Roberto Manassero

Comments

Au hasard Balthazar

A rigorous, shocking film. Each cut of the montage a leap into the void, each image a revelation, each action, gesture, look, object a mystery. It's timeless quality let this film stay forever modern. An unrivaled masterpiece.

Raging Bull

Scorsese's most personal, heartbreaking film (which I choose over "The Age of Innocence" only because it comes first). The beginning, with La Motta dancing in the ring in slow motion to the notes of Mascagni, and then the violent detachment on the first boxing match remains one of the most dazzling in the history of cinema. One of last, epic titles of the Hollywood Renaissance, with perhaps the highest rehearsals of two of Scorsese's primary collaborators: of course De Niro, and film editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

La Règle du jeu

In this film we can find everything: the decadence of European culture before the war, the creative freedom of a film director both modern and primitive, the infinite potential of filming in deep-focus and longshots to grab and replicate the complexity, the openness, the elusiveness of reality.

Persona

Bergman's most experimental and complex film. The sense of helplessness while watching this movie - with its incredible beginning and that mysterious embrace between the two women - is one of the most impressive cinematic experiences ever.

The Searchers

Simply, the greatest western ever. From the greatest American classic director ever.

Rocco E I Suoi Fratelli

The greatest novel about post-war Italy, where the story of a family replicates the evolution of a whole nation and shows the wounds of history in private. Melodramatic, cruel, with one of the most moving endings ever, full of hope and consciousness.

The Travelling Players

Among the many reasons why this is one of the most extraordinary films ever, there is the style of Angelopoulos: plan séquence in deep focus, during which history comes on the screen like an epiphany, replicating political, economical, and social events. Each vision is a revelation.

The Apartment

The greatest American comedy ever, the passing from classic cinema and modernity, with a protagonist, the infamous C.C. Baxter by Jack Lemmon who embraces the human misery and contradiction of the American middle man (not a Mensch, but simply a guy looking for promotion). Shirley McLaine unforgettable.

DVADTSAT DNEI BEZ VOINI

An unsung masterpiece from a Soviet dissident. The story of a journalist soldier who returns home from the front during the battle of Stalingrad, between history and fiction, love and disillusionment. Some images are hallucinating, so strong to be difficult to see, imbued in an extraordinary suspension of time and space.

Fargo

The ultimate American film, a film noir immersed in snow, with the classical editing which that fails to represent a reality in which normality and madness are indistinguishable. Coen brothers at their best.