Writer_Mario_Biondi Reviews

Harem Suare (1999)

Unaccomplished

[6/10 · 18 September 2015]

Strange film. The story of a historical "Fall", the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It makes you immediately think of movies by the gigantic Luchino Visconti such as "Ludwig" and "The Damned" (the original title translates as "The Fall of the Gods"). Dark colors, morbid atmospheres, perturbations, homosexuality open or veiled. And so on. And the story is good, well thought of. But unfortunately narrated too quickly and in a too confused way. To understand it (and again not completely) one must know well history and traditions of the Ottoman Empire, or at least of its last decades. What is really a Harem, which are the relationships of power between one woman and the others, why a very few of them become powerful and others remain behind, what's the position of the Valide, what it means for a woman to bear a male child to the Sultan, why exactly the small child of the main character is poisoned, why near the end the possible poisoner, the favorite of the Sultan, has to go with her son to Salonika? Because she must follow Abdul Hamit 2 in his exile, but one must know it by himself, the movie does not give any explanation whatsoever. All in all a good film, but could have been much better

Fat City (1972)

Bitter City, magnificent story

[8/10 · 5 February 2015]

This is a magnificent movie. Simply magnificent. With a very simple, minimalistic plot John Huston succeeds in creating a story which you can not abandon and on the contrary await avidly to see scene after scene. And, let alone the extraordinary direction (and photography: only a shadowy hint of Edward Hopper, where one risked to have tons of it), the magic is done by the actors. All, all, all of them, but particularly (and obviously) Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges and Susan Tyrrell. This last one is simply fantastic in her portrayal of the desperate, solipsist boozing woman. Bridgse is my favorite actor after Dustin Hoffman, but I had never seen him so young and yet a perfectly accomplished actor. And Keach… well, tell me I am dumb, but I didn't even know him. When I look at a DVD I like to stop near the middle and begin again from that point the day after. So, with this movie I spent two splendid evenings. Depressing movie, I read somewhere. No, no way. I will look at it again

Seven Years in Tibet (1997)

Simply bad

[4/10 · 15 September 2014]

This is a really bad piece of disinformation and propaganda. Harrer is depicted as ant-Nazi, while in his real life he was very proud of the honors he received from Hitler and the photos where he appears with the Nazi boss. As a matter of fact he did not leave Tibet until 1950. Why did he remain there? Was he acting as an "adviser" for some Western power? Was he scared of going back to Austria and being summoned by an anti-Nazi courtroom? Or was he even more afraid to fall in the hands of Chinese judges? After all, he was a Nazi, allied with the Japanese, who had invaded China and killed thousands and thousands of innocent Chinese people. And Aufschnaiter? Did he really remain in the Himalayan areas because he had "married a Tibetan woman"? Or was he similarly afraid to go back to the West? After all, he had joined the Nazi Party in 1933. And so on. Movies should be respectful of History and not play with It and twist It as if It were a toy to use for political amusement.

Under Milk Wood (1971)

Absolutely Magic

[8/10 · 16 June 2014]

This is a marvelous piece of theater (yes: theater) put on a roll of film and released as a movie. The images are not that important, the real importance lies in the WORDS: the way the words are connected one to the other in the text, with silences, spaces, italics and all, and the way they are PRONOUNCED. This is a work for voices, conceived by Dylan Thomas (I think) for the radio, not for the TV (1954). As a matter of fact the subtitle says: "A Play for Voices". And here you have almost the best as far as voices are concerned: Burton, O'Toole, the others. You could as well shut your eyes and simply listen. I did it, and found myself dreamily trying to follow the rhythm of the voices

Sorcerer (1977)

Good movie but not a good remake

[6/10 · 17 April 2014]

Well, as many reviewers have already remarked, this is a remake of a glorious french movie, "Le salaire de la peure", "The Wages of Fear", 1953, by the extraordinary Clouzot, based on the same novel by Georges Arnault. A good remake? I have many doubts. I must admit that it was not an easy task, having to compete with "monsters" like Ives Montand, Folco Lulli, Peter Van Eyck, Charles Vanel, but there is no way that the actors in "Sorcerer" can attain that level. Francisco Rabal, for instance, never seems to understand where he is and what he is doing. Even the narration here and there is clumsy. If you already know which (more or less) will be the end, very little suspense remains. And you can not in any way compare the tragic, almost Wagnerian finale by Clouzot with the arrival of the 2 ugly Mafiosos. In any case, if you have not seen the masterly Clouzot movie, you can enjoy also this one.

Sleuth (1972)

Extraordinary piece of theater

[8/10 · 13 August 2013]

A piece of theater, I repeat, because this is exactly filmed-theater, not cinema. That said, I must put a strong stress on the expression "extraordinary", because that's the only way one can describe the acting of the 2 actors. Only two, for all the plot, which is pretty long. Too long, possibly, and I have in my opinion (not being a cinema and even less a theater man) that the third part could have been cut away with a big gain for the story in itself and for the audience. But the way in which L. Olivier and M. Caine perform their (several…) parts is simply admirable. Highly admirable. Funny but, having seen only now the movie (which is 40 years old!), I feel the strong sensation that it was there that Mr Irvine Welsh found inspiration for the main character (a pulp writer, albeit a woman) of his "Lorraine Goes To Livingston" (a part of "Ecstasy").

