Summertime (1955) (2003 restoration Academy Film Archive / BFI)

David Lean: Summertime (GB/IT/US 1955). Jane Hudson (Katherine Hepburn) and Renato De Rossi (Rossano Brazzi) with the red glass goblet.

David Lean: Summertime (GB/IT/US 1955). Jane Hudson (Katherine Hepburn) and Renato De Rossi (Rossano Brazzi).

David Lean: Summertime (GB/IT/US 1955). Jane Hudson (Katherine Hepburn) on the piazza San Marco, Venice.

Tempo d'estate / Summer Madness (GB) / Kesäinen romanssi / Sommarens dårskap / Vacances à Venise.

    GB/IT/US © 1955 Lopert Films Incorporated. Prod.: Ilya Lopert, Norman Spencer for London Films.

    Director: David Lean. Sog.: based on the pièce The Time of the Cuckoo (1952) by Arthur Laurents. Scen.: David Lean, H. E. Bates. F.: Jack Hildyard – Technicolor – 1.85:1. M.: Peter Taylor. Scgf.: Vincent Korda. Mus.: Alessandro Cicognini. Int.: Katharine Hepburn (Jane Hudson), Rossano Brazzi (Renato De Rossi), Isa Miranda (Mrs Fiorini), Darren McGavin (Eddie Yaeger), Mari Aldon (Phyl Yaeger), Jane Rose (Edith McIlhenny), MacDonald Parke (Lloyd McIlhenny), Gaetano Autiero (Mauro), Jeremy Spenser (Vito De Rossi).

    Soundtrack: "Sul mare luccica (Santa Lucia)".

    Theme song: "Summertime in Venice" (comp. Icini = Alessandro Cicognini), English lyr. Carl Sigman, Italian lyr. Pinchi.

    Overture to "La gazza ladra" / "The Thieving Magpie" (1817) by Gioachino Rossini.

    Loc: Venice.

    Studio: Scalera Studios, Venice.

    Language: English and some Italian.

    100 min

    Festival premiere: 29 May 1955 Venice

    US premiere: 21 June 1955

    Finnish premiere: 7 Sep 1956

    Restored in 2003 by the Academy Film Archive and the British Film Institute with the support of the David Lean Foundation.

    35 mm print from Academy Film Archive.

    Courtesy Tigon Film Distributors and Hollywood Classics International.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Katharine Hepburn: Feminist, Acrobat and Lover.

    Viewed at Cinema Arlecchino with e-subtitles in Italian by SubTi Londra, 29 June 2025.

Molly Haskell (Bologna 2025): "At an age when most actresses are playing character parts rather than romantic leads, Hepburn’s longevity was an anomaly. Hollywood then as now was a town that equates female power with youth and beauty. But she had staked her career on intelligence and determination, not the glamor and beauty of a prima donna, and she won by outliving them all. (She wasn’t entirely alone: Hollywood in the 1950 was more receptive to aging stars. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford also had late-life romances in films such as Now Voyager and Sudden Fear.)"

"Like so many of her parts, this one originated in a play (Arthur Laurents) and went through various possible actresses before she won it and made it her own. Here she’s shorn not just of youth and glamor but of her brash confidence and imperious manners. She’s an Ugly American of all things, a spinster from Akron, Ohio, but she’s in Venice! And never has it looked more beautiful on the screen than in this film directed by David Lean and shot on location."

"In a way Hepburn turns age into an asset; she can make fun of herself, can be irritating and likable at the same time. She can even fall into the canal without completely smashing her amour-propre. Or her romantic prospects, which reside in the heart-stoppingly gorgeous Rossano Brazzi as an antiques dealer she sees first (where else?) on the piazza San Marco."

"She was a risk-taker, on screen and off, and in this case her recklessness got her into trouble: she insisted on doing the canal scene herself rather than turning it over to a stuntwoman. As a consequence, she developed an eye infection that lasted for the rest of her life."

"Yet she recalled working with Lean as one of the most challenging experiences of her career, as he pushed and goaded her into places she hadn’t chosen. Emotionally, too, she allowed herself to be fearlessly exposed in all her loneliness and insecurity, this may be one of her bravest and most moving performances." Molly Haskell (Bologna 2025)

...

BFI SCREENONLINE

SYNOPSIS

"Jane Hudson, a single American woman in her late thirties, visits Venice for the first time. Upon arrival, by train, she is clearly a little overwhelmed by the crowds and bustle which greet her. She is whisked away by water-bus down the Grand Canal to her hotel, photographing everything she sees. On board are the McIlhennys, a middle-aged American couple who are also staying at the Pensione Fioria.

The hotel owner, Signora Fioria, shows Jane to her rooms. Jane meets some other American guests, Eddie, an artist, and his girlfriend Phyl. As evening approaches, everyone, including Signora Fioria, goes out to dinner, leaving Jane alone. She makes the acquaintance of a small boy, a street urchin called Mauro, who makes a living from the tourists, but Jane decides to explore Venice on her own, eventually reaching St. Mark's Square, where she is dazzled by the beauty of her surroundings. She orders a drink at a café and observes the early evening promenade. All around her, people are in couples. The sound of Jane's camera attracts the notice of an Italian man, around her own age, sitting at the table behind her. Jane is embarrassed when she realises he is looking at her, and leaves.

The next day, Jane continues her sight-seeing with Mauro, but later, on her own, she sees a beautiful red glass goblet, in the window of an antique shop by a canal. When she goes into the shop she is disconcerted to see that it is owned by the man who had watched her in the square the previous evening - Renato di Rossi. She buys the goblet and Renato says that he will try to find another for her, although the glasses are very rare 18th century antiques.

Back at the hotel, Jane strikes up a conversation with Phyl, but is left alone again when she goes off with Eddie. Leaving her camera behind, for once, Jane returns to St. Mark's Square. Taking a table, she sees Eddie and Phyl, with their friends, coming towards her. She moves the chairs to make it look as though she is waiting for some-one to join her, but they pass by without seeing her. Renato comes to the café, but when he sees the upturned chair and untouched drink at Jane's table, he moves on before she has a chance to explain that she is really on her own.

The following morning Jane goes sight-seeing again with Mauro. She returns to the antique shop but Renato is not there. Taking a photograph of it she loses her balance and falls into the canal. Renato calls on her, back at the hotel. Jane is immediately suspicious and questions why he has come to see her. He tells her that he finds her attractive, and Jane admits that she is attracted to him. He asks her out and she is about to accept when the McIlhennys come in to the hallway and show off the six goblets of red Venetian glass they have bought, just like Jane's 'antique'. An angry Jane accuses Renato of having duped her, but agrees to meet him that evening, in the Square.

They spend the evening together and Renato buys her a white gardenia. She agrees to see him again the following night. The next day she goes shopping for new clothes, but when, that evening, she discovers that Renato is married with children, she joins Phyl in Harry's Bar, and both women, disappointed with their men, drown their sorrows, for Eddie is having an affair with Signora Fioria. Renato finds Jane and tells her he is separated from his wife. She relents,goes out with him as planned, and they spend the night together, followed by an idyllic day on the island of Murano. But Jane knows that they have no future together, and prepares to leave Venice. Renato reaches the station as her train is leaving - he has brought her a white gardenia."

ANALYSIS (JANET MOAT)

The credits for Summer Madness (1955) proudly proclaim that it was photographed entirely in Venice. David Lean's love for the city shines out in every scene. The film was to become his favourite. It was based on a Broadway play, which explored the old Henry James subject of New World innocence meeting and being seduced by Old World charm and experience, but the city is such a central character in the film that it is hard to see how the story worked on stage. Once again, it was Alexander Korda who brought subject and director together.

It was Lean's third film in colour, ravishingly shot by Jack Hildyard, and an Anglo-American co-production. In its theme of an adulterous love affair (the Italian is married), it echoes both Brief Encounter (1945) and The Passionate Friends (1948). Like Brief Encounter it begins with a steam train thundering into the frame. Like The Passionate Friends it includes a motorboat ride for the lovers.

Lean is not afraid to show all the tourist sites, and he marshals his crowd scenes with great aplomb. In Katharine Hepburn he had a huge star, and the truthfulness of her playing of an ageing American spinster achingly alone in a city of lovers saves the film from being what, suggested critic Dilys Powell, might otherwise have been a novelette within a documentary. Hepburn and Lean became life-long friends, but were never to make another film together.

Some of the symbolism - there is a shoe motif, and the lovers finally come together to the accompaniment of a firework display over the city - may seem too obvious to modern audiences, and the whole film is shamelessly romantic and glamorous, but, like Venice herself, it is hard to resist. Janet Moat (BFI Screenonline)

AA: I see David Lean's Summertime for the first time in Bologna's Katharine Hepburn retrospective. The film was special for both artists, who became lifelong friends. Summertime was Lean's favourite film and Hepburn his favourite actress. It was Lean's first film on location abroad, and he never again made a pure studio film. Summertime was also Lean's last contemporary story. Lean fell in love with Venice, which became his second home. Even natives of Venice agreed that he had caught the spirit of the city.

