Le grandi donne

Roma, cittá aperta (Rome, Open City). 1945. Directed by Roberto Rossellini. Screenplay by Sergio Amidei. With Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello Pagliero. With Rome overrun by the Nazis, Italian resistance fighters had two major foes: the Germans and the Fascists. The very pregnant fiancée of a hardened resistance fighter joins the cause by carrying secret message. Rossellini, best known for making films in the Neorealist style (location filming, nonprofessional actors, humanistic stories), began making Roma, Open City less than a year after the end of World War II.

103 min.
Thursday, December 1, 1:30 p.m. T3
Thursday, January 19, 1:30 p.m. T3

La signora senza camelie (The Lady Without Camelias). 1953. Italy/France. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Screenplay by Antonioni, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Francesco Maselli, Pier Maria Pasinetti. With Lucia Bosé, Gino Cervi, Anna Carena. Clara Manni (Lucia Bosé), a former shop girl turned movie starlet, becomes famous making trashy movies and marries a powerful producer she doesn’t love. Antonioni deftly explores female adoration and the audience expectation of perfection when none can truly be achieved. According to film lore, the role of Clara was originally intended for Gina Lollobrigida.

101 min.
Friday, December 2, 1:30 p.m. T3
Friday, January 20, 1:30 p.m. T3

La strada. 1954. Directed by Federico Fellini. Screenplay by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano. With Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard Baseheart. Gelsomina is the tragic woman who, sold by her mother, becomes the abused servant to Zampanó, a circus strongman. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “The movie is the bridge between the postwar Italian neorealism which shaped Fellini, and the fanciful autobiographical extravaganzas which followed.” Indeed, the story is fanciful—and especially wretched for the naïve and innocent Gelsomina. When Zampanó kills the Fool, his rival in the circus, Gelsomina disconnects from reality, sending the once-impervious strongman into despair.

108 min.
Wednesday, December 7, 1:30 p.m. T3
Thursday, January 26, 1:30 p.m. T3

L’oro di Napoli (The Gold of Naples). 1954. Directed by Vittoria De Sica. Screenplay by Cesare Zavattini, De Sica, Giuseppe Marotta, based on a novel by Giuseppe Marotta. With Sophia Loren, Silvana Mangano, Toto. In this anthology of stories set in Naples, husbands and wives navigate fidelity, betrayal, an assortment of vices, and the great war of the sexes. A 20-year-old Sophia Loren plays the hearty wife of the local pizzaiolo.

107 min.
Thursday, December 8, 1:30 p.m. T3

The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 1956. France/Italy. Directed by Jean Delannoy. Screenplay by Jean Aurenche, Jacques Prévert, based on the novel by Victor Hugo. With Gina Lollobrigida, Anthony Quinn, Alain Cluny. In this version of Hugo’s timeless tale of beauty, the beast, and the cathedral of Notre Dame, Anthony Quinn plays the sad Quasimodo as more human and less monstrous. He is a victim of failed physiognomy and a malicious world. When the tambourine-playing Esmeralda enchants Qusimodo, he is transformed.

115 min.
Friday, December 9, 1:30 p.m. T3

I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street). 1958. Directed by Mario Monicelli. Screenplay by Monicelli, Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Suso Cecchi D’Amico. With Vittorio Gassman, Claudia Cardinale, Rossana Rory. In this heist-movie satire, not everyone has what it takes to be a thief. Utilizing the Hollywood tropes of dark rainy nights and crumpled fedoras, the film follows a veteran crook, a cocky young gun, and a sweet safecracker as they try to use a supposedly empty apartment to gain access to a treasure hidden benath a baby’s crib. Marcello Mastroianni is delightful as the fledgling thug Tiberio.

106 min.
Wednesday, December 14, 1:30 p.m. T3

Un maledetto imbroglio (The Facts of Murder). 1959. Directed by Pietro Germi. Screenplay by Alfredo Giannetti, Ennio De Concini, Germi, based on the novel by C. E. Gadda. With Claudia Cardinale, Pietro Germi, Franco Fabrizi. Director Pietro Germi plays Inspector Ingravallo, tasked with investigating a robbery in the apartment of Commendatore Anzaloni. The ease of the crime seems suspicious, and what role did the striking maid Assuntina (Claudia Cardinale) play in the caper?

