/ Director
Paolo Virzì
/ Cast
Claudio Bigagli, Sabrina Ferilli, Massimo Ghini, Giorgio Algranti, Emanuele Barresi, Paola Tiziana Cruciani, Ugo Bencini, Raffaella Lebboroni, Roberto Marini, Mario Erpichini.
/ Music
Claudio Cimpanelli
/ Producer
Time International
/ Length
93 mins.
/ Year
1994
/ Sponsor
Date :: Friday, October 16
Time :: 7:00 pm
Location :: MoPA in Balboa Park
Cost :: $5.00 donation suggested
Language :: Italian with English subtitles
Tickets :: On location
La bella vita
Living it up
Set in Piombino, an industrial seaport town on the coast of Tuscany, La bella vita narrates the story of a small working-class family dealing with depressed economic conditions and personal angst. The film stars actors Claudio Bigagli, Sabrina Ferrilli and Massimo Ghini. La bella vita was very well received in Italy winning several prizes including the David of Donatello, the Italian Oscars, awarded to Virzì for best new director and has been compared to a classic of commedia all’italiana, Mario Monicelli’s Romanzo Popolare (1974).
With the Virzì retrospective SDIFF celebrates the tradition of commedia all’italiana offering its audience the opportunity to enjoy a series of rare films that shed new light on aspects and characters of Italian society relevant to understand Italy’s recent history, faults and virtues.
The San Diego Italian Film Festival kicks off its 2009 annual festival with a retrospective of Paolo Virzì’s films. Born in Livorno in 1964, Virzì is one of the most talented directors working in Italy today and is considered the heir of the commedia all’italiana, a popular genre in Italian cinema that features characters in some kind of life crisis. As viewers we tend to identify with the protagonists even when their choices are questionable because we cannot help but love their flaws. Popular during the 1960s economic boom, commedia all’italiana intended to make viewers laugh while also making us think hard about the pressing social issues of the moment. Among the actors that made this genre famous were Alberto Sordi, Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi, all representatives of a particular Italian social “type.”
After graduating from the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia in Rome in 1987, Virzì embraced commedia all’italiana and its “civil passion” in a series of films that give voice to everyday working people struggling to find their place in a society in utter transition and in social, economic and political turmoil. SDIFF will present four of Virzì’s early films, all absolutely not to be missed for their quality and rarity in the US: La bella vita (Living It Up, 1994), Ferie d’agosto (August Vacation, 1995), Ovosodo (Hardboiled Egg, 1997), My Name is Tanino (2002).
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