Summertime was based on a popular Arthur Laurents play which was later adapted even into a Broadway musical. 

But Summertime is a profoundly cinematic achievement. It draws on a grand tradition that goes way back into the birth of the cinema, the year 1896, when la Cinématographe Lumière commissioned Charles and Marie Moisson to shoot a series of vues during their honeymoon in Venice. They saw the city as a dream space and a promised land for lovers. Constant Girel took one of the cinema's first tracking shots from a moving gondola in Panorama pris d'un bateau (Catalogue Lumière Vue N° 227, 21 September 1896).

Max Reinhardt, the wizard of production design, shot Venetianische Nacht (DE 1913) on location because the reality was more magical than any artificial set could be.

Alexander Korda gave Lean a piece of precious advice. Kevin Brownlow quotes Lean: "He said, 'Good luck, just remember that if I'd chosen some of the highly respected directors of the present moment, they would seek out all the side streets of Venice and never take a shot of the Grand Canal or the Piazza San Marco because that would be a cliché. They're not a cliché for nothing. For God's sake don't be shy of showing these famous places.'"

This piece of wisdom was also shared by Charles Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock. All were big enough to embrace the most familiar objects. All were also big enough to transcend the ordinary in them and reveal the extraordinary.

In an important sense, Summertime is a travelogue. A topical connection for our age of image deluge is the ubiquitous 16 mm movie camera with which Jane Hudson films everything.

Ten years had passed since the end of World War II in Europe, and there was a film trend of Anglo-American romance on the Continent. Lean was inspired by Three Coins in the Fountain and Roman Holiday. To Catch a Thief (which shares the fireworks imagery) premiered a few months after Summertime. Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman filmed Viaggio in Italia, and they, too, had considered filming the property that became Summertime.

Italians responded by launching a cycle of comedies in which a man (usually incarnated by Alberto Sordi) fails to find love abroad, for instance in Il diavolo shot in Sweden.

Love is the most common theme in the cinema. All his life, Lean directed films about love, from Brief Encounter till Ryan's Daughter. Each time it was individual and unique. In Summertime, the plot borders on the boulevard comedy. It is easy to see how the movie could have become licentious, salacious, facile and cynical. Instead, Lean displayed grace and tact.

This was the age of the Production Code. All films in general release had to be suitable for children before the establishment of the rating system in 1968.

The biggest laughter during the 2025 edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato was heard when Renato tells Jane: "You are like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat. 'No' you say, 'I want beefsteak!' My dear girl, you are hungry. Eat the ravioli." Jane answers: "I'm not that hungry". This piece of dialogue was ordered cut by the Production Code Administration. (Was it actually cut at the time? It was in place in the 2003 Academy Film Archive restoration we saw).

In Summertime, the double entendre / le double sens is but a spice to a graceful, gentle, tender and life-affirming tale. What matters is the wisdom of the heart. It is never too late. Love is better than anything. It is not a matter of all or nothing.

Katharine Hepburn was a great comedienne in 1930s screwball, in 1940s Tracy-Hepburn duels and in 1950s spinster-in-love stories launched in The African Queen. In Summertime she is at her best. Like the greatest in comedy, she lands in the most ridiculous situations but never loses her innate dignity. We laugh and we cry.

Kevin Brownlow quotes a surprising comment that Lean gave to a Japanese fan magazine about Summertime. For Lean, the film was not so far from Viaggio in Italia after all.

"What appealed to me in the idea of Summertime? Loneliness. Why? Because I think that loneliness is in all of us, it is a more common emotion than love, but we speak less about it. (...) The film is about a lonely woman who falls in love, and as I know no better remedy for the complaint I hope you will find it sympathetic."

The fabulous print did justice to the film's photochemical Technicolor glory.

Riḥ es-sed / L’Homme de cendres / Man of Ashes (2025 restoration Cineteca di Bologna with Cinétéléfilms)

Nouri Bouzid: // ريح السد // Riḥ es-sed / L’Homme de cendres / Man of Ashes (TN 1986). Imed Maalal (Hachemi) and Khaled Ksouri (Farfat).

// ريح السد // Riḥ essed / Riḥ al-sadd / L'uomo di cenere. [Literally: "The Wind That Takes Away Everything].

    TN 1986. © 1985 Satpec / Camel. Prod.: Ahmed Bahaddine Attia per Cinétéléfilms, Satpec. 

    Director: Nouri Bouzid. Scen.: Nouri Bouzid. F.: Youssef Ben Youssef – colour. M.: Mika Ben Miled. Scgf.: Claude Bennys, Mohsen Rais. Mus.: Salah Mahdi. Int.: Imed Maalal (Hachemi), Khaled Ksouri (Farfat), Mustapha Adouani (Ameur), Mouna Noureddine (Neffisa), Yaacoub Bchiri (Levy).

    Wassila Chaouki (Sejra), Sonia Mansour (Amina).

    Loc: Sfax.

    109 min

    In Tunisian Arabic. With some Hebrew.

    Restored in 2025 by Cineteca di Bologna in association with Cinétéléfilms and in collaboration with Cinémathèque royale de Belgique who provided the 4K raw scan of the original camera negative. The restoration of the image, the scan and restoration of the sound – stored at Éclair Préservation, were carried out at L’Immagine Ritrovata and L’Image Retrouvée laboratories

    DCP with English subtitles from Cinétéléfilms.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Cinemalibero.

    Viewed at Cinema Modernissimo with e-subtitles in Italian, 29 June 2025.

Mohamed Challouf (Bologna 2025): "I too was there, among the huge crowd of Tunisians and foreign festivalgoers, massed together in front of the doors of the Le Colisée cinema in the heart of Tunis. The scene was almost surreal: the impatience was palpable, the pressure on the entrance doors was mounting. The police, overwhelmed, were becoming agitated. Then the batons came out in an attempt to contain the momentum of the people. It was unlike anything ever seen before for a Tunisian picture." 

"That evening, we had not just come to see a film, but an event. Riḥ Es-Sed, Nouri Bouzid’s début feature, was already making waves at international festivals, notably in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. Following these screenings abroad, a major smear campaign was launched against the film by several Tunisian and Arab media outlets, with rumours swirling in Tunis that the censors would never allow its theatrical release, and that the Carthage Film Festival would be our only chance to see it."

"Produced by Ahmed Bahaddine Attia, a friend and trusted ally of the director, Riḥ Es-Sed was released in a tense climate, surrounded by virulent criticism. The film was accused of breaking taboos and tackling subjects long buried in silence: homosexuality, the rape of children by a figure of authority (a boss and master) and the presence of a marginalised character, a Tunisian Jew, who becomes the confidant of the two tormented young men, Farfat and Hachemi."

"A hypocritical society did not want to see its reflection in this brutal and necessary mirror. And yet, despite the controversy, the film found its audience. I still recall the intense debate that followed the screening at the Maison de la Culture. The theatre was packed, and the audience was overcome with emotion and respect for Nouri Bouzid’s courage. That day, Tunisian cinema confronted itself: its silences, its flaws."

"At the conclusion of the 1986 Carthage Film Festival, when the Tanit d’or was presented to Nouri Bouzid, the entire crowd rose to its feet to applaud him. That moment… I will never forget it. It was more than an award; it was a victory against censorship and against fear. Riḥ Es-Sed became a phenomenon, reconciling, perhaps for the first time, the general Tunisian public with its own cinema." Mohamed Challouf (Bologna 2025)

...

FROM ITALIAN WIKIPEDIA:

"Plot

Hachemi and Farfat are two young cabinetmakers who work in the city of Sfax. Hachemi, forced by his family, is about to get married, while Farfat begins to wander aimlessly, thinking of moving to Tunis. They both share a secret: as boys they were raped by Ameur, the carpenter where they did their apprenticeship. Hachemi, in an attempt to escape from future married life, takes refuge in the past and the ghosts that compose it. One evening they go to Ameur's house. Farfat kills Ameur with a knife and leaves the city for good, while Hachemi meets his destiny, returning home to get married.

The film

Man of Ashes deals with the theme of memory and the violent past, represented by an abused childhood. According to the director, the film represents the link with a violent collective past, which through the conflicts of the characters, evokes some characteristics of Tunisian society. The authoritarian and coercive act of Hachemi's father is not totally negative, but is an attempt to re-establish order in the patriarchal hierarchical structure, which is in danger. The director was accused for this of bringing personal themes regarding his own childhood to the screen, while, as stated by Bouzid, the film is a reflection and transposition into fiction of the consequences of the violent past of his country. Even Fellini's childhood in Amarcord is fictional, since the dramatic reality as always draws from historical reality, which represents an inexhaustible source for artists.

