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Great Directors

Film Studies 120. Great Directors. NANNI MORETTI. The work of Nanni Moretti “is above all the painfully honest, defiantly narcissistic, semi-fictionalized chronicle of a life in which generations of frustrated left-wing Italians regretfully recognize their own autobiographies.”

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Great Directors

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  1. Film Studies 120 Great Directors

  2. NANNI MORETTI The work of Nanni Moretti “is above all the painfully honest, defiantly narcissistic, semi-fictionalized chronicle of a life in which generations of frustrated left-wing Italians regretfully recognize their own autobiographies.” Deborah Young, 2002

  3. NANNI MORETTI • Giovanni Moretti was born in Brunico, Italy, on August 19,1953, and now lives in Rome. • As a child he devoted himself to cinema and water-polo, ending up playing for the Italian water-polo first division and the junior national team. • When he left school he sold his stamp collection to buy a film camera, and started making short films with friends in 1973.

  4. NANNI MORETTI • Writer, director, producer and actor Moretti speaks to - and for - a generation of Italians through his judgmental, self-absorbed heroes. • Moretti’s work has influenced younger Italian filmmakers who, for better or worse, have grown up as “Morettians” in search of a new film language. • Moretti offers an alternative to the one-way street of old-style Italian comedy.

  5. NANNI MORETTI • All of Moretti’s ten feature films, from Io Sono un Autarchico (1976) to Il Caimano (2006), are built on his own image and persona. • Moretti was torn between calling his production company Sacher (after the Austrian chocolate cake he adores) or Water Polo Film (after his favorite sport). • This blurring of personal and professional matters colors everything he does.

  6. NANNI MORETTI • Io Sono un Autarchico- I am Self Sufficient (1976) • Ecce Bombo(1978) • Sogni d‘Oro – Sweet Dreams(1981) • Bianca (1984) • La Messa e’ Finita– Mass Is Over (1985) • Palombella Rossa– Red Wood Pigeon(1989) • Caro Diario– Dear Diary (1994) • Aprile - April(1998) • La Stanza del Figlio-The Son's Room(2001) • Il Caimano – The Caiman(2006)

  7. NANNI MORETTI Io Sono un Autarchico (1976)

  8. NANNI MORETTI Ecce Bombo (1978)

  9. NANNI MORETTI • In 1976 he directed his first full length feature, Io Sono un Autarchio(I am Self Sufficient). • In 1978 he produced Ecce Bombo, which became his first national success and remains a cult movie for many Italians.

  10. NANNI MORETTI: Social-Historical Context • Io Sono un Autarchio(1976) and Ecce Bombo (1978)were shot during the period that the Christian Democrat politician Aldo Moro was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades.

  11. NANNI MORETTI: Social-Historical Context

  12. NANNI MORETTI • “The characters, the political-sociological ambience and style in Io Sono un Autarchioare constants in all my films. I've always told the kind of stories I wanted, the way I wanted, because it was the only thing that made sense.” • I am Self Sufficient was shot in super-8 and came out in film clubs.

  13. NANNI MORETTI • Made in 35mm and screened in “regular” movie theaters, Ecce Bombowas a box-office success. • Ecce Bomborepresents late-1970s young, left-wing, middle-class Romans, who were fed up with how the “old” Left was acting. • In Ecce Bombo, “I made fun of myself, my generation and the audience, something the [old] Left would never do.”

  14. NANNI MORETTI • Io Sono un Autarchio(I am Self Sufficient, 1976). • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEv5L8KMvGU • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUDDbfbcS5E • Ecce Bombo (1976). • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaRdgKpPElg

  15. NANNI MORETTI Sogni D’Oro (1981)

  16. NANNI MORETTI • In 1981, Moretti released Sogni d‘Oro, a movie about the film-making process. • Moretti: “I guess many directors feel the need to make a film about directing. I never shot so much in the studio. … It's also about Michele's life, his mother, his temperament, his dreams. I wanted to do a film about a phenomenon that was just beginning: vulgarity on television. There's a TV match between two film directors that foretells the vulgarity to come.“

  17. NANNI MORETTI • Sogni d’Oro“won the special jury prize at Venice. My parents, being very discreet, didn't come to Venice for the premier. The film came out a few days later. The audience laughed at the scene where I beat up my mother, and I nervously warned my real mother about it before she went to see it. Though it's very different from The Son's Room, there's a part in it about psychoanalysis. The film in the film is called Freud's Mom.”

