Favorite Italian Film Director
 

For horror I would say Lucio Fulci for his work on Zombi 2 and The Beyond

For westerns my sure choice is Sergio Leone for his amazing work with Clint Eastwood and building the structure for Spaghetti Westerns to take the fore front of the western world during the 1960s/70s

Franco Zeffirelli for Brother Sun Sister Moon and many more.
Silvio Soldini for Bread and Tulips.

Re: Favorite Italian Film Director
 

the only movie ive seen by franco is his romeo and juliet im goin to check out the brother sun sister moon

Re: Favorite Italian Film Director
 

I like the films of Francesco Rosi

Re: Favorite Italian Film Director
 

Antonioni, probably.

Re: Favorite Italian Film Director
 

Fellini is too obvious but I love Antonioni, and I really really hate Fulci

Vittorio De Sica is also wonderful, Dario Argento is a given, Giuseppe Tornatore seems pretty underrated

Re: Favorite Italian Film Director
 

Leone is a great. I haven't watched enough Fellini or Antonioni (1 film each).

Which for each? And opinions

The directors which have the sliest senses of humor are Pietro Germi (Divorce - Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned) and Elio Petri (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and The Tenth Victim).

The guy who basically invented neorealism is Luchino Visconti (Ossessione and La terra trema) although he later evolved into a director of epics which resembled operas (The Leopard) and therefore highly influenced eveybody's fave, Sergio Leone. Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica took up the mantle of neorealism and carried it for several years although they also were able to sneak in all kinds of American melodrama into their early and later films.

Fellini is an obvious choice since he basically had a singular career which evolved from neorealism (La Strada) to surrealism (8 1/2) and to some personal kind of obsession with the circus (The Clowns) which put him into a totally unique niche (if you didn't realize already :cool:).

Antonioni seems to be the Godard of Italian directors. He's the most iconoclastic and personal in that he focuses on certain themes (isolation and identity) which other directors don't seem to bother with. Although it's not really his textbook film, I prefer Blowup to all his others, even if it's in English.

I'm probably forgetting several modern Italian directors, but the one who strikes me as the most-consistent-and-entertaining is Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso, Everybody's Fine, A Pure Formality, The Starmaker, The Legend of 1900 and Malena).

OK. That's a start.

I watched this a week or two ago, excellent film.

8 1/2 and Blow-up. I watched about half of Satyricon on television, but didn't finish it.

8 1/2 is a masterful film, but I didn't really get anything out of it until the theater rehearsal scenes and the final scene by the spaceship. To be honest, I was bored as f*ck until the final third of the film. I saw it a while ago when I was slightly more of a philistine. Blow-up wasn't boring whatsoever and had even better imagery than 8 1/2, in my unpopular opinion. I really want to watch La Dolce Vita and The Red Desert next, respectively.

Satyricon was f'ing crazy, but I wasn't going for it.

Antonioni for me hands down. I've heard the expression that you are either in the Fellini camp or the Antonioni camp. While I like them both I think Antonioni takes more risks, (which is why it seems many of his films, [take for example, L'Avventura] are not well received). He reminds me a lot of Bresson, another director who I hold in very high regard. Instead of doing the Bressonian approach of doing close-ups of hands, legs, feet, etc. Antonioni usually has his subjects backs to the camera, as if to alienate the subject from the audience/modern world. I'm actually the polar opposite of Mark though, I didn't so much like Blow Up. I loved L'Avventura, L'Eclisse, and I think Red Dessert is easily one of the greatest films ever made. Then again, I'm a art house goon so what can I say.

Re: Favorite Italian Film Director
 

Have you seen La Notte? I really liked L'Avventura and am not sure whether to continue to L'Eclisse since La Notte is supposedly the 2nd film in that trilogy.

In addition to Mark's great list and the others already mentioned there's Roberto Rossellini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Lina Wertmüller and Pier Pasolini as the big arthouse names. On the Horror side Mario Bava. And from the past couple decades, you can't overlook Roberto Benigni. Matteo Garrone had a strong international breakthrough with Gomorrah, though I confess I haven't seen anything else by him yet. Plus there's the "other" name in Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Corbucci (though I don't know who would honestly choose him over Leone).


As for which Italian I'd choose myself, I think most days I'd be very comfortable with Michelangelo Antonioni. And even though Leone only made six features from Fistful through OUATIAmerica and they aren't specifically "Italian" in content or even setting and language spoken, I do love them all fiercely. The more Rossellini I get my hands on, the higher he rises, even past Fellini at this point. And while Bertolucci wouldn't make the top of my list, Il Conformista would be way up there for individual films. Same thing for Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano. I've only seen a couple films by Alberto Lattuada, but his Mafioso is amazing (which reminds me, I should consciously seek out more of his work). I've only seen a few from Pietro Germi, but wow, they're fantastic.

I suppose considering total body of work, my list would have to be...

http://ts3.mm.bing.net/images/thumbn...-1912-2007.jpg http://ts3.explicit.bing.net/images/...son%2bmaria%2b

1. Michelangelo Antonioni
2. Sergio Leone
3. Roberto Rossellini
4. Federico Fellini
5. Vittorio De Sica

This one is obvious. Sergio Leone. Man was genius.

http://www.lifeinitaly.com/images/img/Sergio-Leone.jpg