Criticism

Critics and the public were divided on the character of Levy, the Jewish musician in the film, played by Yaacoub Bchiri. The director declared that he was perfectly aware of the reactions that such presence would have aroused. In fact, Bouzid, because of his political affiliation and militancy within a party like the "GEAS", which supported the need to create two independent states on the Palestinian issue, spent five years in prison, together with a Jewish friend who was active in the same association, knowing the issue perfectly. Dialogue between cultures is fundamental, according to Bouzid, and the character of Levy is an integral part of the Tunisian historical heritage, as well as of the director's personal memory. The choice of Mr. Levy in the film has an important dramaturgical function: the joy and pleasure (marriage) that Hachemi rejects as a patriarchal structure, are experienced through Levy's song and music. The patriarchal society cannot achieve Hachemi's happiness, who therefore seeks comfort in marginality, represented by the elderly musician."

...

AA: In Man of Ashes, Nouri Bouzid might seem to be dancing on minefields, discussing a love affair between men, sexual abuse of boys, Jewish friendship and prostitution.

Yet there is no sensation, provocation or gratuitous taboo-busting in this movie, which is both bitter and tender but an ultimately humoristic and life-affirming growing-up story set in the director's hometown Sfax, the second largest city of Tunisia.

The framing story is about the marriage arrangements for the gay man Hachemi who in the betrothal feels like a stranger in his own life. In this respect I am reminded of The Wedding Banquet but Man of Ashes goes further. Hachemi's mother attempts suicide, and his raging father whips him.

The authority figures of patriarchal order are associated with assault and battery. As underage boys, Hachemi and Farfat have been sexually abused by their boss, the cabinetmaker Ameur. Childhood abuse never heals, and Farfat is driven to an ultimate settling of scores with his despoiler.

Hachemi and Farfat find refuge with other marginalized figures. They share a drink and enjoy an evening with the old Jewish musician Levy, who sings Hebrew songs accompanying himself with the lute the boys brought along. The sequence of Arab-Jewish friendship resonates with profound meaning for Nouri Bouzid, in the same way as in the oeuvre of Youssef Chahine.

Man of Ashes presents us with the sweetest bachelor party sequence I have seen in the cinema. Hachemi and his male friends enter the house of tolerance of Madame Sejra for a long night of beauty, music, dance and the joys of the bed of the enchanting Amina, a woman to fall in love with at first sight. But "forget Amina. We are used to forgetting". The key symbol (pun intended) used evocatively by Bouzid is a long bolt moving inside the lock.

But Man of Ashes is not a film based on symbols. It is about vivid and complex human beings, set in a warm and vibrant atmosphere of their Lebenswelt, conveyed in an affectionate account of the spirit of the place.

The music is mesmerizing. The cinematography is vibrant and full of life. The refined work of restoration enhances all this perfectly.

A Walk in the Sun (117 min version) (ca 2010 restoration UCLA / BFI / Schawn Belston / The Film Foundation)

Lewis Milestone: A Walk in the Sun (US 1945). Richard Conte (soldier Rivera).

Salerno, ora X / He vaelsivat auringossa / De vandrade i solen (Swedish title in Finland) / Attack i sol (Swedish title in Sweden).

    US © 1945 Lewis Milestone Productions [according to the opening credits. But according to the AFI Catalog "the title is not included in the Catalog of Copyright entries"]. Prod.: Lewis Milestone per Lewis Milestone Productions, Superior Pictures, Inc.

    Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog.: from the novel of the same name (1944) by Harry Brown. Scen.: Robert Rossen. F.: Russell Harlan – b&w. M.: Duncan Mansfield. Scgf.: Max Bertisch. Mus.: Freddie Rich. Int.: Dana Andrews (sergeant Bill Tyne), Richard Conte (soldier Rivera), George Tyne (soldier Friedman), John Ireland (soldier Windy), Lloyd Bridges (sergeant Ward), Sterling Holloway (McWilliams), Norman Lloyd (Archimbeau), Herbert Rudley (sergeant Porter), Richard Benedict (soldier Tranella).

    117 min

    US premiere dates: 3 Dec 1945, 25 Dec 1945, 11 Jan 1946 – released by Twentieth Century Fox.

    Helsinki premiere: 25 May 1951 – Aloha – Valio-Filmi – 99 min version

    35 mm print from UCLA Film & Television Library Archive

    By courtesy of Kit Parker

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.

    Introduced by Ehsan Khoshbakht.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian at Cinema Jolly, 28 June 2025.

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "“Just a little walk in the warm Italian sun” provided the basic material for one of Milestone’s greatest films of the 1940s. To be precise, the “walk” in question spans the six miles covered to capture a modest, crumbling farmhouse. During the course of the walk, the implications of heroism, country, responsibility, and camaraderie are redefined."

"After the paranoid and pathetic The Purple Heart (1944), which felt almost like an apology for the Communistic excesses of The North Star, Milestone’s fifth WWII film in a row was his most accurate depiction of military absurdity since All Quiet on the Western Front. The film looks remarkably modern, with its barren landscape so stripped down it feels like watching a Dreyer film. It’s a study of faces and the psychology of characters set against a faceless (but not vilified) enemy. It’s in keeping with Milestone’s method of combining realism and stylisation, the latter so extreme as to strain credibility. The film captures the most agonising aspect of every war: the long stretches of waiting for something to happen."

"Robert Rossen’s script, based on a novel by Harry Brown, includes some of the most consistently memorable dialogue written in American cinema. It stays close to the bone, reflecting the sarcastic cynicism of soldiers under duress, when fear and self-loathing feed into each other."

"It was Milestone who suggested that part of the soldiers’ experience be turned into ballads sung on the soundtrack. “I got the idea from my childhood in Russia. Very often, in the town where I lived, you’d see war veterans on street corners who’d become troubadours.” The communist and soon-to-be-blacklisted Earl Robinson wrote the lyrics, which helped develop both the characters and the plot. Years later, Carl Foreman confessed to Milestone that he had lifted the idea of the ballad for High Noon."

"A trace of A Walk in the Sun can be found in many war films that followed, emphasising the meaninglessness of combat and its unbearable pressures, leaving everyone with some sort of scar. In a way, in an unvarnished war film, everybody dies." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)

AA: Seen in June 2025, Lewis Milestone's A Walk in the Sun appears in the perspective of the 80th Victory in Europe Day / Tag der Befreiung / Jour de la Victoire. We are witnessing the end of Pax Americana, and the end of a period of hope that followed the Fall of the Wall in 1989. Arms race is being relaunched. We will miss the 80 years of peace that we gained thanks to the fighters that took a walk in the sun.

I see for the first time the full version of A Walk in the Sun, which was released in Finland in an abridged 99 min version. I have only seen it once, in November 1970, at a film society screening of the vintage nitrate release print, too long ago to make comparisons, but I guess the full presence of the theme ballad and the concept of the photo album to introduce the fighters of the infantry platoon give an uplift to the movie that remains otherwise so much on grassroots level. In a film like this, each detail matters.

A Walk in the Sun is a classic combat film covering a lethal mission of a platoon. Like Story of G.I. Joe made in that same year by William A. Wellman, it inspired the Finnish writer Väinö Linna in his classic novel The Unknown Soldier which has been filmed thrice with distinction.

Lewis Milestone was a great director of men in war, and after All Quiet on the Western Front this is his second war-themed masterpiece. Authenticism like this soon appeared in Samuel Fuller's cycle of war films, inspired by his own experience.

Made under the full weight of the Production Code, the dialogue has been sanitized to an idealized fantasy of soldier speak. (Milestone would have wanted to make a limited release parallel version with more authentic dialogue). Otherwise A Walk in the Sun has dated well. There is honesty in registering extreme psychological pressure. These soldiers are human beings, not killing machines. Even the best of us can break under the circumstances and under such responsibility. A Walk in the Sun is not a fairy-tale of heroes and villains. It is a film about the true face of war.

The restoration does justice to the extraordinary cinematography by Russell Harlan (Red River, Gun Crazy, Lust for Life, Rio Bravo, To Kill a Mockingbird). Might A Walk in the Sun have been the movie that demonstrated his full greatness for the first time?

Väinö Linna said that he wanted to strip war of all its glory and bestow it on the soldiers. The same could be said about Lewis Milestone's war films.

Uirá, um Índio em Busca de Deus / Uirá, an Indian on the Search for God (2025 restoration Rai Teche)

Gustavo Dahl: Uirá, um Índio em Busca de Deus / Uirá, an Indian on the Search for God (BR 1973) with Érico Vidal (Uirá).

Uirá, intiaani Jumalaa etsimässä / Uirá, an Indian in God's Forest.

    BR 1973. Prod.: Alter Filmes, Ltda, Rai. 

    Director: Gustavo Dahl. Sog.: based on the anthropological study Uirá vai ao encontro de Maira – as experiências de um índio urubu-kaapor que saiu à procura de Deus (1957) di Darcy Ribeiro. F.: Rogério Noel - colour. M.: Gilberto Santeiro, Emma Menenti. Scgf.: Francesco Tullio Altan. Int.: Érico Vidal (Uirá), Aria Maria Magalhães (Katai), Gustavo Dahl, João Capitão.

    86 min

    In Portuguese and Tupi.