115 min.
Friday, December 16, 1:30 p.m.

T3 Wednesday, December 21, 1:30 p.m. T3

L’avventura. 1960. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Screenplay by Antonioni, Elio Bartolini, Tonino Guerra. With Monica Vitti, James Addams, Lea Massari. According to the late MoMA film curator Charles Silver, “At the heart of L’avventura is, of course, Monica Vitti, Antonioni’s muse throughout this period, to whom he would return decades later for The Mystery of Oberwald. Vitti has an extraordinary haunting quality, expressing perfectly the inexpressibility of the inhabitants of Antonioni’s universe.” As Antonioni’s handsome characters wander through desolate vacation sites, they all seem to be thinking about what to do next—but no one takes action.

138 min.
Thursday, December 15, 1:30 p.m. T3

Thursday, December 22, 1:30 p.m. T3

La ciociara (Two Women). 1960. Directed by Vittorio DeSica. Screenplay by Cesare Zavattini, based on the novel by Alberto Moravia. With Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Eleonora Brown. Cesira and her daughter Rosetta venture from Rome to Naples to escape the ravages of war. Cesira’s only concern is her daughter’s safety, but she is also victimized by the men who are more interested in her physique than in offering shelter, food, or human comfort. Loren won more than 20 international awards for her portrayal of Cesira, including the Academy Award for Best Actress.

105 min.
Friday, December 23, 1:30 p.m. T3

Divorzio all’italiana (Divorce Italian Style). 1961. Directed by Pietro Germi. Screenplay by Ennio De Concini, Germi, Alfredo Giannetti. With Marcello Mastroianni, Stefania Sandrelli, Daniele Rocca. Baron Ferdinando Cefalù has fallen in love with his cousin, but in a country where divorce is not permitted, how does he disentangle himself from his wife? The Baron’s homely wife, Rosalia, is sexually insatiable and he can no longer endure her conjugal demands. He has two ways out: catch Rosalia with another man or murder her. (Divorce finally became legal in Italy on December 1, 1970.)

105 min.
Wednesday, December 28, 1:30 p.m. T3

Mamma Roma. 1962. Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. With Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofolo, Franco Citti. In postwar Rome, Mamma is ready to give up her life as a prostitute and bring her son, Ettore, from the countryside to live with her in the city. Having managed to save up and buy an apartment in a respectable neighborhood, she hopes Ettore will go to school, train for a good job, meet a kind woman, and marry. But Ettore is lazy and self-absorbed, taking for granted the gains his mother provides. Magnani is a powerhouse of maternal emotion and devotion in this, Pasolini’s second feature.

107 min.
Thursday, December 29, 1:30 p.m. T3

8½. 1963. Directed by Federico Fellini. Screenplay by Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Fellini, Brunello Rondi. With Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, Marcello Mastroianni. Filmmaker Guido Anselmi is so distracted that he can’t begin his new project. He procrastinates, makes excuses, and putters around getting nothing done. He even visits a spa in the hope that the treatments will invigorate him, but with his mistress and a crowd of insistent producers and assistants in tow, he retreats into his boyhood memories—most revolving around encounters with women—for salvation. Anselmi is a mirror image of Fellini in a film that won the latter an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film.

138 min.
Friday, December 30, 1:30 p.m. T3

Il Gattopardo (The Leopard). 1963. France/Italy. Directed by Luchino Visconti. Screenplay by Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, Enrico Medioli, Visconti. With Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon. As the nobility begins to fade from prominence in Sicily, the rise of the merchant class intimidates those who cling tightly to their peerages. In the 1860s the noble family of Fabrizio Corbero, Prince of Salina (“Il Gattopardo”) is collapsing, and while the Prince struggles to manage, his cunning nephew marries the daughter of Don Calogero Sedara—a former peasant who is now the Prince’s equal.

