I nuovi mostri
I nuovi mostri (English-language version: Viva l'Italia!; meaning of Italian original title: "The new monsters") is a 1977 commedia all'italiana film composed by 14 episodes, directed by Dino Risi, Ettore Scola and Mario Monicelli. It is a sequel of I mostri, made in 1963. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 51st Academy Awards.[1]
| I nuovi mostri | |
|---|---|
 Italian film poster | |
| Directed by | Dino Risi Ettore Scola Mario Monicelli |
| Produced by | Pio Angeletti Adriano De Micheli |
| Written by | Agenore Incrocci Ruggero Maccari Giuseppe Moccia Ettore Scola Bernardino Zapponi |
| Starring | Vittorio Gassman Ornella Muti Ugo Tognazzi Alberto Sordi |
| Music by | Armando Trovajoli |
| Cinematography | Tonino Delli Colli |
| Edited by | Alberto Gallitti |
| Distributed by | Titanus |
Release date |
|
Running time | 115 minutes 106 minutes (alternative cut) 102 minutes (French cut) 87 minutes (cut edition) |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
Episodes
The original version is composed by 14 episodes.
| Episode | Director | Starring |
|---|---|---|
| "L'uccellino della Val Padana" | Ettore Scola | Ugo Tognazzi and Orietta Berti |
| "Con i saluti degli amici" | Dino Risi | Gianfranco Barra |
| "Tantum ergo" | Dino Risi | Vittorio Gassman |
| "Autostop" | Mario Monicelli | Ornella Muti and Eros Pagni |
| "Il sospetto" | Ettore Scola | Vittorio Gassman |
| "Pronto soccorso" | Mario Monicelli | Alberto Sordi and Luciano Bonanni |
| "Mammina e mammone" | Dino Risi | Ugo Tognazzi and Nerina Montagnani |
| "Cittadino esemplare" | Ettore Scola | Vittorio Gassman |
| "Pornodiva" | Dino Risi | Eros Pagni |
| "Sequestro di persona cara" | Ettore Scola | Vittorio Gassman |
| "Come una regina" | Ettore Scola | Alberto Sordi and Adelina Provin |
| "Hostaria!" | Ettore Scola | Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi |
| "Senza parole" | Dino Risi | Ornella Muti and Yorgo Voyagis |
| "Elogio funebre" | Ettore Scola | Alberto Sordi |
Plot
The film, like the previous one, consists of short episodes that portray the evil and meanness of Italian middle-class society during the years of lead in the 70s.
| Segment details | |
|---|---|
|
Tantum ergo |
A cardinal stops by a small parish in the suburbs of Rome, where the local priest, a young far-left sympathizer, is organizing a protest of the local peasants facing eviction by the Church. The cardinal improvises an eloquent sermon, thus placating the peasants' animosity and peacefully sedating the protest. He resumes his journey without even concluding his speech. |
| Autostop | A motorist picks up an attractive young woman hitchhiking. To fend off his repeated advances during the journey, the girl pretends to be a dangerous escaped convict, aligning her story with the news of a recent prison break found on the driver's newspaper. The man believes the girl's story, but her plan backfires as the frightened driver kills her at his earliest opportunity. |
| With the greetings of friends | A local mafioso strolls around the Sicilian town of Ragusa as the bystanders pay their respects to him. However, they all quickly retreat as the man is suddenly shot by two hitmen on a motorbike. When the carabinieri arrive on the scene, the dying boss denies even being assaulted, in an extreme final display of omertà. |
| Mommy and mammon | In Rome two homeless roam the streets, picking up what they can. The police and people avoid them. The poor woman is smart and protective, while the forty-year-old son is a shy and stoned fool who follows her everywhere. At the end of their day of wandering, the two poor tramps return to their home invaded by rubbish. The two try to assemble some junk to sell to people on the street the next day. |
| First aid | Giovan Maria Catalan Belmonte is a snobbish representative of the Roman black nobility. One evening, while on his way to a family meeting, he finds a man lying injured after being hit by a car. Belmonte reluctantly drives the wounded man in search for an available hospital. However, for a variety of reasons that expose the warts and contradictions of the Italian healthcare system — such as a Church-run hospital not treating atheists and a military hospital refusing civilians — no medical institution admits the man. Belmonte eventually takes the agonizing man back to where he found him, leaving him on his own, but not without feeling somewhat amused by this bizarre adventure. |
| Bird of the Po Valley | Fiorella is a successful nightclub singer managed by her unscrupulous and exploitative husband. After she loses her voice due to temporary illness, her husband forces her to undergo unnecessary and dangerous surgery. As Fiorella cannot recover on time for her demanding touring schedule, he sabotages the stairs and causes her to fall down. Fiorella resumes touring with both her legs broken, having turned into a charity case and leveraging the audience's pity rather than her lost vocal abilities. |
| The suspect | A group of young Communists detonate a bomb in a city square. After the perpetrators are brought to the police station and interrogated, the judge realizes that they, despite being Communists, are all sons of prominent figures such as lawyers and doctors. He therefore drops the case and sends everyone home, only to vent off his frustration against a policeman. |
| Pornodiva | Two parents are negotiating the audition of their young daughter for a movie. They briefly hesitate upon learning that the film is pornographic and includes a bestiality scene involving the girl and a monkey, but eventually they sign their daughter up anyway for a hefty fee. |
| Hostaria! | A group of wealthy socialites enter a typical Roman tavern and order the daily special. Inside the kitchen, the head waiter and the cook (who are in a tumultuous homosexual relationship) have an extremely heated argument, during which they toss food at each other. They finally assemble the ordered dishes from the squashed remnants of their struggle and serve them to the unaware customers, who enjoy their meals regardless. |
| Model citizen | During the night a man is witnessing the beating of a victim by a thug. The man, frightened by the scene, runs home and watches the sad lynching by the window, smiling. Exactly the morning of the same day, he had boasted to friends of being an honest and courageous man. |
| Kidnapping of a dear one | A man makes a tearful appeal on TV, begging his wife's kidnappers to call him and state their conditions for her release. Once off the air, the man is revealed to have purposefully cut the phone line. |
| Like a queen | A man, incited by the cruel lover, brings his elderly mother in a nursing home, trying to convince the woman to stay cheerful. But the mother is not happy, because she's aware that the life of the retired hospice is sad and devastating. The woman does not trust even the nurses, and tries to escape, but his son takes her up and forces her to enter the hospice. When the mother is taken away by the nurses, the son has a moment of repentance and cries to the nurses to treat his mother like a queen. |
| Without words | A young stewardess meets a handsome Middle-Eastern man. Though they do not speak a common language, they share a brief yet intense romantic relationship. When the stewardess is about to board her next flight, the man gives her a portable phonograph playing their love theme as a souvenir. The scene cuts to the news that the aircraft has exploded in mid-air, implying that the man was a terrorist who seduced the stewardess so he could plant the rigged record player on the plane. |
| Eulogy | The aging members of an avanspettacolo company attend a colleague's funeral. As one of them delivers the eulogy, he recalls and recreates the signature gags and jokes of the deceased, turning the speech itself into an improvised comedy sketch, which all the other mourners follow upon by singing and dancing in laughter. |
Editions
The full version of the film runs about 115 minutes, but upon its release in Italy, the film was censored a few episodes considered too "strong". The length of the cut version of the film lasts about 87 minutes.
See also
References
- "The 51st Academy Awards (1979) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2013-06-07.
External links
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