Open Roads: New Italian Cinema at Lincoln Center 2018

THE APE WOMAN/LA DONNA SCIMMIA (1964)

One of the neglected Marco Ferreri's less known but still loved films, in a restored print. With parallels to Fellini's La Strada.

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PURE HEARTS/CUORI PURI (Roberto De Paolis 2017)

As expected, this one from Directors' Fortnight at Cannes is a powerful little indie film. It concerns a girl in Rome who belongs to an evangelical group and is vowing to remain a virgin till marriage who meets a sexy parking lot attendant trying to fight his way out of a criminal background. Tight, intense script, fine acting. Blows most of those slick mainstream Italian films out of the water.

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Overview.

The series was a mixture as usual. There were glossy efforts like Comencini's Stories That Cannot Belong to This World (which I have not reviewed) , Castellitto's Fortnata and Öspetek's Naples in Veils. For those who wanted to celebrate and learn about Itaiian cinema history there were films by the Taviani brothers, including their well-known Night of the Shooting Stars, and a documentary about the lesser known Marco Ferreri and his The Ape Woman.

But for me the films that mattered were Look Up/Guarda in alto by 27-year-old Fulvio Risuleo, an imaginative gem; Vincenzo Marra's heartfelt little study of a priest bucking the southern mafia, Equilibrium; and two debut features about young people, Boys Cry, by the D'Innocenzo brothers, Fabil and Damiano,about two teen boys who become gangsters with dire consequences; and Pure Hearts, a fraught love story by Roberto De Paolis. The strength, sincerity and accomplishment of these were really encouraging - even though the weakness of the local industry is reflected in the lack of attention films like this get in Italy.

Nonetheless, it is good news that films like this are coming out of Italy.

At the Film Society of Lincoln Center, it never stops. In fact, often it gets better. See below.

A grand Visconti retrospective at Lincoln Center.

Unfortunately, we won't be there.

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ViSCONTI'S LUDWIG [Times]

If you picked up a program of this year's Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series, and flipped it over, on the reverse is another, bigger program (twenty-one days vs. six) of a complete retrospective of the cinema of the great Luchino Visconti. All his films, and some in restorations and 35mm prints. From June 8-18, all his other features and shorts are shown. From June 22-28, 2018, a new restoration of his Ludwig is coming. I would love to devote my days and nights to this retrospective. But I do not live in New York,and my plans were only for Open Roads. A.O. Scott has a piece, "How Luchino Visconti Made History Sing," to kick of the series in today's New York Times that you can find here: CLICK.

For the Visconti series at Lincoln Center, the films, dates, and times, and to get tickets, go here: VISCONTI SERIES.