Word: amico
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Such is the slight story of Tropici, a film about modern-day Brazil made by an Italian, Gianni Amico, for Italian television. But the content of Tropici is primarily political: the effects of foreign exploitation on a Third World nation. Amico has correctly realized that traditional narrative, no matter how portentous, is inadequate for describing a social reality that lies beneath surface story lines. Therefore he has interweaved his narrative with a conventional documentary which attempts to set Miguel's story in context, to explain in party why Miguel is unskilled, why a country so rich in resources...
...business domination. Once we lose Miguel, Tropici is strewn with interesting shots of the billboards that blister the countryside of Brazil, shouting "Texaco" "Ford" "Esso" at the passing cars. But this is rather small accomplishment; it's all there, as obvious as a Wheaties box. Tropici is betrayed by Amico's failure to integrate his narrative and documentary concerns, to deal with them not in isolation but in interaction. This failure gives his statement on foreign exploitation the ring of a superficial overview, rendering it less forceful, less immediate and real. The few times he manages to bring both elements...
Instead of simply duplicating the first-folio on film, Zeffirelli and his two co-writers, Franco Brusati and Masolino d'Amico, have blithely excised and elided speeches, transposed lines, eliminated characters. It is a dangerous game, rewriting Shakespeare, but Romeo and Juliet proves that it can be played and won. An even greater risk was to give the leading roles to a pair of youthful unknowns with virtually no acting experience: Juliet is a tremulous 16-year-old, Olivia Hussey; Romeo is Leonard Whiting, 17. Both look their parts and read their lines with a sensitivity far beyond...
...intend to make Shakespeare as successful a screenwriter as Abby Mann." Thus spake Director Franco Zeffirelli last year when he began filming The Taming of the Shrew. The screen credits maintain the mock-the-bard tone: script billing goes to Zeffirelli, Paul Dehn and Suso Checchi D'Amico, with a coy acknowledgment "to William Shakespeare, without whom we would have been at a loss for words." The irreverence in this case is less a shame than a sham. Despite the disclaimer, Zeffirelli has succeeded in mounting the liveliest screen incarnation of Shakespeare since Olivier's Henry...