On December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded in the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura (National Agricultural Bank) in Piazza Fontana, near the Duomo in Milan, Italy. 17 people died from the explosion and more than 84 were injured. Other unexploded bombs were discovered at several places in the city the same day and the attack was obviously the coordinated effort of a terrorist group. More than 80 arrests were made and, at first, the police suspected members of the Anarchists Club. One of them – Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Pinelli – was held for questioning at police headquarters for more than 72 hours. During a break in his interrogation on the fourth floor, he allegedly went to the window for air and fell to his death below. Luigi Calabresi, the police commissioner, had left the room briefly to retrieve a telegram when this occurred, but was told varying accounts of what happened when he returned – most of which stated that Pinelli had committed suicide by leaping to this death. The press and the public were immediately suspicious of this and the investigation became more complicated with other terrorist groups being implicated, most notably the neo-fascist group Ordine Nuovo. The Piazza Fontana bombing resulted in three different trials – one in 1972, one in 1987 and one in 2000 – but no one was ever officially changed and convicted for the crime. The investigations launched countless conspiracy theories and remain a controversial subject even today but it was more than forty years later that a filmmaker would dramatize the events in a movie. That would be celebrated Italian director Marco Tullio Giordana, who released Romanzo di una Strage (English title: Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy) in 2012.
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The Price of Fame
After directing more than fifty feature films including the three-part New York Stories (1989) with contributions from Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese and the re-edited/re-dubbed version of a Japanese spy thriller retitled, What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), Woody Allen has one of the most impressive filmographies of any living director in Hollywood. Regardless of what you think about him as a person due to the controversy that surrounded his marriage to adopted stepdaughter Soon-Yi Previn, one can’t deny all of the critical acclaim he has amassed over the years, which includes 24 Oscar nominations, three of which won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay (Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters and Midnight in Paris). Not all of his films have been box office hits and some have been minor efforts or polarizing like September (1987) or Deconstructing Harry (1997), but the true acid test for any fan or critic who loves Woody Allen movies is Stardust Memories (1980), his most misunderstood and generally maligned tenth feature about the downside of being famous.
Continue readingLip-Syncing to a Different Tune
In the wake of Heaven’s Gate (1980), the $38 million dollar epic by director Michael Cimino that become one of the most expensive box office disasters in movie history, every studio in Hollywood began to carefully monitor their production costs. This was especially true at MGM, which had recently acquired United Artists, the producer and distributor of Heaven’s Gate. You would think in this financially conservative new climate, created by near-bankruptcy conditions, MGM would have steered clear of producing a risky commercial venture like Pennies From Heaven (1981), based on the critically acclaimed six-part British TV mini-series by Dennis Potter. Yet, despite the odds, the studio took a chance on this dark and disturbing tale of a traveling sheet music salesman who escapes the daily drudgeries of his job and miserable married life through fantastic daydreams set to popular songs.
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