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The Great Beauty



For decades, journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the glittering nightlife of Rome. Since the legendary success of his only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city’s literary and elite social circles. But on his sixty-fifth birthday, Jep unexpectedly finds himself taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the lavish nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome itself, in all its monumental glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty. Featuring sensuous cinematography, a lush score, and an award-winning central performance by the great Toni Servillo, this transporting experience by the brilliant Italian director Paolo Sorrentino is a breathtaking Felliniesque tale of decadence and lost love.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION

- New 2K digital transfer, approved by director Paolo Sorrentino, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Conversation between Sorrentino and Italian cultural critic Antonio Monda
- New interview with actor Toni Servillo
- New interview with screenwriter Umberto Contarello
- Deleted scenes
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- One Blu-ray and two DVDs, with all content available in both formats
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Lopate

rohmerin wrote:Roma in the 2010's seems the Milano da bere in the 80's (Has Martini paid the film), or La dolce vita updated, Fellini's masterpiece meets all those Berlusconi's tacky women you can easily see in Milano or Rome most expensive streets (amazing spectacle, by the way).
The films is produced by Berlusconi's company !!! 8-[

The film looks terrific.

I hated This must be the place. I loved the other four Sorrentino's films.

A question for Italians: which novel can I find set in the Milano da bere? Grazie.

This is the first Sorrentino I've seen, so I have no idea it it's representative of his work, but boy, is he eager to please. From go to whoa, he's throwing every attention-getting trick up on screen, from artsy tracking shots, to glammed-up women screaming in the camera, to mysterious infestations of flamingoes. It's entertaining enough in a Post-Fellini sort of way, and Toni Servillo is compulsively watchable, but when you boil it right down to the actual content (blocked writer and two sentimental takes on the 'lost woman'), it's pretty familiar stuff. For me, it came off like a perfectly ordinary film that has been aesthetically turbo-charged. The turbo-charging is extremely photogenic, however, and provides more than enough justification for the film.

I don't know how representative this film is of him overall, but that post-Fellini hyper tense camerawork sounds about right though the themes and other issues don't. Sorrentino (who humourously I was thinking of before I turned my computer on) is interested in the mundane faces of immense things (which I guess makes his American film the ultimate calling card) with mundane lives featuring mundane actions like drinking tea or taking heroine. Usually that immense thing is an evil like gangsters or war criminals, but sometimes (usually the opposition as represented by someone the lead lusts for) a mundane good is present. This probably as text is extremely boring, but as film Sorrentino makes it as you note compulsively watchable. Also yes, Servillo is just great. Probably my favorite working actor.

zedz wrote: From go to whoa, he's throwing every attention-getting trick up on screen, from artsy tracking shots, to glammed-up women screaming in the camera, to mysterious infestations of flamingoes. It's entertaining enough in a Post-Fellini sort of way

That sounds exactly like This Must Be The Place, so I guess it's indeed a feature of his (current) style. Personally though I found that film less entertaining than just plain irritating, not least because I couldn't - at least on first viewing (and God forbid I should have to endure a second one) - discern any rhyme or reason to any of said visual affectations, other than to cover up a rather contrived, tritely sentimental story... I wish someone could explain to me how to view it in a more positive way!

Comes to Region B BR on November 25th from AE...

zedz wrote:This is the first Sorrentino I've seen, so I have no idea it it's representative of his work, but boy, is he eager to please. From go to whoa, he's throwing every attention-getting trick up on screen, from artsy tracking shots, to glammed-up women screaming in the camera, to mysterious infestations of flamingoes.

Flamingos aside, that's a pretty accurate description of Il Divo.

Oddly, his 2004 The Consequences of Love is the coolest, most controlled, cards-to-the-chest film imaginable. It's as if he needed to erupt after restraining himself on that one - the grotesques and dancing girls in soap suds and cowboy hats followed with 2006's The Family Friend, and he's been giving it the full Fellini ever since.

I think The Consequences of Love isn't as restrained as your giving it credit for. Maybe relatively, but there's a lot of visual invention going on in each shot. His protagonist is just more rhythmic there so he needs a more dance like visual style.

From those descriptions, it sounds like I lucked out on a Sorrentino film that didn't give me a migraine. Still, The Consequences of Love sounds like it might be worth a spin at some point.

Admittedly after Dennis he's probably my favorite working director, but I say it is probably just easiest to buy that AE boxset which has most of his features attached. The editing is usually slow with the music and roving doing the heavy lifting.

Dennis Thatcher?

I apologize for the extra 'N'. I meant Claire Denis.

Denis Thatcher also spelled his name with one 'n'...

This news made me literally shout in joy for which my sister scolded me.

Here's the Deadline piece on the Janus/Criterion pickup.

La Grande Bellazza Showtimes and trailer.

Here's Mike Figgis's handwritten "tweet" review. He thinks it's "a bit of a masterpiece."

Finally I could watch it at home. Not the masterpiece I expected. Fellini's obvious.
Napolitan actor in the middle of Romanity, and not subtitles, it was not easy.

What a cazzuta is? It's something about cocks or vaginas but in the feminine turn (as its discussed in the film) is a new word for me.

First time I see Bramante's circle church in Italian cinema, and I've seen a lot Roman movies. Sorrentino's offer us not such tourist Roma places, even Colisseo is filmed on its back (where Servillio lives). Roma rocks.

I miss some conflict or narrative progression; I mean, as the film starts with a Celine's quote about traveling and Imagination, this is an impressionist film. Even Woody Allen's black and white NY dolce vita was more attractive for me. Yes, I am a narrative man.

It's not a frivolous parade about mundanes. It's full of references, even Contemporary art is beautiful and interesting: two live performances (the 1st is impressive, a red bush with communist flag in the artist's pussy) and a picture exhibition in an old cortile / cloister. Modern art in the middle of History (and Art), Roma, where the old (really old) money lives. I loved that.
I didn't like the very high cultivated German (and latin) music that remarks the images.

Anyway, the film has got 3 to 4 sequences for posterity: the Botox- vitamins ritual !!!
the mourning boutique (set in a beautiful fascist palazzo); the visit by night to all those Princesses' palaces (Fellini again) without seeing too much (darkness).

Servillo sees / imagines the ocean on his room ceiling, and I think in the famous song Il cielo in una stanza.

Googleing about the Bramante's church I found a Roma map with the locations.

http://www.swide.com/art-culture/movies ... 2013/06/01" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I resume: never boring but it's TOO long. Wrong soundtrack. The botox communion will be for good in my mind.

I made some caps: the botox communion

http://rohmerin.blogspot.com.es/2013/11 ... rande.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Announced for dual-format release March 2014.

Two DVDs?

theres a lot of deleted scenes

And that "conversation" could be very long. The excellent ones on the Dardennes discs clock in at around an hour.

Or it could be like the "conversations" on Frances Ha that are about 15 minutes long apiece.