Black Journal

Gran bollito

Italy

1977

115 Min

Color

1.85:1

Italian

Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
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PROD Sandra Ricardi Infantilli

SCR Sergio Amidei, Nicola Badalucco, Mario Monicelli, Luciano Vincenzoni

CAST Shelley Winters, Max von Sydow, Laura Antonelli, Milena Vukotic, Rita Tushingham, Renato Pozzetto, Alberto Lionello, Mario Scaccia, Franco Branciaroli, Adriana Asti, Antonio Marsina

Gran Bollito opens with a message that “this is a tale of collective madness.” In a film as willfully deranged as this one, that’s putting it mildly. Shelley Winters stars as a psychotic Italian matriarch with a penchant for slaughtering her neighbours and boiling their chopped-up corpses to make soap. In a spirit to waste-not-want-not, she grinds up any bones that are left over to make biscuits for afternoon tea. The fact that all her victims are middle-aged spinsters played by men in drag (including – no, I kid you not! – that Ingmar Bergman stalwart Max von Sydow) only goes to show that Gran Bollito is well-nigh apocalyptic in its weirdness. —IMDb

Director

Mauro Bolognini

Mauro Bolognini (28 June 1922 – 14 May 2001) was an Italian film director of literate sensibility, known for masterful handling of period subject matter.

Mauro Bolognini was born in Pistoia, Tuscany.

A former architectural student, Bolognini began his film career as an assistant to director Luigi Zampa in Italy, and directors Yves Allegret and Jean Delannoy in France. He began directing his own feature films in the mid 1950s, and had his first international success with Gli innamorati (“Wild Love”).

His other notable films of the 1950s and early 1960s include Giovani mariti (“Young Husbands”), La notte brava, La giornata balorda (“From a Roman Balcony”), and the Marcello Mastroianni-Claudia Cardinale starrer Il bell’Antonio (arguably his masterpiece), all written by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Parting professionally with Pasolini in 1961, Bolognini went on to direct two sensual love stories starring Cardinale, La Viaccia and Senilità, before turning his talents… read more

Mauro Bolognini (28 June 1922 – 14 May 2001) was an Italian film director of literate sensibility, known for masterful handling of period subject matter.

Mauro Bolognini was born in Pistoia, Tuscany.

A former architectural student, Bolognini began his film career as an assistant to director Luigi Zampa in Italy, and directors Yves Allegret and Jean Delannoy in France. He began directing his own feature films in the mid 1950s, and had his first international success with Gli innamorati (“Wild Love”).

His other notable films of the 1950s and early 1960s include Giovani mariti (“Young Husbands”), La notte brava, La giornata balorda (“From a Roman Balcony”), and the Marcello Mastroianni-Claudia Cardinale starrer Il bell’Antonio (arguably his masterpiece), all written by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Parting professionally with Pasolini in 1961, Bolognini went on to direct two sensual love stories starring Cardinale, La Viaccia and Senilità, before turning his talents to a series of international anthology films, including Le bambole (The Dolls), I tre volti (“Three Faces of a Woman”), Le fate (“The Queens”) and Le streghe (The Witches).

Returning to features in the late 1960s with Mademoiselle De Maupin, his later works included the accomplished period dramas Metello and Bubu (both featuring Massimo Ranieri), Fatti di gente per bene (La Grande Bourgeoise) starring Giancarlo Giannini, Catherine Deneuve and Fernando Rey, L’eredità Ferramonti (The Inheritance) with Anthony Quinn and Dominique Sanda, and La Dame aux camélias featuring a young Isabelle Huppert.

In his later years, Bolognini continued directing feature films, as well as opera and the television miniseries The Charterhouse of Parma and The Time Of Indifference. His final movie feature was the soft-core erotic drama Husbands and Lovers, released in 1992. In 1994 he directed the show that the top female Greek singer Haris Alexiou appeared in the world famous Odeon of Herodes Atticus. He died in Rome in 2001. —Wikipedia

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