    Restored in 4K in 2025 by Rai Teche in collaboration with Rai Cultura ed Educational/Fuori orario. Cose (mai) viste at Rai Teche – Digitalizzazione, supporti e preservazione di Torino laboratory, from a 16 mm positive print

    DCP with subtitles in English by Rai Pubblica Utilitá from Rai Teche

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Cinemalibero.

    Introduced by Cecilia Cenciarelli.

    Viewed at Cinema Jolly with e-subtitles in Italian, 28 June 2025.

From the series: Latin America Seen by Its Directors.

Glauber Rocha (as quoted in Bologna 2025): "Cineanthropology – a modern linguistic practice par excellence. Uirá, the story of an Indian who sets out in search of God, a rare cosmogony in our cinema, is a film structured in medium shots, according to the rhythms of a synthesis produced by the dialectical montage of humanists like Rossellini and Bresson and historical materialists like Brecht. Flowing without the phenomenological accidents of a naturalistic river, Uirá, from the pure theory of universal cinema to cultural specificity, closes another cycle of modern Brazilian cinema, which began after 1968 with another Indianist film: Como era gostoso o meu francês, by Nelson Pereira dos Santos … Uirá masterfully employs the general theories of Cinema Novo and reincorporates the actor into reality, opens up avenues that eschew the complacent confusion between repression and creation, and points to the real as an object revealed by discourse that integrates scientific information and poetic transcendence. Uirá is the funeral of a civilisation that – as Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda recalls – did not have the strength to mobilise its own history. As a result, the Indians become the enemies of another History, which sings its glories in blood. In Tupi and Portuguese – since the actors play in a language stripped of all conceptual drama – Uirá laments, with the rigour of the moralists, the lack of generosity of those who have conquered in the name of the Faith and the Empire. Gustavo plays an official of the Service for the Protection of Indians: his speech, with the humility of great artists who are not ashamed of contracting the diseases of their people, attributes violence to its perpetrators. With Indian civilisation dead, the humanists offer the survivors the small comforts of their society. Uirá jumps from his car into the sea, swims like Taris in a journey that begins with Jean Vigo and ends in the Homeric myth of the brave warriors resurrected." Glauber Rocha, Reviewing Histories: Selections from New Latin American Cinema, Hallwalls Inc. New York, 1987

AA: Before becoming a key force in Brazilian film culture, Gustavo Dahl was a student with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and Jean Rouch in the early 1960s. This formation led to Uirá, um Índio em Busca de Deus, a work of cineanthropology and ethnofiction.

The movie starts in 1939 in Maranhão among the Urubu-Kaapor tribe. Misfortune hits the family of Uirá (Érico Vidal) and Maíra (Ana Maria Magalhães) whose firstborn son dies "of White illness". The film begins with his funeral ceremony. Uirá is crushed and seeks Shaman advice. The family (including two children) sets on a quest of a "land without evil", traverses the interior of Maranhão in search of the Tupi creator divinity and arrives in the capital São Luis.

The culture clash is extreme, Uirá's family is harassed, split and jailed, but under the orders of President Getúlio Vargas, Uirá is liberated and rehabilitated with official pomp and circumstance. Peaceful interaction with Indigenous peoples is celebrated. Still the clash is unhealed. Uirá seeks final solace in the currents of the river.

The existential tragedy of the Indigenous peoples is the fundamental background. Gustavo Dahl does not craft a work of grandiose abstract messages but keeps everything on a human level, avoiding melodramatic excess. 

Uirá only speaks Tupi, and the Brazilian administration only Portuguese. The worldview and the cosmology of the two is unreconciled. The meeting of the peoples founders instantly on the matter of dress. The Urubu-Kaapor family lives without hardly any dress, and nudity is intolerable for the Portuguese-Brazilians.

There is also a humoristic side to the cultural encounter – the first encounters with a brass band, a phonograph record and radio soap opera.

The restoration from 16 mm origins has resulted in a DCP with a vibrant and appealing colour world. It does justice to the fabulous Indigenous attires and the splendour of the Amazonia forest.

Voltati Eugenio / Eugenio

Luigi Comencini: Voltati Eugenio / Eugenio (IT/FR 1980). Francesco Bonelli (Eugenio).

IT/FR 1980. Prod.: Achille Manzotti per Intercontinental Film Company, Les Films du Losange, Gaumont.

    Director: Luigi Comencini. Sog., Scen.: Luigi Comencini, Massimo Patrizi. F.: Carlo Carlini - colour. M.: Nino Baragli. Scgf.: Paola Comencini. Mus.: Fiorenzo Carpi.
    Int.: Saverio Marconi (Giancarlo), Dalila Di Lazzaro (Fernanda), Francesco Bonelli (Eugenio), Memè Perlini (Baffo), Bernard Blier (grandfather Eugenio), Dina Sassoli (grandmother Anna), Gisella Sofio (grandmother Edvige), José Luis de Villalonga (Tristano).

    105 min

    DCP from Faso Film

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Life First! The Cinema of Luigi Comencini.

    Introduced by Emiliano Morreale

    Viewed with subtitles in English by Sub-Ti Londra at Cinema Modernissimo, 28 June 2025.

Emiliano Morreale (Bologna 2025): "“Why have children? They are no use to the family, and society doesn’t want them. I know why you have them: to photograph them, to give them a pat on the cheek, to take them for a walk, to take Super8 films of them, and compare them to other children. Like dogs.” This is one of the characters in Voltati Eugenio, perhaps the film which most clearly expresses the link between Comencini’s portrayal of children and his bitter vision of Italian society. 

"Ten-year-old Eugenio is in a car with a friend of his parents, the foolish clown Baffo, who is supposed to take him to the airport. After a falling out, Baffo abandons him on the street and his parents go looking for him. Meanwhile, flashbacks reveal the negligence, loneliness, and abandonment that the child has always suffered."

"Following L’ingorgo, an apocalyptic film about humanity destroying itself, a tombstone for the commedia all’italiana underpinned by a core of humanity and compassion, here the director seems to be addressing the disaster caused by the children of 1968 now that they are parents and every impulse of the youth movement had been extinguished."

"The tone is not plaintive: rather it is a surreal and melancholic dance accompanied by the music of Fiorenzo Carpi (reminiscent of that of Carlos Saura’s Cría cuervos, 1977). Comencini does not spare anyone, least of all the older generation, even if he understands almost everybody’s reasons (with the exception of the bourgeois, middle-aged grandparents)."

"For him, observing children also meant exploring class relations (the rich, the former peasants, the underclass) and gender (the dynamics between couples are sharply observed). In this film, being on the side of children ultimately means also being something of an anarchist." Emiliano Morreale (Bologna 2025)

AA: Luigi Comencini in Voltati Eugenio tells the story of the friendship of two abandoned children: Eugenio and Guerrino, both 10+ years old.

Guerrino, from a large and poor family, lives in conditions of child labour. His father sends him out as a street hawker, and if he fails to bring home the required sum, he gets a whipping.

Eugenio's parents were young radicals in the year 1968, and Eugenio is the result of un amour des barricades. The parents consider his birth an accidental discharge, and they do their best to avoid responsibility. Eugenio does not call them mum and dad but by their first names Fernanda and Giancarlo. 

Eugenio's grandparents seem to be more committed to him than his parents. Fernanda comes from a grand bourgeois background and Giancarlo from the middle class. Giancarlo's parents are the dearest to Eugenio.

Fernanda and Giancarlo have been activists for all the right causes, at 18 about to start a revolution, and Fernanda is passionate in feminist commitment. But in their family life they are cases of arrested development.

Living in the countryside with Giancarlo's parents, Eugenio has grown fond with animals, and he brings his pet bunny, duck, hen and turtle with him to the city. In passing, Giancarlo learns from Guerrino's father that Eugenio will become a veterinarian, a fact of which he has had no clue.

The film is structured as a chase story. Eugenio is left on the roadside by a friend of the parents who got fed up with Eugenio's caprices. During the chase we learn the whole story in flashbacks, in a jumbled timeline which starts gradually to make sense.

Eugenio is the story of child neglect. I was also thinking about The Invisible Child by Tove Jansson and the story of the lost child in Luis Buñuel's Le Fantôme de la liberté.

When the family finally finds the lost child they turn their backs on him again. In the finale Eugenio abandons his family, only followed by a loyal dog.

A clean image and vibrant colour in the DCP from Faso Film.

Of Mice and Men (1939) (sepiatone print from UCLA Film & Television Library)

Lewis Milestone: Of Mice and Men (US 1939) with Lon Chaney, Jr. (Lennie), Burgess Meredith (George) and Betty Field (Mae).

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck [opening credits] / Uomini e topi / Des souris et des hommes / Hiiriä ja ihmisiä / Möss och människor.

    US © 1939 Hal Roach Studios, Inc [opening credits]. [AFI Catalog copyright info: United Artists Corp. 2 February 1940, LP9395]. Prod.: Lewis Milestone per Hal Roach Studio. [Other sources indicate Hal Roach as the producer].

    Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog.: from the novel of the same name (1937) by John Steinbeck. Scen.: Eugene Solow. F.: Norbert Brodine – b&w. M.: Bert Jordan. Scgf.: Nicolai Remisoff. Mus.: Aaron Copland. Int.: Burgess Meredith (George), Lon Chaney Jr. (Lennie), Betty Field (Mae), Charles Bickford (Slim), Roman Bohnen (Candy), Bob Steele (Curley), Noah Beery Jr. (Whit), Oscar O’Shea (Jackson). Leigh Whipper (Crooks).

    Loc: Agoura Ranch (California).

    104 min

    US premiere: 22 Dec 1939 (Los Angeles), 24 Dec 1939 (New York), 12 Jan 1940 (wide). Released through United Artists.

    Helsinki premiere: 1 July 1949 – Kino-Palatsi – Suomi-Filmi.

    35 mm sepiatone print from UCLA Film & Television Archive Library

    By courtesy of Beta Film

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.

    Introduced by Imogen Sara Smith

    Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian at Cinema Jolly, 25 June 2025.

Based on the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (London and New York, 1937) and the play of the same name as produced by Sam H. Harris and staged by George S. Kaufman (New York, 24 Nov 1937). The Finnish premieres of the play were launched in 1946, spreading into five cities during the first run. A revival started in 1974 (staged in four cities). It has been in permanent repertory since.

"The best laid schemes of mice and men 

gang aft agley

And leave us naught but grief and pain

for promised joy"

Robert Burns: "To a Mouse" (1785) [a quote that starts the opening credits, chalked on a boxcar]

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "Milestone heartfelt hymn to the underdog, based on the famous novella by John Steinbeck, tells the story of two hoboing farmhands – hulking, mentally-impaired Lennie (Lon Chaney Jr.) and his self-appointed guardian George (Burgess Meredith). The pair find work on a ranch but tragedy strikes when they encounter the flighty daughter-in-law of the owner. In one of the most biting retrospective portrayals of the Great Depression, the unkempt, shabby drifters band together in search of Utopia, only to discover it is nothing more than a pipe dream."

"Earth, itself one of the characters of the story, features prominently in Milestone’s unexpectedly lyrical compositions that are occasionally reminiscent of Soviet cinema. There are frame-within-frame shots, each broken into clustered entities, divided by elements such as bed bunks. Objects within the frame, particularly threads, belts, and fences, crisscross the composition, sometimes jutting out from the depth of field toward the camera as though Milestone is establishing a physical connection between the viewer and the scene. (The original release prints were in sepia, meant to imitate the burned-up, golden hue of the Californian at the end of July. This must have emphasised the tactile quality of the imagery.)"

"There are fine performances by everybody, especially Group Theatre talent Roman Bohnen who plays Candy, a crippled man 35 years older than his actual self. The sequence in which a foreman absurdly and cruelly insists on, and succeeds in, killing Candy’s beloved dog is one of the most moving moments in 1930s American cinema. It mirrors the film’s famous (and controversial) mercy killing at the end, where those who dream of “living off the fat of the land” end up being swallowed by its swamps." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)

AA: I entered the screening with the intention of listening only to the introduction by Imogen Sara Smith and leaving early to catch a unique screening of Dimitri Kirsanoff's restored Rapt, but the heartfelt introduction was so compelling that there was no alternative than to stay. (There are eerie affinities between Rapt and Of Mice and Men, by the way).

I'm glad that I stayed. Smith mentioned that 1939 is often cited as the miraculous year of the cinema. Many of the notable films were based on fantasies and myths. The realistic Of Mice and Men is hardly ever mentioned, but it would deserve to be. It was Lewis Milestone's comeback film after years of setback. It was the first John Steinbeck film adaptation - The Grapes of Wrath had its premiere one month later. It garnered four Academy Award nominations but was a box office failure. Several times Milestone succeeded in turning plays into films (The Racket, Rain, The Front Page, Of Mice and Men). Here Milestone impresses with the introduction of the natural world of fields and swamps and animals (horses and especially dogs). Milestone excels both in intimate scenes and great ensemble sequences, caught in very long takes by a moving camera. Notable is the dignified presence of Leigh Whipper as the Black farmhand. Of Mice and Men portrays a shadow America, of loss, loneliness and failure, a band of outcasts, inspired by a mirage. (End of my resume of Imogen Sara Smith).

I realize that I may have not seen this version of Of Mice and Men before although I know the book, cultural connections from The Rain People to Den enfaldige mördaren and even Tex Avery's Lonesome Lenny (1946) in which Tex Avery himself as a voice actor creates an accurate parody of Lon Chaney, Jr. as Lennie. This film has made a deeper impact than the numerous later film adaptations for the cinema and television, including Gary Sinise's distinguished Of Mice and Men (1992) starring John Malkovich as Lennie, Sinise as George and Sherilyn Fenn as Mae.

Milestone is at his best in Of Mice and Men. There is real feeling and commitment, and the movie transcends initial doubts of being a piece of champagne socialist make-believe of proletarian life. High points include the sequence in which Curley beats brutally Lennie who is mostly afraid of his own overwhelming strength. Finally he grabs Curley's hand so hard that he breaks every bone. In the heartbreaking core sequence of the movie the old swamper Candy needs to part with his old loyal sheep dog, now terminally ill. In scenes like these Milestone displays perfect tact, timing and sense of duration.

Of Mice and Men is a classic tale of mental impairment. Milestone and Lon Chaney, Jr. negotiate the impossible mission in a way that remains deeply compelling. Of special note is also Leigh Whipper's unstereotyped portrait of a Black farmhand, the only intellectual on the ranch.

I am beginning to realize that Lewis Milestone is a great director of men – men at war, men at work. He is not a great director of women, in contrast to Luigi Comencini, the other director whose retrospective I am tracking in Bologna.

It is a highly gratifying to view this sepia-toned print. There is an appealing watercolour affinity, expressive of the sensuality of the natural world. The aquarelle touch also means that there is at times blur in the image, organic to the vision. The illusion of realism is at times undermined by studio echo.

Al ôrs / La noce / The Wedding Party (2024 restoration Cinemateca Portuguesa) in the presence of Jalila Baccar etc.

Collectif Nouveau Théâtre de Tunis (Fadhel Jaïbi, Fadhel Jaziri, Jalila Baccar, Mohamed Driss, Habib Masrouki): // العرس //Al ôrs / La noce / The Wedding Party (TN 1978) with Jalila Baccar (the bride).

// العرس //

    TN 1978. Prod.: Collectif Nouveau Théâtre. 

    Director: Collectif Nouveau Théâtre de Tunis. F.: Collectif Nouveau Théâtre de Tunis (Fadhel Jaïbi, Fadhel Jaziri, Jalila Baccar, Mohamed Driss, Habib Masrouki). B&w. M.: Larbi Ben Ali. Int.: Jalila Baccar (the bride), Fadhel Jaziri (Mostafa), Mohamed Driss (the groom), Mostafa Nagbou (Ismaïl), Béchir Labbene (bride’s father).

    91 min

    In Arabic.

    Soundtrack: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" (1928, comp. Kurt Weill, lyr. Bertolt Brecht) sung by Lotte Lenya.

    Restored in 4K by Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema in association with the Direction Générale des Arts Scéniques et Audiovisuelles du Ministère Tunisien des Affaires Culturelles, Collectif Nouveau Théâtre and Association Ciné-Sud Patrimoine at Cineric Portugal laboratory, from a 35 mm duplicate negative (wet-gate scan) and a 35 mm optical soundtrack. Restoration supervised by Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema in collaboration with director Fadhel Jaziri.

    DCP with English subtitless from Cinemateca Portuguesa.

    Courtesy of Nouveau Film. 

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Cinemalibero.

    Introduced by Jalila Baccar, Rui Machado (Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema) e X. Hosted by Cecilia Cenciarelli.

    Viewed at Cinema Jolly with e-subtitles in Italian, 27 June 2025.

Hédi Khélil (Bologna 2025): "I place Al Ôrs by the Nouveau Théâtre at the pinnacle of Tunisian cinema. The 1978 film, directed by Fadhel Jaïbi, Fadhel Jaziri, Jalila Baccar, Mohamed Driss and Habib Masrouki originated from a play of the same name, staged and performed by the same ensemble in 1976."

"The work – which plunges us into the tragicomic world of petits-bourgeois newlyweds, shattered and defeated – has appeared and reappeared on the Tunisian cinematographic landscape as a motion picture so distant and remote, unlike anything else, claiming no clear lineage, made with very limited means. Amid the Cinema within the theatre and the Theatre within the cinema – mirrored arts, organically linked – the members of the Nouveau Théâtre go forth like sleepwalkers, suspended between nightmare and reality, angelism and satanism, along a path of resolute solitude."

"Upon recently rewatching Al Ôrs, my attachment to the film was more strongly affirmed than ever. What is immediately – and eternally – striking about this film, is the richness of its signifiers, its formal complexity of the oeuvre, and the thoughtfully-crafted beauty of each shot. Al Ôrs is a rhapsody of scattered material that merge into a unified whole, where all its facets seamlessly fit together. There is continuity in the movement, continuity in the duration, continuity in the analogy, cycles and returning cycles."

