Italy,
1968, 91 min
Shown in 1968
CREDITS
- dir
-
Sandro Franchina
- prod
-
Enzo Giullioi
- scr
-
Sandro Franchina
- cam
-
Guido Cosulich
- editor
-
Roberto Perpignani
- cast
-
Franco Angeli, Karen Blanguernon, Mario Pisu, Gerard Herter, Isabel d’Avila, Adrano Amedei Migliano, Madeleine Santoro, Sandro Brunori
- source
-
Enzo Guiloli / Fedel Film, Rome
-
COMMENTS
New Directors series; Sandro Franchina attended.
OTHER
The new wave of young Italian directors has already brought such men as Marco Bellochio (Fists in the Pockets, China is Near) and Bernardo Bertolucci (Before the Revolution) to the attention of American audiences. One of the youngest directors, and perhaps the most individualistic, is Sandro Franchina, the son of a famous sculptor. In his first feature, Morire Gratis, (winner of the Prix Max Ophuls, 1968, for the best new director) it is apparent that Franchina is absorbed by the contemporary Roman mood, the post-dolce vita atmosphere of intellectual pessimism and the corruption of artistic ideals. The story centers around a young artist, Enzo, who is forced to make a hurried journey by car from Rome to Paris, in order to deliver his latest piece of sculpture to a gallery exhibition. It is this journey that begins Enzo's emotional flight from the pressures of the world around him, with the confines of his automobile serving as a refuge from responsibility to himself or to others. Suddenly, a chance meeting with a young woman brings new adventure: their liaison becomes a major crisis in Enzo's life, and each day of the trip is emblematic of the breakdown of his moral stability. Morire Gratis is an intense, understated look at the frantic whirl of modern living, where casual love is correlative to the temporary euphoria of alcohol and drugs. The film is constantly on the move, with images of Italy and France swiftly passing, and the impersonal stares of billboard faces or Enzo's sculptured wolf appear as alive and penetrating as the director's unblinking gaze into an artist's tormented soul.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #75
Italian screen siren and ’60s sex symbol Sophia Loren appeared in two films screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival: Ettore Scola’s A Special Day in 1977 and Francesco Rosi’s More Than a Miracle in 1981.