185 min.
Wednesday, January 4, 1:30 p.m. T3

Friday, January 27, 1:30 p.m. T3

Ieri, oggi e domain (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow). 1964. Italy/France. Directed by Vittoio DeSica. Screenplay by Eduardo De Filippo, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Zavattini. With Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Pasquale Cennamo. This sometime comedy is a trilogy of stories, set in Naples, Milan and Rome. Sophia Loren plays three different women, including Adelina, a shrewd Neopolitan who sells black-market cigarettes. When the police nab her, Adelina gets a reprieve from arrest because she is pregnant. So she gets pregnant year after year and seems more radiant than ever, while her husband Carmine is virtually exhausted.

133 min.
Thursday, January 5, 1:30 p.m. T3

Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits). 1965. Italy/France. Directed by Federico Fellini. Screenplay by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, Brunello Rondi. With Giulietta Masina, Valentina Cortese, Mario Pisu. Juliet, a middle-aged housewife with a no nonsense haircut and a tailored wardrobe, stays home and smokes while peering at the bombshell neighbor who entertains many gentlemen callers. Juliet suspects her husband is having an affair and desperately wants to leave him. She must dig deep for the courage to do so and it is her memories—including a typical Fellini seaside parade—that sustain her in her convictions.

137 min.
Friday, January 6, 1:30 p.m. T3

Modesty Blaise. 1966. Great Britain. Directed by Joseph Losey. Screenplay by Evan Jones, based on the comic strip by Peter O’Donnell, Jim Holdaway. With Monica Vitti, Terence Stamp, Dirk Bogarde. Based on the popular British comic strip, Modesty Blaise recounts how the titular heroine emerged with amnesia from a Greek refugee camp in 1945 and wandered postwar Europe until connecting with Lob, a fellow refugee, and eventually becoming a formidable spy. When Blaise is charged with protecting a shipment of diamonds heading to the Middle East, the loot attracts the attention of a jewel thief.

119 min.
Wednesday, January 11, 1:30 p.m. T3

Io, io, io…e gli altri (Me, Me, Me and the Others). 1966. Directed by Alessandro Blasetti. Screenplay by Adriano Baracco, Leo Benvenuti, Blasetti, Lianell Carell, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Piero De Bernardi, Ennio Flaiano, Age Incrocci, Carlo Romano, Giorgio Rossi, Furio Scarpelli, Libero Solaroli, Vincenzo Talarico. With Gina Lollobrigida, Silvana Mangano, Marcello Mastroianni. Gina Lollobrigida plays Titta, the wife of Sandro, a well-known journalist who excels at getting to the core of his subjects’ souls. But he hardly knows Titta! It takes the death of Sandro’s best buddy to finally get him to examine his own life.

95 min.
Thursday, January 12, 1:30 p.m. T3

The Secret of Santa Vittoria. 1969. USA. Directed by Stanley Kramer. Written by Ben Maddow, William Rose, based on the novel by Robert Crichton. With Anthony Quinn, Anna Magnani, Virna Lisi. The Italian village of Santa Vittoria must figure out a way to save their precious wine reserves from destruction by the Nazis. Mayor Bombolino is not very shrewd, but he works successfully with the townsfolk to squirrel the wine away from the occupiers. The citizens of Santa Vittoria are decent and hardworking but no match for the power of the Nazis…except when it comes to saving their wine! Print courtesy UCLA Film & Television Archive.

139 min.
Friday, January 13, 1:30 p.m. T3
Wednesday, January 25, 1:30 p.m. T3

La cena (The Supper). 1998. Italy/France. Directed by Ettore Scola. Screenplay by Scola, Furio Scarpelli, Silvia Scola, Giamcomo Scarpelli. With Vittorio Gassman, Stefania Sandrelli, Fanny Ardant. At a small neighborhood restaurant diners come and go, and we experience their lives and relationships through food, wine, discussion, and emotion. The eclectic mix of patrons, including a magician, a Japanese couple, and a strange professor, contributes to the offbeat vibe.

127 min.
Wednesday, January 18, 1:30 p.m. T3