Iconic Italian star Monica Vitti is a stateside tribute with the posthumous pageant “Monica Vitti: La Modernista,” offered by Movie at Lincoln Heart and Cinecittà. The actress, who died in 2022, was immortalized onscreen along with her famed collaborations with auteurs Michelangelo Antonioni and Luis Buñuel. Now, the 14-film collection at FLC would be the first North American retrospective devoted to Vitti’s profession. The collection will characteristic new restorations of her basic movies together with “Purple Desert” and “La supertestimone.”
“We’re happy to accomplice with Cinecittà to have a good time one in every of Italy’s most revered actresses,” Florence Almozini, Vice President of Programming at Movie at Lincoln Heart, mentioned in a press assertion. “It’s a privilege to have the chance to current a long time value of movies from Monica Vitti’s illustrious and prolific profession, particularly with many restored variations of her legendary work.”
Vitti most famously starred in Antonioni’s “L’avventura,” which turned her breakout flip in 1960. She went on to steer “The Woman with the Pistol” (which is getting a 4K re-release), “Flirt,” and extra. Vitti received 5 David di Donatello Awards for Finest Actress, three Nastro d’Argento awards, and eight Globi d’Oros (Italian Golden Globe), in addition to the Silver Bear for Finest Actress on the Berlin Worldwide Movie Competition, the Concha de Plata for Finest Actress, and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement on the Venice Movie Competition in 1995. In whole, Vitti starred in 55 movies throughout 35 years for her profession.
“After we started discussing the thought of a retrospective devoted to Monica Vitti — along with our Division for the Promotion of Basic Cinema and our longtime accomplice, Movie at Lincoln Heart — the primary query we requested ourselves was which movies to current to the American viewers,” Chiara Sbarigia, President of Cinecittà, mentioned. “So we put collectively what I imagine is a really unique choice — one that may showcase the outstanding and versatile expertise of Monica Vitti, who moved effortlessly between glowing comedies and auteur cinema, such because the celebrated trilogy by Michelangelo Antonioni that established her on the worldwide stage. In New York, we’ll additionally current the world premieres of three gems: the 4K digital restorations of ‘I Married You for Enjoyable’ by Luciano Salce, ‘I Know That You Know That I Know’ by Alberto Sordi, and ‘The Woman with a Pistol’ by Mario Monicelli.”
Manuela Cacciamani, CEO of Cinecittà, added, “It’s each an honor and a deeply transferring second for Cinecittà to contribute to this tribute at Movie at Lincoln Heart, which celebrates a unprecedented determine like Monica Vitti. The restored prints of her movies, produced in our laboratories, are a passport to the greatness of Italian cinema. Actors are the voices of movies — and on this case, of a complete tradition. Vitti is a logo of the fashion, creativity, and freedom of Italian cinema. With this tribute, we’re sure that not solely Cinecittà, however the picture of Italian movie itself, has discovered an unparalleled ambassador, in Monica Vitti, in America.”
“Monica Vitti: La Modernista” runs from June 6-19. Take a look at the total listing of movies under, with language supplied by Movie at Lincoln Heart.
“L’avventura”
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960, Italy/France, 143m
Italian with English subtitles
Arguably one of the important provocations in movie historical past, Antonioni’s sixth characteristic and existentialist masterwork helped to launch trendy artwork cinema as we all know it. Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), his girlfriend Anna (Lea Massari) and their good friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) set out on a Mediterranean yacht journey to have a good time Sandro’s return from working overseas; Sandro and Anna’s relationship, in the meantime, has grown distant and tense for mysterious causes. However when Anna goes lacking on the journey, Sandro and Claudia search (nonetheless half-heartedly) for her, although a surfacing attraction between them threatens to overshadow Anna’s disappearance. An immaculate work of pacing and visible composition, L’avventura is rightly thought to be an epochal instance of cinematic modernism. DCP courtesy of Cinecittà.
