What's your favorite Italian movie, especially if you are just learning to speak Italian?

Hmmm, favorite Italian movies. Quickly, off the top of my head...

Pane e Tulipane (Bread and Tulips)
Garden of the Finzi Continis
The Conformist (Bertolucci)
Cinema Paradiso

Edited to add:
La Ciociara [Two Women] (Sophia Loren. Jean Paul Belmondo; dir Vittorio de Sica)
Divorzio all'Italiana (Marcello Mastroianni; dir Pietro Germi)

I very much enjoyed:
Big Deal on Madonna Street or I soliti ignoti with Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, Claudia Cardinale, Toto, among others.

Mastroianni, Gassman, Cardinale all so talented, young and attractive. Toto at his nuttiest. A very good, funny movie. Easy to follow and a lot of fun.

I like many many many, but I love il Postino.

I have bought or taped

Cinema Paradiso
Mignon has come to stay
Life is Beautiful
Juliet of the Spirits, Roma and other Fellini films
The Decameron

quote:

if you are just learning to speak Italian

Thinking of this aspect, I think one of the best recent films is Io non ho paura (I'm not scared), after the novel by Niccolò Ammaniti. A lot of the dialogue is between the young children: their simple vocabulary and surprisingly clear diction certainly helped my understanding.

And while I share with Judith (and, I'm sure, many others) a deep love of Il Postino, Massimo Troisi's wonderful main character isn't a real contender in the 'surprisingly clear diction' stakes

Jonathan

Liz compliled a great list of Italian films here on Slowtrav.

An excellent and very new one is "Il vestito della sposa" by Fiorella Infascelli, which is about a young, soon to be bride who is raped by a gang of masqued men. The violence shifts her world, she gives up the marriage and the university and gets a job in a pastry shop, until one man comes along and starts gently flirting with her. With Maya Sansa (The best of youth) and Piera Degli Esposti, shot somewhere in Central italy, with great sights.

Another movie that I lved in recent times is "La lingua del Santo" by Carlo Mazzacurati, which is the story of two losers who decide to steal Saint Antony's tongue, a holy relic kept in the Padova duomo. Half-drama and half-comedy. (Check out Marco Paolini playing the Siant that appears ina vision to the two thieves, speaking as though he had no tongue.)

Awesome, more movies to watch! I've seen many of the ones posted here, but others I have not.

Alice mentioned "The Best of Youth." That's one of my favorites so far. It's actually a miniseries that chronicles the life of two brothers as they experience life. Just an excellent drama.

Spaghetti westerns!!

"Between 1960 and 1975, European film production companies made nearly 600 Westerns. Critics either blasted or ignored these films, and because most of them were financed by Italian companies, they called them Spaghetti Westerns. Fans of the genre embraced the term which is now lovingly used to label any Western made and financed by Continental filmmakers." From here.

About Pane e Tulipani: I've seen this several times, most recently last year at Koinè, where we watched parts of it. Our teacher pointed out that it's only the foreigner (Bruno Ganz) who speaks proper Italian; the others speak mostly with Veneziano pronunciation.

I enjoy Nanni Moretti's films, The Son's Room and Caro Diario come to mind.

Though a Danish film, Italian for Beginners does have a bit Italian spoken as well - and it's so appropriate.

I always start out watching an Italian film with the notion of learning more of the language but I often either 1) become engrossed in the storyline or 2) become confused by regional dialect that differs from what I have been taught.

My favorite though remains Il Postino.

At the Uni for Foreigners here in Perugia they show two Italian films each week - one more modern film and a classic. I've seen some truly amazing films here which I would never have seen otherwise and loved and appreciated every single one of them.

The ones I've seen are:

* Mediterraneo (Italian soldiers stranded on a Greek Island during WWII)

* Fumo di Londra (Alberto Sordi film about a Perugian who goes to London in the 1960s)

* Tutto L'amore che c'e` (film set in Puglia showing the northern-southern "conflict")

* Fuori dal Mondo (about a Nun who finds a baby abandoned in a park)

* Signore e Signori (comedy set in Treviso, about the need to present a "bella figura" even if behind closed doors your marriage isn't good)

* La Mandragola (hilarious film based on a play by Macchiavelli)

* Ricordati di Me (Monica Bellucci film about a dysfunctional family)

* I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini film about five grown up men who laze around doing nothing all the time)

* Caterina va in Citta` (a small-town girl moves to Rome. Think "Mean Girls" in Italian!)