  18. NANNI MORETTI • Sognid’Oro(Sweet Dreams, 1981). • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Ygl39LzX8&feature=related

  19. NANNI MORETTI Bianca (1984)

  20. NANNI MORETTI • In 1984 Moretti released Bianca, a movie that mixes a love story, a mystery, and a comedy. • Moretti: “I shot it in my real elementary school, which I transformed into the Marilyn Monroe High School. Here I continue to play with my character, who has the same name and characteristics of being quarrelsome and intolerant - as well as an obsession with shoes, sweets, telephone calls, the school, and family dinners.”

  21. NANNI MORETTI • Bianca (1984) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkZWKSjdASk

  22. NANNI MORETTI La Messa E’ Finita (1985)

  23. NANNI MORETTI • In 1985 Moretti produced La Messa e’ Finita, which won a Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival. • Moretti: “The main character is a priest, but it's not a film about priests. It concentrates not on faith but on relationships with other people.” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUBZb0ynkqY&feature=related

  24. NANNI MORETTI Palombella Rossa (1989)

  25. NANNI MORETTI • In 1989 Moretti releasedPalombella Rossa, a film on the crisis of the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Left. • Moretti: “It was a time when the party had a lot of votes but was unable to solve its relationship to its own past; suddenly, many members wanted to throw out everything, even the positive things. So I put this confusion and crisis into a metaphoric game of water polo that lasts one day and one night.”

  26. NANNI MORETTI • Palombella Rossawas the first film produced by Moretti’s company, Sacher. • Moretti: “We could have saved a lot of money if we had shot the swimming pool scenes in Rome, but I wanted the game set away from home - so the public would be against the young Communist. We shot it in Acireale, Sicily, in September, 1989. Two months later, the Berlin Wall fell and Occhetto, the Italian Communist leader, proposed they change the party's name, nature and identity.”

  27. NANNI MORETTI • Palombella Rossa(Red Wood Pigeon, 1989) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtP3FWRo6Ow&feature=related

  28. NANNI MORETTI Caro Diario (1994)

  29. NANNI MORETTI • Released in 1994, Caro Diariois the film for which Moretti won the best director prize at Cannes. The movie is divided into in three chapters, which are shot in different styles: • It has Moretti riding around Rome on a Vespa. • It was shot in the Aeolian islands (Sicily). • It ironically chronicles one year of mistaken doctors' diagnoses of Moretti’s tumor (the chemo session is real). Moretti: “I didn't feel anxious about reliving this experience - I was just a director shooting a movie.”

  30. NANNI MORETTI Aprile (1998)

  31. NANNI MORETTI • Moretti produced Aprile in1998. • Moretti: “Like Dear Diary, parts of April tell what really happened to me. … My son was born on April 18 and three days later, Italians voted in a left-wing government for the first time. There was no script; I just wrote a bit and shot fragments. I realized the nucleus for a film was there, a feeling. Some consider it my most private film and some my most political.”

  32. NANNI MORETTI La Stanza del Figlio (2001)

  33. NANNI MORETTI • Moretti produced La Stanza del Figlio in 2001. • Moretti: “I made two definite choices about the film: to set it in a small town and to put the doctor's office on the same floor as his residence. The first was important because … when you lose a son in a smaller community, you feel the warmth and solidarity around the family. The studio is on the same landing as Giovanni's apartment to show that for him to do his job, he needed his family and vice versa. In his home, he can't separate himself completely from the suffering he works with.”

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