The Italian

Nov 2, 2008 — To see the gorgeous Fanfan la Tulipe is to go back in time twice over: to the film’s eighteenth-century French setting and to the international cinema world of more than fifty years ago, when this genial action farce was initially...

Sep 15, 2008 — Max Ophuls’s ingenious tale of Viennese cafe society conveys both the transience of individual passions and the durability of passion itself as a motivating force in human behavior.

Jan 14, 2008 — As Japan was coming out of World War II, Akira Kurosawa was coming into his own as a filmmaker.

Aug 28, 2006 — Pietro Germi’s brilliant satire skewers Italian society’s devotion to appearances and its cultlike obsession with gossip and honor.

Oct 24, 2005 — Kihachi Okamoto’s subversion of the samurai movie possesses the same gritty, stark realism with regard to imagery and body count, yet the tone is decidedly comic.

Sep 26, 2005 — “They were down for each other.” If one wanted to pitch the concept of Bad Timing in six words, this comment by its director, Nicolas Roeg, couldn’t be bettered.

Jun 4, 2001 — Mario Monicelli’s caper comedy is that genuine rarity in popular culture: a satire that not only helped kill off one movie genre, but started a whole new subgenre in the process.

Aug 28, 2000 — Alberto Lattuada’s gifts for dramatic narrative were joined for the first and last time with Federico Fellini’s flair for cartoonish satire and lyrical sentiment.

Nov 23, 1998 — Paul Morrissey’s cult classic has obvious appeal for the lover of Grand Guignol—but it equally addresses the thoughtful.

Jul 21, 1998 — On November 2, 1975, the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini was found dead—murdered, police said, by a young male prostitute. However lurid its details (the Roman tabloids ran huge front-page photos of the disfigured corpse), his death struck many as...