"Never before in Tunisian cinema has there existed such a hyper-presence of bodies, enhanced by the lighting that diffracts and divides more than it brings together or unites. The lighting is not orchestrated shot by shot, but rather set once and for all, in different spaces, ready to accommodate the shooting of each scene."

"Al Ôrs is a film that was conceived, experienced and worked on as homage to Habib Masrouki, co-founder of the Nouveau Théâtre and the work’s cinematographer, an artist who tragically took his own life. If the image enthrals, it is thanks to him. If the tone is so disillusioned and incisive, terribly lucid and prescient, it is because it is also his own." Hédi Khélil (Bologna 2025)

AA: The Wedding Party by the Collectif Nouveau Théâtre de Tunis was reportedly inspired by Bertolt Brecht's A Respectable Wedding (Die Hochzeit / Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit, 1919), but I was rather reminded of August Strindberg's The Dance of Death (Dödsdansen, 1900) and its definitive film adaptation, Marcel Cravenne's La Danse de mort (FR 1948) starring Erich von Stroheim as Edgar and his wife Denise Vernac as Théa. We can also think about La Poison, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Le Chat and El diablo entre las piernas.

Yet The Wedding Party is an original, an intimate Kammerspiel odyssey, as black as can be, out-Strindberging Strindberg as an essay on the marriage inferno. There is nothing more fearsome than love that turns to hate.

The Wedding Party is actor-driven. Jalila Baccar  as the bride and Mohamed Driss as the groom disgrace themselves and all humankind profoundly in a Laurel & Hardy style mutual destruction play. The darkness is relentless and unforgiving.

The visual quality is dismal due to the production's zero budget genesis. The raw edge is an intentional means of expression.

The Wedding Party also finds its place among cinematic records of important experimental theatre productions, including early Fassbinder (Action-Theater, antiteater) and Shirley Clarke's The Connection (The Living Theatre).

La ragazza di Bube / Bebo's Girl (2022 restoration Cinecittà / Cristaldifilm)

Luigi Comencini: La ragazza di Bube / Bebo's Girl (IT/FR 1963). Claudia Cardinale (Mara Castellucci), George Chakiris (Arturo Cappellini, named Bube),

Buben tyttö / Bubes flicka.

    IT/FR 1963.  Prod.: Franco Cristaldi per Lux Film, Ultra Film, Vides Cinematografica, Lux Compagnie Cinématographique de France S.A. 

    Director: Luigi Comencini. Sog.: from the novel of the same name (1960) by Carlo Cassola. Scen.: Marcello Fondato, Luigi Comencini [uncredited]. F.: Gianni Di Venanzo – b&w. M.: Nino Baragli. Scgf.: Piero Gherardi. Mus.: Carlo Rustichelli. Int.: Claudia Cardinale (Mara Castellucci), George Chakiris (Arturo Cappellini, named Bube), Marc Michel (Stefano), Dany Paris (Liliana), Monique Vita (Ines), Carla Calò (Mara’s mother), Emilio Esposito (Mara’s father), Mario Lupi (Lidori).

    111 min

    Finnish premiere: 6 Nov 1965 – Adlon – O.Y. Fox Films A.B.

    Restored in 4K in 2022 by Cinecittà in collaboration with Cristaldifilm, from the original camera and sound 35 mm negatives.

    By courtesy of Cristaldifilm.

    DCP with English subtitles from Cinecittà Luce.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Life First! The Cinema of Luigi Comencini.

    Viewed at Cinema Modernissimo, 25 June 2025.

Bologna 2025: "The novel La ragazza di Bube by Carlo Cassola that won the Strega Prize in 1960 was one of the era’s bestsellers. A film adaptation was inevitable, also because films about Fascism and the Resistance had been in vogue in Italy for several years. The story tells of a working-class girl engaged to a former partisan who is arrested for a murder that took place during the tumultuous days following the liberation. It is the portrait of a woman, a fact which Marcello Fondato’s screenplay accentuates through the deliberate choice of recounting the story as a long flashback told in her words. Comencini’s direction emphasizes this reflection on the past and enters into dialogue with the cinema of the post-war years. On the one hand, its remoteness is emphasized by the use of flashback and Carlo Rustichelli’s melancholy leitmotif. On the other, the film’s style is both lively and refined: the close ups with dense backgrounds, the use of the almost virtuoso scenes (the dialogue in the cinema foyer with the lights gradually being dimmed), the high contrast chiaroscuro cinematography by Gianni Di Venanzo (along the lines of his previous work on Salvatore Giuliano and 8½), and scenes such as the deposition at the trial, shot as a static long take without reverse shots. Claudia Cardinale plays a problematic and nuanced heroine, staring into space or with her eyes downturned. She inhabits the post-war period but simultaneously reveals to us how remote those years now are. She is a character closer to the women of Antonioni’s cinema than those of neorealism."

AA: In Luigi Comencini's La ragazza di Bube Claudia Cardinale stars in the strongest role of hers that I have seen. Produced by Franco Cristaldi, photographed by Gianni Di Venanzo and the score composed by Carlo Rustichelli, this is a high profile production in all ways.

It takes place in the years of the painful transition from Fascism to democracy, and the society is full of open wounds.

In these circumstances the Bildungsroman of Mara Castellucci (Claudia Cardinale) takes place. She is the subject, the driving force of her life, facing painful choices, revising them and committing herself finally to her fiancé Bube who faces 14 years in prison for murder.

The love story is unique in many ways. Bube the fearless partisan fails miserably in emotional intelligence. Mara keeps rejecting him if he does not improve. But when it is a matter of life and death, Mara is true blue and does not care what people are saying. She is a warm-hearted heroine of spirit, independence and willpower.

Mara has no education but she possesses a grandeur of spirit and courage. She is a real woman who selects the clumsy and awkward Bube although she is also courted by the aspiring writer, the gentle and sophisticated Stefano (Marc Michel). Luigi Comencini is a great director of women. He has wisdom and understanding in the mysteries of the heart.

My favourite scene in the movie is one that reminds me of Young Mr. Lincoln. In a mob hunt sequence, a Fascist priest is being harassed and about to be hanged. But Bube, the authority among the crowd, takes him in his arms – and brings him to the police station. He alone is able to save him. When Bube is on trial, the priest is brought to testify and gives an honest account of Bube's character.

I am ashamed to confess that I don't know Italian history very well, but a film like this helps me understand a bit more, especially about the crucial election about the Italian constitution – monarchy or republic.

Luigi Comencini handles both the epic historical scenes and the psychological growing-up story of the young woman extremely well. It is both living history and a story of real human beings of flesh and blood. One of the all time great Italian films in the same way as Il mulino del Po.

I love this film for personal reasons, and was in tears from the beginning.

La finestra sul Luna Park / The Window to Luna Park (2025 restoration Bologna & Surf Film)

Luigi Comencini: La finestra sul Luna Park / The Window to Luna Park (IT/FR 1957). The son meets his estranged dad. Giancarlo Damiani (Mario) and Gastone Renzelli (Aldo).

Tu es mon fils.

    IT/FR 1957. Prod.: Antonio Cervi per Noria Film. 

    Director: Luigi Comencini. Sog., Scen.: Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Luigi Comencini, with the collaboration of Luciano Martino. F.: Armando Nannuzzi – b&w. M.: Nino Baragli. Scgf.: Pek G. Avolio. Mus.: Alessandro Cicognini. Int.: Giulia Rubini (Ada), Gastone Renzelli (Aldo), Giancarlo Damiani (Mario), Pierre Trabaud (Righetto), Calina Classy (Aida), Giselda Mancinotti (Antonietta), Luigi Russo (Spartaco), Remo Galli (Niccodemo).

    90 min

    Not released in Finland.

    Restored in 2025 by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Surf Film, at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory.

    DCP from Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna

    By courtesy of Surf Film.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Life First! The Cinema of Luigi Comencini.

    Introduced by Francesca Comencini e Paola Comencini, hosted by Gian Luca Farinelli.

    Viewed with subtitles in English by Eoghan Price at Cinema Modernissimo, 22 June 2025.

Emiliano Morreale (Bologna 2025): "A commercial failure on its release, La finestra sul Luna Park is one of the hidden masterpieces of 1950s Italian cinema and the most personal of the films Comencini made during that decade. Aldo, a workman who has emigrated, returns home following the death of his wife and attempts to rebuild a relationship with his son, Mario. During his absence, Mario has found a substitute father-figure in the very different Righetto, a weak and mild-mannered member of the underclass (a character who recalls Il Matto in Fellini’s La strada, another fool who sends a brutish male into crisis – a parallel reinforced by the fact that both characters are dubbed by the same voice actor, Stefano Sibaldi). Righetto lives day-to-day but is able to offer the child the kind of affection he cannot find elsewhere (“The little I earn is enough for me,” he says, “Why should I work more if it would deprive me of time I can spend with Mario?”) It is the vision of this different kind of emotional relationship which opens the eyes of Aldo who brings to mind the protagonist of another film made the same year, Antonioni’s Il grido, played by one of the non-professional actors from Visconti’s Bellissima, Gastone Renzelli."

