Word: neapolitan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...usually a bad idea to argue with De Laurentiis' instincts. They have served him well for 57 years. The son of a Neapolitan pasta manufacturer, he quit school at 13 to work as a salesman for his father, gravitated to movies first as an actor, then-quite quickly-as a producer. Eventually he produced Fellini's first two international hits, La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, stealing a portion of the latter's negative to prevent the director's including a long monologue that De Laurentiis was convinced slowed the picture down...
...East Side, with its more than 200 often excellent coffee shops and restaurants, its shops selling salted fish, smoked duck and preserved eggs. Or Little Italy, next door, where one can sit at a side walk café with a cappuccino and time-warp 50 years back to some Neapolitan atmosphere. Ninth Avenue from 38th to 53rd streets is a rapid collage of Italian, Greek, Philippine and African shops and stalls. Yorkville around 86th Street and Third Avenue is somewhat homogenized now, but abounds with German gourmet shops, Irish bars and Hungarian restaurants. Harlem remains the capital of black America...
...portrait of Giovanni Leone (whom the author envisions as still president of the Italy of 1980 in which the coup occurs) is condescending but sympathetic. The bite of the satire is playful; Leone is irritated by the noise of electric guitars because he "was himself . . . a great connoisseur of Neapolitan songs." Reactionary forms of music, Neapolitan songs have all the melodrama "Italy" suggests...
...abandonment of dignity in the name of survival; he will seduce the commandant (Shirley Stoller) in order to eat. In a series of pathetic but comic scenes which show that Pasqualino's mad scheme derives as much from his vanity as from his desperation, he attempts to bring his Neapolitan charm to bear on the ogress, despite the ravages his misfortunes have wreaked on his appearance. Whistling, winking, and blowing kisses as if he were on an Italian street corner, Pasqualino hums a southern love song as he adjusts his striped prisoner's cap to a rakish angle above...
Image of Horror. The movie is vastly ambitious, but it is also jaunty and diverting. There is time for an affection ate send-up of Bertolucci: Giannini's en trance into a Neapolitan music hall, stupidly splendid with a cigarette holder and snap-brim hat, recalls The Conform ist. There are some good visual puns...