Friday, June 6 at 8:30pm
Sunday, June 8 at 3:15pm
Saturday, June 14 at 3:15pm
Wednesday, June 18 at 6:00pm
“La notte”
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961, Italy, 122m
Italian with English subtitles
On this beguiling second entry in Antonioni’s celebrated trilogy that additionally contains L’avventura and L’eclisse, Marcello Mastroianni radiates brooding power as Giovanni Pontano, a profitable novelist who spends a day and an evening drifting via the starkly stunning constructed and pure environments—and the unsettlingly superficial social settings—of Sixties Milan. Drifting alongside him, on a path that alternately intersects with and diverges from his personal, is his spouse Lidia (Jeanne Moreau); the destiny of their imperiled marriage provides the movie’s emotional focus. In the meantime, husband and spouse encounter tragedy and temptation in equal measure—the latter partly within the type of a watchful, seductive Monica Vitti. Shot in lusciously textured black-and-white, the movie affords a melancholic, unblinking portrait of a time and place, a social class, and a relationship.
Saturday, June 7 at 5:45pm
Saturday, June 14 at 6:15pm
Wednesday, June 18 at 9:00pm
“L’eclisse”
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962, Italy/France, 126m
Italian with English subtitles
The culminating installment of the trilogy begun by L’avventura and La notte, L’eclisse finds Monica Vitti as soon as once more teaming up with Antonioni for arguably his most audacious movie thus far. Vitti stars as a translator named Vittoria who, following an apparently sleepless evening, breaks up along with her boyfriend and begins wandering the streets of Rome; she’ll quickly make her means over to the Roman Inventory Change, the place she meets her mom’s dealer, Piero (Alain Delon), inaugurating an eminently trendy, curiously cool courtship that culminates in one in every of cinema’s all-time nice endings. L’eclisse endures as one in every of Antonioni’s most open and slipperiest works, a movie that speaks cryptically but unforgettably about love amid modernity.
Saturday, June 7 at 8:15pm
Saturday, June 14 at 8:45pm
Thursday, June 19 at 8:45pm
“Purple Desert” 4K Restoration
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964, Italy/France, 120m
Italian with English subtitles
A seminal eco-psychological nightmare, Purple Desert stars Monica Vitti as Giuliana, an industrialist’s spouse who stumbles via the poisonous wasteland wherein she lives beneath the affect of an obscure, debilitating nervousness. When an outdated good friend of her husband’s, Corrado (Richard Harris), involves city on a enterprise journey, she finds a person extra delicate to her situation, and an affair between them ensues. However Corrado can do little to sluggish the onset of Giuliana’s psychic collapse. Antonioni’s first coloration movie is an audiovisual tour de power, with Carlo Di Palma’s stark photos conjuring a world whose exterior ravages replicate and reinforce the soul-sickness of recent man, masterfully embodied by Vitti’s lead efficiency. 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà and CSC – Cineteca Nazionale.
Sunday, June 8 at 6:15pm
Sunday, June 15 at 8:30pm
Thursday, June 19 at 6:15pm
“I Married You for Enjoyable” World Premiere of 4K Restoration
Luciano Salce, 1969, Italy, 100m
Italian with English subtitles
A pleasant diversion after her string of weighty collaborations with Antonioni, this late-’60s romantic comedy presents one other facet of Monica Vitti. She stars right here as Giuliana, the marginally whacky woman with whom bourgeois lawyer Pietro (Giorgio Albertazzi) meets cute at a bohemian bacchanal. Simply as shortly, the 2 get married, setting the stage for a humorous research of then-contemporary romance and the state of sexual politics in Italy. One thing of a time capsule, I Married You for Enjoyable contributed considerably to Vitti branching out from the inscrutable Antonioni talisman to turning into extra synonymous with Italian cinema within the Sixties. New 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà.
