Just Deserts

Men behaving badly could easily qualify as a cinema subgenre with such classic examples as Kirk Douglas in Champion (1949) and Robert De Niro in Raging Bull (1980) leading the pack but the athletic anti-hero of La Noche Avanza (English title: Night Falls or The Night Draws On, 1952) might even surpass them in terms of sheer toxic masculinity. Marcos (Pedro Armendariz) is Mexico’s most famous undefeated jai alai champion, a public hero and a sexually magnetic lure for women. He is also the epitome of an arrogant macho muchacho Latin male who considers everyone else inferior with boasts like “I’m one of the victorious, the strong…The weak don’t count.”

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The Prince and the Peasant

Will there be a happy ending for Prince Rodrigo (Omar Sharif) and Isabella Candeloro (Sophia Loren) in More Than a Miracle (1967), directed by Francesco Rosi.

Imagine, if you can, a rustic Neapolitan fairy tale directed by Francesco Rosi in the docudrama style of his post-neorealism films of the early sixties like The Moment of Truth (1965), shoot it in Technicolor and Techniscope, add a lush musical score by Piero Piccioni and you get More Than a Miracle (1967), a zesty Southern Italian fantasy-romance that was more appropriately titled Cinderella, Italian Style in Europe.   Continue reading