"The film is structured as a low key, everyday (or realistic) male weepie. Aldo wanders through the new districts of Rome, often holding his son’s hand like the protagonist of Bicycle Thieves (the locations are the popular districts of Ostiense and Centocelle), in an attempt to reclaim spaces that have been dramatically transformed while he was away. The end result is a coming of age story focusing not on a child, but an adult who learns to let go of his identity as a working class man with bourgeois aspirations when confronted by a son drawn to a member of an underclass who lacks his work ethic and displays a “feminine” model of paternity. As the economic miracle beckoned, Comencini presents us with a point of entry into affluence which does not sacrifice the warmth of ordinary people and of a child." Emiliano Morreale (Bologna 2025)

AA: In La finestra sul Luna Park, Luigi Comencini displays exceptionally sophisticated and profound psychological wisdom in portraying the world of childhood. On that topic he belongs to the greatest, together with Mary Pickford, Jacques Feyder, Astrid Lindgren, Carol Reed in The Fallen Idol and the Iranian masters of the Kanoon school.

When mother Ada dies in a tram accident, the dad Aldo, who has always been away on business, returns to take care of his little son Mario. The boy now lives with his grandparents, who have designs of their own about the future of the family home and how to save money from childcare by taking the boy out of school to work as soon as possible. It is the age of reconstruction, after all, and the nation needs builders.

When Aldo returns, he realizes that he has become estranged from Mario, and that is just for starters. In successive stages he learns how absolute his ignorance is. Indeed, Mario has acquired a surrogate father, the kind carpenter Righetto, who has been the true emotional mainstay of Ada and Mario. Many have even supposed Righetto to be Mario's father.

Aldo experiences a belated crisis of jealousy, but he soon realizes that Righetto has been a true and loyal friend, even though he may have harboured unrequited feelings towards Ada. Righetto also mourns Ada more than Aldo.

The drama plays out in borgate surroundings. Comencini evokes this world in rich and vivid detail, a precarious existence in which Mario is learning to navigate, guided by his good friend Righetto. There is nothing naive in Comencini's vision. Aldo is a well-meaning man, but in his career obsession he has remained blind to the circumstances of his own family.

Righetto (interpreted by Pierre Trabaud, familiar from films by Becker and Tavernier) is a real life saint, and Comencini displays a grandeur of spirit in his ability to portray him so memorably. There are people like Righetto among us. They pursue good deeds anonymously, avoiding attention.

Late during the movie we get a crucial flashback about the trip to the beach. Righetto takes Mario and his mother there to cure the boy. They share a true family experience, but Righetto does not abuse the situation. The happiness culminates in a visit to the circus. Having been absent from work, Righetto is fired, but he does not regret anything. "These were the most beautiful days of my life". Having taking the place of the father, Righetto would now also need to give Mario a whipping, but that he is not able to do.

Aldo finally understands the truth about Righetto, Ada and Mario. He urges Righetto to start a family of his own. A transference of fatherhood takes place in a powerful finale covered by an extreme high angle shot with a moving camera.

Bambini in città (Cineteca Milano restoration)

 

Luigi Comencini: Bambini in città (IT 1946). 

IT 1946. Prod.: Gigi Martello per S.A. Cortimetraggi. D.: Luigi Comencini. F.: Plinio Novelli – bn. Int.: Mario Amerio (narrator’s voice). 14 min

    Restored by Cineteca Milano at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from a 35 mm positive nitrate print.

    35 mm print from Cineteca Milano.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Life First! The Cinema of Luigi Comencini.

    Introduced by Francesca Comencini e Paola Comencini, hosted by Gian Luca Farinelli.

    Viewed with subtitles in English by Sub-Ti Londra at Modernissimo, 22 June 2025.

Bologna 2025: "Bambini in città is Comencini’s first official film, following a single amateur short in 16 mm, La donzelletta, which was lost during the war. On the surface, this documentary provides a timely dose of neorealism: children amongst the ruins, as in the films of De Sica and Rossellini. Shoeshine and Paisan were produced during the same months; Bicycle Thieves and Germany Year Zero were still to come."

"The narrator’s voice adopts a tone curiously lacking in rhetoric, while the beginning and ending reveal the gaze of an architect and town planner. Ruins are also a place of freedom. Amongst fairs, little theatres, amusement fairs, meadows and clearings, the Lampwicks and Pinocchios of the post-war years go in search of a world between the city and the countryside that the director would never forsake."

AA: Luigi Comencini's first film Bambini in città [Children in the City] is prophetic as the first entry in his unique corpus as the greatest director of childhood in the cinema.

It is Year Zero. The children have nothing, and they conquer everything. Out of the rubble, they make toys. Trams they use for joyrides. Traffic becomes a field of adventure. Anything can become a playground: construction sites, wastelands, garbage heaps, the whole city. We are dancing on the ruins.

The children also discover Buffalo Bill and Black Corsair magazines in the newsstands. At a pop-up theatre, Il Capitan Fracassa is playing. A corpse on the stage frightens the children. A mini circus arrives, complete with a clown, a strongman and an acrobat who can eat a lightbulb.

A story of desolation and solitude, and an invincible life force, in the best tradition of neorealism.

On the soundtrack we hear magnificent Baroque music and themes from Rossini operas. This reminds me of Chaplin's reminiscences of the Fred Karno spectacles of his childhood, in which the extreme poverty of a London slum was set against Baroque music.

Low contrast, no black on the print.

Nyonin aishu / A Woman’s Sorrows

 

Mikio Naruse: 女人哀愁 / Nyonin aishu / A Woman’s Sorrows (JP 1937). Salesladies at the record store: Hiroko Kawano (Takako Irie) and Kazuko (Chizuko Kanda).

女人哀愁 / [I dolori di una donna] / Les Larmes d'une femme.

    JP 1937. PC: P.C.L.

    Director: Mikio Naruse. Scen.: Mikio Naruse, Chikao Tanaka. F.: Mitsuo Miura. M.: Koichi Iwashita. Scgf.: Masao Totsuka. Mus.: Yoshi Eguchi. Int.: Takako Irie (Hiroko Kawano), Hideo Saeki (Masao), Masako Tsutsumi (Yoshiko), Ko Mihashi (Hiroko’s father), Namiko Hatsuse (Hiroko’s mother), Hideo Saeki (Ryosuke Kitamura), Hyo Kitazawa (Shinichi Horie), Tamae Kiyokawa (Shinichi’mother), Ranko Sawa (Yoko Horie), Heihachiro Ogawa (Toshio Masuda).

    [Nyonin aishu theme song] (Yoshi Eguchi, 1937?) sung during opening credits and repeated during the movie. Not translated.

    "When It's Lamp Lighting Time in the Valley" (words and music by Joe Lyons, Sam C. Hart and The Vagabonds: Herald Goodman, Curt Poulton, Dean Upson, 1933) / "Kodin kynttilät" in Finland. [Instrumental version in the movie]

    "West End Blues" (Joe "King" Oliver, 1928) perf. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five (1928). [Another version in the movie]

    "Blue Moon" (comp. Richard Rodgers, lyr. Lorenz Hart, 1934) [Instrumental in the movie].

    74 min

    35 mm print from the National Film Archive of Japan

    Courtesy of Toho.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Sorrow and Passion: Pre-War Mikio Naruse.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in English and Italian by SubTi Londra at Cinema Jolly, 22 June 2025.

 Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna 2025): "One of the finest and most trenchantly feminist of Naruse’s early films, Nyonin aishu brilliantly dissects the situation and feelings of a woman forced into an unhappy and stifling arranged marriage to a man from a wealthy family. Its power and intensity derive in part from Naruse’s sympathetic direction, in part from the touching star performance of lead actress Takako Irie (1911-95). A diva of the Japanese silent cinema, Irie had established her own independent production company in 1932; this was its first collaboration with P.C.L."

"Naruse co-wrote the screenplay with Chikao Tanaka (1905-95), whose wife Sumie was eventually to become Japan’s most famous female screenwriter and to furnish the scripts for many of Naruse’s most celebrated postwar films. Indeed, with its engrossing combination of bleakness and hope, the tone of the film closely resembles that of Naruse’s later work. The film’s distinguished cinematographer, Mitsuo Miura (1902-56), had visited Hollywood in 1928 and was influenced by Josef von Sternberg. He had shot Naruse’s earliest extant film, Koshiben ganbare (Flunky, Work Hard!, 1931), and was to lens Kafuku later in 1937."