Saturday, June 7 at 1:00pm
Wednesday, June 11 at 6:00pm
Tuesday, June 17 at 8:45pm
“The Woman with a Pistol” World Premiere of 4K Restoration
Mario Monicelli, 1968, Italy, 102m
English and Italian with English subtitles
An interesting, genre-inflected story of revenge impressed by Sicilian traditions, Monicelli’s drama stars Monica Vitti as Assunta, a younger girl who falls for Vincenzo (Carlo Giuffrè), just for Vincenzo to unsuccessfully try to kidnap and forcibly marry Assunta’s sister. Native customs dictate that Assunta and her sisters can’t marry till the household has taken revenge towards Vincenzo and restored their honor. When Vincenzo flees to the U.Okay., Assunta units out after him, setting an enthralling cat-and-mouse recreation into movement throughout Edinburgh, Sheffield, and Bathtub. New 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà.
Friday, June 6 at 6:00pm
Friday, June 13 at 4:00pm
Thursday, June 19 at 4:00pm
“Assist Me My Love”
Alberto Sordi, 1969, Italy, 35mm, 124m
Italian with English subtitles
One other charming romantic comedy anchored by Monica Vitti’s presence, this team-up with director/costar Alberto Sordi casts the 2 as a pair who’re married fortunately—in no small half attributable to their open relationship. However cracks of their blissful association type when Vitti meets a fortysomething professor at a chamber music live performance and turns into infatuated with him. Sordi and Vitti—the field workplace king and queen of Italian cinema on the time—are magnetic and hilarious as a pair whose abrupt disaster comically sends up the period’s sexual mores, and Sordi is very touching as a person who, by means of his contradictions, finds himself falling in love along with his spouse anew. Print courtesy of Cinecittà.
Sunday, June 15 at 3:30pm
Monday, June 16 at 4:00pm
“Jealousy, Italian Fashion”
Ettore Scola, 1970, Italy/Spain, 35mm, 99m
Italian with English subtitles
Also referred to as The Pizza Triangle, Ettore Scola’s comedian story of three-way love injected a dose of irony and modernism to the commedia all’italiana custom. Monica Vitti stars because the fiancée to Marcello Mastroianni’s Communist building employee, however their relationship turns into sophisticated with the introduction of Giancarlo Giannini’s hunky pizza chef. Following an amorous kerfuffle, the three wind up transferring in collectively—however can they handle to make their uncommon association work, or will it’s bickering and dramatics until dying do they half? Carlo Di Palma’s affectionate digicam captures a special facet of Vitti—right here, she’s each a troublemaker and the pillar holding up the roof over Mastroianni and Giannini’s heads. Print courtesy of Cinecittà.
Saturday, June 7 at 3:30pm
Monday, June 16 at 6:30pm
“La supertestimone” 4K Restoration
Franco Giraldi, 1971, Italy, 104m
Italian with English subtitles
A darkly comedian portrait of the guts’s irrationality, Franco Giraldi’s seventh characteristic stars Monica Vitti as Isolina, a lady who falls in love with a pimp (Ugo Tognazzi) who has been convicted of murdering the girlfriend whose physique he profited from—following eye-witness testimony from Isolina, who finds herself second-guessing what she thought she noticed on the scene of the crime. A beguiling exploration of reminiscence, ardour, and relations between the sexes, La supertestimone melds the courtroom drama with a blackly satirical depiction of jail life to yield an entirely unique cinematic expertise. 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà.
Friday, June 13 at 6:15pm
Wednesday, June 18 at 3:45pm
“Stardust”
Alberto Sordi, 1973, Italy, 35mm, 142m
Italian with English subtitles
Alberto Sordi and Monica Vitti renewed their irresistible partnership for this humorous and charming WWII-set love letter to Italian theater. Mimmo (Sordi) and Dea (Vitti) are down-on-their-luck skilled dancers attempting to get by in an Italy ravaged by the struggle. An inflow of American troopers suggests the potential of making some cash—in spite of everything, troopers have to be entertained—however Mimmo and Dea’s typical, considerably provincial method isn’t precisely the Broadway spectacle that the occupying forces predict. The present, nonetheless, should go on, and Mimmo and Dea should discover a method to give their new viewers what they need…. Print courtesy of Cinecittà.