The Sicilian Clan (1969)

Not a good movie

[5/10 · 13 August 2013]

Absolutely not a good movie, full of clichés about Sicilian mafia, even here depicted as a minor thing, concerning only a few "deviated" families, but all in all perfectly under control. On the contrary, Mafia is far from being a romantic inconvenience, with heroic and wise old bosses always ready to pay for their "mistakes" (when? where?), but rather a terrible thing, which poisons all the ECONOMY of the world. More over, in this movie almost everybody seems out of role, except in part Ventura and Delon. The two venerables, Gabin and Nazzari, were probably never explained which parts they were playing in which movie. Even the music by Morricone, beautiful but obsessively repetitive, at the end spreads a certain smell of staleness. Sorry

Death Becomes Her (1992)

A splendid movie

[9/10 · 20 June 2013]

This is a splendid movie, and I really can't understand the modest general rating. It is performed at their best by Meryl Streep (gorgeous) and Goldie Hawn. Even Isabella Rossellini behaves very well (albeit I am not sure I have seen her in other movies: being Italian, i remember her parents…) Bruce Willis is very good, too, even if probably not exactly in the right role for is characteristics. I do not know how many times I have seen it (the movie), and every time I have discovered something new, which has made me enjoy it a little more. A little too much "color", possibly, in the scenes at the party, but for all the rest OK

Geheimnis Tibet (1943)

Why did Nazis go to Tibet, really?

[7/10 · 6 February 2013]

Did really Himmler only want measures of skulls, legs, hands, colors of eyes, descriptions of Shapis and Blue Tibetan Sheep, and so on? Did he really want to discover traces of the origins of the Aryan race in Tibet? In Tibet of all places? I will never believe it. He simply wanted to establish an alliance with that strange country and its ruler (the Dalai Lama's Government) to try and create a connection with the Japanese armies which were at that time ravaging China, and close British India in a mortal pincer. The Nazis Schäfer and Beger knew it perfectly well. That was their real mission. Nevertheless this documentary remains of extraordinary interest. Probably the first account of Tibet on film. Needs English subtitles, which is possible to find on the Web.

Habanastation (2011)

Very beautiful

[8/10 · 6 February 2013]

I bumped on this movie by mere chance while I was trying to learn how to use my AppleTV and YouTube on it. Well, I thought I would have seen just a few minutes of it, but ended up seeing it to the end. Even more: I downloaded it from YouTube and found the English subs, because (even if I am Italian) I could not understand well the Spanish dialogs. I was simply delighted. I visited Cuba in 1974 and had an idea about their cultural vivacity, but I think I had never seen a Cuban movie. So this one has been a double surprise. The direction is brilliant and the acting really very good, particularly the two kids. Happy to have discovered it. Ah, by no way it's a movie only for kids.

The Law (1959)

It aged very badly

[16 August 2011]

This could have been a great movie, but it is almost unbelievable the way in which Dassin looked at Southern (I repeat: SOUTHERN) Italy in the Fifties of 1900. I was a boy, I did not live there, but in that South I spent my holidays. The best holidays I ever had, due surely to my (then) splendid age and to my (then) splendid country.

A young woman dressed like Gina Lollobrigida could never be seen in those years walking the streets of a southern Italian village.

The magnificent place where the movie was partly made is Peschici (Gargano, Puglia). The name Manacore, in fact, was later used for a very elegant and costly touristic place. I spent several holidays there in the Sixties, and (let alone the Fifties!) never saw a woman dressed that way. And, as far as I remember, they did not go to the beach albeit wearing a diving apparatus (complete of snorkel).

And the music in the local festivals (dedicated to saints, with parades, priests, candles and so on) was very different, almost always neapolitan.

Mrs Mercouri and Ives Montand are surely not at their best (to be kind), but we really re- discover a woman which was at most considered a pin-up, and on the contrary was really a great actress: Gina Lollobrigida.

Brasseur is OK, very human and credible. Marcello Mastroianni as usual shows how one can be a great actor with the minimum of mannerisms (or not at all).

A movie which unfortunately aged very badly.

The Cup (1999)

Very moving

[8/10 · 16 August 2011]

In its simplicity this is by far the best movie about the REALITY of Buddhist monastic life, very far from the sheer propaganda of "Seven years" and from the mistakes and confusions of "Little Buddha".

This is Bhutanese thinking. The movie has been shot in a real monastery in India, but belonging to the Nyingma sect, and if you have made only a short visit to Bhutan and seen a couple of Nyingma (or even Drukpa Kagyu) monasteries (no Gelugpas, there, no Dalai Lama), or even simply the markets, so similar to the ones where those funny boys go for their errands and their "shopping", you will recognize something very sincere and true.

What is the abbot mostly afraid of for that closed community of only males? Sex. Yes, sex! And those very young monks are boys like all the others in the world.

A beautiful and moving movie, yes!

Topkapi (1964)

A masterpiece, but

[8/10 · 3 August 2011]

A real masterpiece, important also for the images it offers of an Istanbul which does not exist anymore (nostalgia…)

Who knows if they still practice that fascinating wrestling with oil…

And those small traveling circuses, with distorting glasses and merry-go-rounds and sugar floss?

The problem though, is the terrible English pronunciation of Melina Mercouri (let alone her teeth…)

Her fictional name is "Elizabeth", she pronounces it "Elishabesh". When she wants to say "Sit here", she says "Shit here", which is not very beautiful…

But Ustinov, Morley, Tamiroff (!) and the others… Wonderful