An attractive young woman named Marion (Arielle Dombasle) has retreated to her brother’s house in Normandy for a late summer holiday to await the finalization of her divorce. One day, accompanied by her charming adolescent cousin, Pauline (Amanda Langlet), Marion encounters her former lover, a quiet and pensive young man named Pierre (Pascal Greggory) on […]
Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a devout, unmarried engineer, has a very specific profile in mind for his ideal wife: attractive, blonde, intelligent, and above all, a practicing Catholic. He believes that he has found his soulmate when he spots a young student named Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) in a crowded church during Sunday mass, and resolves to […]
Perhaps Francesco Rosi’s most pointed and incisive social examination of the widespread instability, scandal, injustice, and corruption of (then) contemporary postwar politics, Exquisite Corpses opens to the image of a somber, elderly judge named Varga (Charles Vanel) as he walks pensively through the catacombs of a church, observing in painstaking detail the recesses and contours […]
Voyage in Italy opens to a shot of a reserved British couple, Alex (George Sanders) and Katherine Joyce (Ingrid Bergman) traveling in silence down a long, empty, narrow road on the Italian countryside. They are awaiting the sale of an inherited villa in Naples, and have decided to seize the occasion and spend undivided time […]
In an upscale district of Rome, a cosmopolitan American socialite named Irene Girard (Ingrid Bergman) hurries home with her pet in tow and is greeted by the concierge with the inconvenient news that the elevator is again out of service. It is a perfunctory irritation for the carefree and sophisticated expatriate whose pressing engagement is […]
In the midst of a torrential rain, Brother Francis of Assisi (Brother Nazario Gerardi) in the province of Umbria and his disciples arrive at their outpost in the rural village of Rivo Torto to seek shelter from the inclement weather, only to be driven away by a trespassing peasant who, along with his donkey, have […]