"In a book on Japanese film directors published in the year of the film’s release, critic Kyoichi Otsuka described the film as a return to form for both Naruse and Irie, praising it for its “depth and authenticity”, and observing that Irie was “the perfect choice for the role”. “Kinema Junpo” critic Seiji Mizumachi likewise praised Irie’s performance as the best of her career since the coming of sound cinema. More recently, Tetsuya Hirano has saluted Naruse’s “brilliant” direction, commenting on “the fast-paced scene changes at the beginning and his signature outdoor scenes”. Susanne Schermann compares the film’s focus on the independence of a married woman with Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, while Catherine Russell calls the film “one of the most damning critiques of women’s social roles to be found in pre-war Japanese cinema”." Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna 2025)

AA: Mikio Naruse's A Woman's Sorrows is a family drama and multi-character study focusing on the parallel destinies of two young couples in love.

It starts with establishing images of modern urban Tokyo full of life and energy. It is a tale of turbulence between tradition and modernity through generations, families, class and gender. The protagonist is Hiroko Kawano, a traditional, conservative and deferential woman, played by the great actress Takako Irie. Starring in a parallel drama is Yoko Horie, a modern, defiant and independent woman, played by Ranko Sawa.

Hiroko as the oldest daughter of the Kawano family has to defer to the omiai. Obeying her mother's wish she has to marry Shinichi Horie (Hyo Kitazawa), born to wealth and privilege, and renounce her secret love to her cousin Ryosuke Kitamura (Hideo Saeki).

Yoko, the eldest daughter of the Horie family, has entered a love union with her fiancé Masuda (Heihachiro Okawa) but has returned to the family fold as Masuda is unable to support her. Masuda is undaunted and keeps asking to see Yoko, but is unceremoniusly thrown out. "He is not brave enough for me". The Hories are a combative family, and the sisters and the brothers are in a habit of fighting each other.

Meanwhile, Hiroko has second thoughts. Although she is a conservative woman, "I cannot live like a doll", in a status somewhere between the lady of the house and an unpaid servant whom everybody can boss around. She is an outsider and stranger in her own family whose members consider themselves better than others. Hiroko is not even invited to the all-important all-family mahjong game.

In the turbulent transition from tradition to modernity, men want to spend their evenings in freedom in modern urban spaces such as Ginza bars, while women are expected to wear traditional dress and conduct subordinate chores.

As observed by Suzanne Scherman, Hiroko makes the Nora decision of Ibsen's The Doll's House: she leaves. What is the alternative? "I'll search for it until I find out". She rejects marriage altogether. "I want to stand on my own." "I see something more important than myself".

As for Yoko, she returns to Masuda, who has committed a serious crime, stealing from his company "to prove myself worthy of her".

Naruse's mise-en-scène is excellent, now also including a command of sound. He keeps the actions of the multiple characters in the Horie home well in hand. The sound of dialogues from different rooms expands the sense of space.

Like in Naruse's first sound film, Three Sisters and Maiden Hearts, there is a lot of music, and the contrast of (Japanese) tradition and (Western) modernity is expressed also via the soundtrack. Before marriage, Hiroko works as a saleslady at a record store, which helps justify further the presence of the songs.

But A Woman's Sorrows is also a masterpiece of visual storytelling. Naruse was one of the keepers of "the great secret" of silent cinema. See the extraordinary sequence at the photographer's studio where Hiroko and Shinichi have their wedding photograph taken. See the eloquent close-ups of Takako Irie which are silent monologues in facial expressions. See the wonderful panoramic shots from the balcony over Tokyo where life decisions are discussed. Birds in flight are a recurrent motif.

In Three Sisters and Maiden Hearts I missed transcendence. A Woman's Sorrows is a story of solitude, sorrow and pain - and rebellion, defiance and transcendence.

A 35 mm print with good definition and good black levels, at times with slightly soft edges.

Otome gokoro sannin shimai / Three Sisters and Maiden Hearts

 

Mikio Naruse: 乙女ごころ三人姉妹 / Otome gokoro sannin shimai / Three Sisters and Maiden Hearts (JP 1935). Chikako Hosokawa (Oren), Masako Tsutsumi (Osome) and Ryuko Umezono (Chieko).

乙女ごころ三人姉妹 / The Asakusa Sisters [the English title on print] / [Tre sorelle dal cuore di serve].

    JP 1935. Prod.: P.C.L.

    Director: Mikio Naruse. Sog.: by the story Le sorelle di Asakusa / 浅草の姉妹 / Asakusa no shimai (1933) di Yasunari Kawabata. Scen.: Mikio Naruse. F.: Hiroshi Suzuki. M.: Koichi Iwashita. Scgf.: Kazuo Kubo. Mus.: Kyosuke Kami. Int.: Chikako Hosokawa (Oren, the eldest sister), Masako Tsutsumi (Osome, the middle sister), Ryuko Umezono (Chieko, the youngest sister), Chitose Hayashi (the mother), Chisato Matsumoto (Oharu), Masako Sanjo (Oshima), Mariyo Matsumoto (Okinu), Heihachiro Okawa (Aoyama, Chieko's boyfriend), Kaoru Ito (the bad boy), Osamu Takizawa (Kosuki, Oren's boyfriend).

    "Christels Lied" ("Das gibt's nur einmal") (comp. Werner Richard Heymann, lyr. Robert Gilbert) from Der Kongress tanzt (DE 1931).

    "When It's Lamp Lighting Time in the Valley" (words and music by Joe Lyons, Sam C. Hart and The Vagabonds: Herald Goodman, Curt Poulton, Dean Upson, 1933) / "Kodin kynttilät" in Finland.

    Loc: Asakusa, Tokyo.

    75 min

    35 mm print with English subtitles from Japan Foundation

    Courtesy of Toho

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Sorrow and Passion: Pre-War Mikio Naruse.

    Introduced by Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström

    Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian at Cinema Jolly, 21 June 2025.

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna 2025): "Naruse’s first film after his move to P.C.L., and his first talkie, this stylish melodrama was adapted from Sisters of Asakusa, a story by Yasunari Kawabata, who would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. Naruse recounted the travails of three sisters in the shady Asakusa district of Tokyo through a complex flashback structure. Kawabata apparently credited Naruse’s script with curing what he perceived as the weaknesses of his original treatment, while Naruse, by contrast, regretted having complicated the simplicity of the story."

"Naruse used sound creatively, making atmospheric use of sound effects, employing the then-novel technique of voiceover, and interspersing the dialogue scenes with scenes shot silent and played with only musical accompaniment. Catherine Russell notes that “Naruse’s decoupage in Otome gokoro sannin shimai remains as flamboyant as it was in his silent films. The pacing is very quick, and the scenes are often broken into a fragmented assemblage of close-ups and medium shots.” The film was shot partly on location in Asakusa, and preserves the sights and sounds of pre-war Tokyo. The opening scene contains valuable footage of the famous Senso-ji Temple, the original buildings of which were destroyed by firebombing in March 1945."

"Typical of its studio, the film displays a marked Western influence. Naruse acknowledged taking inspiration from The Power and the Glory (William K. Howard, 1933), which pioneered the use of flashback and voiceover in Hollywood, while one character sings a song from the successful German musical Congress Dances (Der Kongreß tanzt, 1931). About three minutes’ worth of footage was trimmed by the censors for alluding to prostitution, an example of the moralistic interference that was commonplace in Japanese cinema during the 1930s."

"At the time of its release, “Kinema Junpo” published a discussion between four critics, who concluded that Otome gokoro sannin shimai was the best Japanese talkie they had seen to date; it is a mark of the excellence of Japanese film in 1935 that it ultimately did not even rank in the magazine’s Best Ten for that year!" Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna 2025)

AA: It was a thrill to see Mikio Naruse's Three Sisters and Maiden Hearts, his first sound film and debut film for P.C.L., soon merged into Toho, where Naruse became a house director for the rest of his life. It was Naruse's first collaboration with the Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata from whom he later also filmed Sound of the Mountain.

Naruse immediately orientates us into the spirit of the place, the Asakusa district of Tokyo, with compelling establishing shots. In this heartbreaking environment three sisters eke out a living as samisen players and nightclub dancers under the stern eye of their own mother. The life of a woman as spectacle has been hardly gratifying before. Now a new challenge, recorded music, is threatening even that existence.

Naruse is already the complete film-maker, combining the poetry of silent cinema in long plotless sequences with the new possibilities of sound, including voiceover. Like Ozu, he was happy before WWII to explore a wide range of cinematic means, including whip pans and complex flashbacks, only to orient towards increasing simplicity after the war.

In Naruse's first sound film, music is all-important. Together with the traditional Japanese tunes of the three sisters, cosmopolitan imports from country & western to German musicals and "O sole mio" are thrown into the mix.

Three Sisters and Maiden Hearts is a film of disillusion, tough melancholy, darker than elegy. It faces disappointment, loneliness and sorrow with a long, hard look. Sayonara! The train leaves the station. Lingering in mind are images of circles inside circles, a fade to black and a tough final cut.

What I miss in Naruse is transcendence. In comparison with Ozu and Mizoguchi, his is a cinema of immanence.

The 35 mm print looks like a dupe from a pretty clean source. Black levels are missing. Might the source be a 16 mm print?