Five Findings from Pesaro

by Elisa Giudici

A quick, aperiodical column dedicated to the small discoveries from the smaller film festivals scattered across Europe.

Pesaro is a small coastal town in central Italy, interionationally known as the birthplace of composer Gioachino Rossini and as a city of bicycles. The economy largely revolves around seaside tourism. For 62 years it has also hosted the Pesaro International Festival of New Cinema, an event dedicated to discovery of new, innovative forms of cinema. The programme does not shy away from hybrid forms, medium-length works and pure experimentation. As a result, its main competition regularly brings together video art, short films, essay films, and boundary-pushing cinema, in all its forms.

This year, for the first time, I was able to spend three days at the festival and explore its offere. Here are five discoveries that surprised me and deserve a mention...

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Queering the Oscars: Best Actor "A Special Day"

by Eric Blume

Marcello Mastroianni’s 1977 Best Actor Oscar nomination for Ettore Scola’s film A Special Day was one of the first examples of a straight actors being recognized for playing a gay role.  Prior to that, we’d only had Peter Finch in Sunday Bloody Sunday and Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, and neither of those actors had such an entrenched persona of the “macho lover” as did Mastroianni.   

A Special Day gives us not just one Italian cinema icon playing against type, but two...

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Star Wars and the Oscars, a History.

Get away from Natalie Wood, Darth Vader, we're warning you!

Over at Vulture this weekend, yours truly has a piece up about the history of Oscar's affection (and lack thereof) for the Star Wars saga. I'm glad they liked my Diane Keaton / Annie Hall intro (though they added the Woody Allen bits -- I left him out as I didn't want to distract people) because I couldn't get the image of Diane callously "la-di-da"ing while wielding the Death Star out of my head. Anyway, it was great fun to write so I hope you enjoy. It was also a trip to source the FYC ads -- if only more of them were available online. I couldn't find a single FYC ad for The Empire Strikes Back or The Phantom Menace (among other films).

One thing I didn't have space for  that I could have written much more on was the individual categories over the years -- isn't it strange that Star Wars (1977) is the only time the series has ever been up for Costume Design?!? -- and the individual presentations. Look how excited Farrah Fawcett was to find out who won Best Editing!

And why did Oscar producers pair her with Marcello Mastroianni for a prize that was clearly going to Star Wars? The mysteries that emerge from history... even history as well documented as pop culture.  

"Yesterday Today and Tomorrow" - Best Shot Visual Index

This week's Hit Me With Your Best Shot subject is Vittorio de Sica's gorgeous comic love song, three of them, to Italy and super-sized movie star charisma. Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are special on their own but together it's something else again. Vittorio de Sica is one of Italy's great directors but usually when people reference him they're talking about neo realism and his classic The Bicycle Thief. That's nothing at all like this colorful playful romantic comedy. The film was shot by Giuseppe Rotunno who also lensed Rocco & His Brothers (previously covered in this very series) and later went on to an Oscar nomination for the Bob Fosse masterpiece All That Jazz (1979). Yesterday Today and Tomorrrow was a hit, another feather in both stars caps (they were already international superstars) and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and a BAFTA for "Foreign Actor" for Mastroianni but today it's underdiscussed.

It remains most famous for one scene in particular, Sophia's modest but ultra sexy little striptease pulling a stocking down to the horny delight of childlike Marcello. The stars later riffed on that scene together in Robert Atlman's fashion comedy Pret a Porter. Since there are so many images in this post (one from each short film from most of the participants) they'll have to go after the jump. And if these images and great articles don't convince you to see this Oscar winner, all hope is lost!  

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Yesterday ("Adelina of Naples")

For this week's Best Shot, we're looking at the anthology romcom Yesterday Today and Tomorrow (Oscar's Best Foreign Language Film Winner for 1964) starring everyone's favorite Italian screen couple Sophia Loren & Marcello Mastrioanni³. I've asked participants to choose a third of the movie to Best Shot, or, one shot from each of the three segments within the film by tomorrow night. If I have time I'll do "Today" and "Tomorrow" but my favorite segment is the first -- which is not to say that it's downhill from there so much as it's the most exuberantly delightful of three distinctive delights.

The first story is about the Sbaratti's, a poor couple who realize that the wife Adelina, pregnant with baby #2, will be sent to prison because they refused to pay their fines and keep avoiding punitive measures like furniture repossession. Her husband Carmine is always unemployed while she sells blackmarket cigarettes on the streets with other poor women. They learn from a reluctant lawyer that Adelina can't be arrested because she's pregnant and thus gets an automatic reprieve. And so this exuberant comedy about a boisterous poor neighborhood morphs into a marital sex comedy as temperamental Adelina & gadabout Carmen attempt to stay pregnant for years on end. Both actors do excellent physical comedy, getting big laughs from gestures and their inimitable chemistry. Time shifts are indicated not by anything as rote as identifying text but the number of children (mostly unnamed) hanging from the couples arms and what their friend happens to be selling in the streets; cherry season? Uh oh, the cops are coming 'round again.

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