Vittorio De Sica

Luchino Visconti

Hi,

You're missing Jacques Rivette, Claude Berri to mention 2 folks that I personally like a lot!

Hi,

Would love to see it ... someday, after I die I suppose I will see all of these things!!! In an age of the "world market" the divisions between cultures are harder than ever! Europe is still segregated when it comes to the arts, and DVD's in a different format, and many American banks locking up accounts ... as they do not want to deal with the conversion rates, and the Euro!

I have nothing but good things to say about Fellini, Bertolucci, some Antonioni, and then some of the less known stuff like Tornatore. De Sica has some magnificent things, but they are kinda hidden away in the history of it all and you don't notice ... oh dang, I missed that! Visconti, was interesting, although I think he had more ideas than he did resolutions for what to do with his films ... in this sense I much prefer Bertolucci, since he will just change a color and throw you a curve ... and give you a completely different set of thoughts and ideas. A lot of folks liked Antonioni in the early days, and I, personally, did not find anything special in all that stuff ... Fellini was more fun, because he was not predictable and would go fingers up to his Italian producers that were always upset that his films could not make that big money they wanted. ... something like that, and in this sense, both Fellini and Kurosawa were very special ... although Fellini was not afraid to tell the Vatican where to stuff it, when it came to them deciding which films were this and that and which ones got cut off mid-sentence ... (see Cinema Paradiso ... happened in Spain, Portugal and Latin America as well, although I'm told that not as badly in England and France.).

All in all, a very lively film scene in my book, although many of the films seem to be designed for a specific audience in smaller cities and towns, something that could excite them more than the (sometimes) overly impressed major film makers ... I, for some weird reason, can not see Antonioni, being liked in small town Italy ... since so many of the films are really bland, and sometimes trivial. But his shooting style is what helped make him famous, although he lost that side in his later years. Fellini, is kind of the clown in the group and he will always be liked in many places ... his politics are the circus! The only problem is that on occasion he hits a note that is very hard on the eyes of the church, and the opening of INTERVISTA is the best example of that ... as if we all were not kids once, and did the same thing without a camera behind us!