On Liberation day I watched a film on TV called "Era Notte a Roma", about a Roman girl who hides Allied soldiers in her apartment. An old TV series is "State Buoni Se Potete" about the life of San Filippo Neri. But my all-time favourite is Cinema Paradiso. It's just so touching, and I think about my dad whenever I see it and wonder what it's like returning to a "home" you left forty years ago.

"Ti amo in tutte le lingue del mondo" is so sooooo good.

I'm a big sucker for romantic comedies and this is definitely hilarious! It's a pretty new movie.

Another of my favorites: "Johnny Stecchino"

quote:

Jonathon said: I think one of the best recent films is Io non ho paura (I'm not scared), after the novel by Niccolò Ammaniti.

good call Jonathon!

I saw that movie one of the first weeks after arriving in Italy expecting to not understand a word.... In the end it was quite easy to understand and very very good.

quote:

Originally posted by Saint_Bambi:
* Mediterraneo (Italian soldiers stranded on a Greek Island during WWII)

Mediterraneo, just like "La meglio gioventù", is an odd movie, it gets very different responses from Italians and foreigners because both movies deal with more than the story they talk about, they deal with history, our history, the things we have lived through. And that's especially true for the people who lived or grew up in a certain cultural an social environment. In particular "Mediterraneo" is appearently about Italian soldiers stranded on a Greek island during WWII, but it actually talks about the 1970's culture!

Many of the films above - I haven't seen Pane e tulipani yet... Guess I'll have to rent it, though I'd rather see it in a cinema.

How about "Le Cristo si è fermato a Eboli", based on Carlo Levi's classic account of an anti-fascist "internal exile" in a remote Southern village? (No, there isn't much dialect at all: almost all the film is in very standard and well-articulated Italian).

Saint Bambi, I remember those films in Perugia very well... and we had such fun seeing them and going out for a glass or two afterwards and chatting...

lagatta wrote:

quote:

How about "Le Cristo si è fermato a Eboli",

How could I have forgotten that lovely movie! A rare case where I thought a wonderful book (which I had read in translation) was transferred beautifully to film. The cast is terrific.

Yes, it was an unusually felicitous filming of a a literary masterpiece.

I won't delve too deeply into it as my master's studies related to Carlo Levi, but everything from the pompous, but not terribly dangerous fascist podestà, to the darkly wonderful witch/healer (Irene Pappas) to the brief ray of light his sister represented - as a "woman doctor" and bringer of boxes of culture - was deftly represented in the film, as were the peasants' stories of poverty, oppression and exile to the Americas.

It is a subtle, open-ended film, deeply sympathetic to the peasantry, but not to be fit in an ideological box.

I also loved La Meglio Gioventu. Wow, I was just so moved by everything! And I am also a big Il Postino-fan.

Lagatta, how did your master's studies relate to Carlo Levi? I would love to hear more about that. (If it has any interest to you, here is a link to a short travel report I submitted, describing what was practically a pilgrimage to Aliano.)

Just an update on a brilliant film I saw at the Uni for Foreigners last week...

Tre Metri Sopra il Cielo (Three Metres Above Heaven)

You could say it's Italy's version of a teen romance flick. For the Aussies amongst us, it reminded me a lot of Looking for Alibrandi.

The film is based on a book by Federico Moccia. It became famous because it was passed around by photocopy amongst high school children, because its original print run was very small. A couple of years ago they reprinted the book and released a film to go with it. You can buy the DVD with English subtitles.

How much did I love this film... I bought the book the next day and read it within five days (my first ever book in Italian.) I even read the sequel (Ho Voglia di Te) but unfortunately I thought it sucked compared to Tre Metri Sopra il Cielo. And yes, I have an appointment with the TV tomorrow night to watch it again!

Please tell me where you all are finding these films? Our Blockbusters is very limited, maybe 2 italian films at the most to rent. Are you buying them over the internet? Thanks.

Leigh,

Do Netflix!! It's an incredible value and they have a pretty big collection of foreign films.

Piccolina, not everyone on the board lives in the USA!! Actually, I don't know for sure where either you or Leigh is from (it's really useful if people put at least their country of residence in their profile field...) - but, Leigh, if you're in the UK there are outfits like Netflix (Lovefilm is the one we use) which stock many, many more foreign films than the average high street rental shop.

Jonathan

Sorry to offend, Jonathan. I figured netflix was an international dealy...

I prefer not to list where I am... that's allowed, right?

I don't want to get in trouble with the moderators!

No offence at all, piccolina And people certainly don't have to put personal information in their public profiles - though for people to just list the country where they live doesn't seem to be giving a lot away, but can be useful if they're asking for advice.

Jonathan