Wednesday, June 11 at 8:30pm
Sunday, June 15 at 12:30pm
“Teresa the Thief” 4K Restoration
Carlo Di Palma, 1973, Italy, 125m
Italian with English subtitles
Legendary cinematographer Carlo Di Palma made his directorial debut with this fascinating cross between melodrama and comedian picaresque. Monica Vitti stars because the titular protagonist, a struggle widow and single mom main a harsh life in Rome. Hungry and depressing, she is caught red-handed robbing somebody’s condominium, sparking a style for kleptomania. She ineptly tries her luck with a succession of schemes, but it surely more and more appears that she is destined for jail…. As all the time, Vitti is fascinating, managing to undertaking profound cool whereas portraying utter desperation. 4K digital restoration by CSC – Cineteca Nazionale and Minerva Footage.
Saturday, June 14 at 12:30pm
“The Phantom of Liberty”
Luis Buñuel, 1974, France/Italy, 104m
French with English subtitles
One in all Luis Buñuel’s most celebrated late-career movies, his penultimate characteristic, The Phantom of Liberty, endures as a deliriously provocative, audaciously subversive all-star ensemble piece and a landmark work of cinematic surrealism. Throughout a succession of non sequitur episodes (each historic and up to date), Buñuel and his star-studded forged enact a form of automated writing utilizing the equipment of cinema. These episodes are drawn from Buñuel’s life (each waking and never), and thru a logic most dreamlike, they discover the illusory nature of freedom, the hypocrisies of varied social establishments, and far, rather more. Monica Vitti seems as a Parisian father or mother whose daughters unwittingly set in movement an inexplicable chain of occasions.
Sunday, June 8 at 1:00pm
Tuesday, June 17 at 6:30pm
“Thriller of Oberwald”
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1980, Italy/Germany, 129m
Italian and German with English subtitles
One of many few tv movies that Antonioni directed, this uncommon Italian/German coproduction (his third-to-final characteristic) finds the modernist grasp adapting none apart from Jean Cocteau (his 1943 play The Eagle with Two Heads). Monica Vitti stars because the reclusive queen of an nameless European nation within the mid-Nineteenth century who has been mourning the assassination of her regal husband 10 years prior. A radical younger poet (Franco Branciaroli) makes an attempt to kill her throughout a clandestine visit a fort referred to as Oberwald, and whereas the try on her life fails, it unusually units the stage for a deeply, fatally romantic connection between the 2. One thing of a curiosity inside Antonioni’s oeuvre, the shot-on-video Thriller of Oberwald marked the ultimate collaboration between Vitti and the director who anointed her his muse. DCP courtesy of Cinecittà.
Sunday, June 8 at 8:45pm
Friday, June 13 at 8:30pm
“I Know That You Know That I Know” World Premiere of 4K Restoration
Alberto Sordi, 1982, Italy, 118m
Italian with English subtitles
Alberto Sordi and Monica Vitti’s remaining collaboration is yet one more charming comedy of remarriage, Italian fashion. Sordi stars as Fabio, a financial institution clerk who has an totally complacent perspective concerning the bourgeois comforts of his life. However when a non-public investigator by accident data Fabio’s spouse of greater than 20 years, Livia (Vitti), Fabio learns how little he truly is aware of about what Livia and his daughter do when he’s not round. This easy sufficient setup proves to be a pleasant pretext for one remaining team-up between Sordi and Vitti, whose chemistry is pleasant as they conjure a pair that is aware of every little thing about each other—apart from every little thing they don’t know, that’s. New 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà.
Sunday, June 15 at 6:00pm
Monday, June 16 at 8:45pm
Tuesday, June 17 at 4:00pm