Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus
when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s?
Do you still have the tapes?
Is there a TIME LIFE logo at the end?
If so, please write to me. Thank you!

Click here to learn the story.

THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASS

Dropout

(1970)

Lee, you wrote to me to tell me your experiences on the crew of Dropout, but Yahoo deleted all our email correspondence as well as my web site and so I no longer have your quotes or your contact info!!!! If you see this, please write back to me. Thank you so much!!!!! And anyone else who may have copied or printed out or saved my site, please write to me right away. Many, many thanks!!!!! (This is what little I remember from Lee’s message. She was an assistant costumist for two weeks. She recalled that Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave had had a spat and as soon as any take finished, they would quickly walk away from each other. Frank Windsor wore elevator shoes. As he explained to Vanessa, “I don’t do this because you’re so tall; I do it because I’m so bloody short!”)

If you know the whereabouts of any prints of this film, in any format, in any condition, in any language, please write to me immediately. Many thanks!



AN IDEA
Can we round up some money to license the rights to this movie, transfer it to video, and finally get it released? I just saw a horrible and censored copy of the Italian dub, with so many video problems that much of the image was meaningless. Nonetheless, I saw enough to recognize that this is truly a jewel of a movie. I had seen so many stills and read so many plot summaries, but none of that prepared me at all for the experience of actually seeing the movie, which was a 100-minute-long series of the most unexpected surprises. I figure that if about a hundred of us can each pitch in about 250€ we can get this thing properly released. Will we make any money? Would we even earn our investment back? Of course not! Don’t even go there. We’ll do this only because this movie means 250€ to us. I’m not joking. I’m really serious about this. If the prospect interests you, please write to me. Many thanks!!!



Forthcoming book that includes the story of the making of Dropout.



According to the interview that Tinto Brass gave to Mario Gagliardotto (Obiettivo Brass), the banning of L’urlo aroused considerable curiosity, and so Jane Fonda and some others asked if they could get a private screening. Brass obliged, and the Italian-language film, without subtitles, shown to a mostly non-Italian-speaking audience, elicited awe and laughter. Among those in the audience were Vanessa Redgrave and her then-boyfriend Franco Nero, who, when the lights went up, approached Brass and asked if he could write a script for them. This is what he concocted, in collaboration with Franco Longo and Roberto Lerici. Carlo Ponti agreed to produce, but soon backed out. Why? Simon Matthews, a walking encyclopedia of 1960’s/1970’s British pop culture, surmises that Ponti may have originally supported the project since it would have been a good follow-up to his Zabriskie Point, but that when Zabriskie Point gave disappointing returns, he changed his mind, unwilling to throw good money after bad. Brass, not one to be defeated by the mere withdrawal of financing, said to Redgrave and Nero, “Let’s do it anyway!” The three of them pooled what little money they could scrape together, presold distribution rights (to Oreste Coltellacci’s company, Colt, as well as to Felice Colaiacomo and Franco Poccioni’s Medusa and Goffredo Lombardo’s Titanus), and with the resulting funds they made this 16mm extravaganza in England, and partly in English, for $100,000.

Vanessa Redgrave, of course, is upper-class glamorous, and generally gets cast to play upper-class glamorous people in upper-class glamorous settings. Not in this movie. This movie is about the dregs, and Vanessa got down and dirty. Hooray. I suppose she felt some relief at doing something different for a change.

At long last, thanks to the Herculean efforts of Alexander Tuschinski who restored/reconstructed some films shown at the HRIFF retrospective in Los Ángeles, I was finally able to see Dropout all the way through, in the Italian dub, with English subtitles. The screener was derived from the only available copy, which was taken from a poorly made, blurry, murky 16mm print that had been battered almost to death through the years. Had there been access to the original camera neg and the original master tracks it would have looked dazzling. Unfortunately such sources are still locked away. It was nonetheless a little gem of a movie. Some people in the audience loved it and found it captivating. Other people in the audience (my friends!) loathed it and found it agonizing. There was no half-way-in-between opinion, and there were walk-outs. I was surprised that nobody laughed at the song called “The Sun Is Shining,” which I had thought was hilarious. Unlike any previous Tinto movie, there was no fast or challenging editing. The content determined the style, and the style consisted mostly of long takes. Very long takes. And that made the movie strikingly theatrical rather than cinematic. Visually it was done in a naturalistic, documentary form, but the story was frequently absurdist. I think my favorite sequence, which got no laughs, was when Gigi the Pimp led his wordless bodyguard, Mary, and Bruno over to see the “Prime Minister.” They walk into a decrepit concrete tunnel underneath a bridge, and then, breaking any illusion of reality, instantly dash, one by one, behind a pillar. They leap out dancing in time to the overture to Bizet’s Carmen. Two older gentleman, who I assume just happened to be walking by during the filming, join in the merriment. Gigi the Pimp’s limp magically disappears (“The Miracle of San Gennaro!”) as they all dance vigorously. Then after a few minutes Gigi the Pimp suddenly shouts out, “Have we all gone mad?” The music stops. The dancing ceases. Gigi resumes his limp.

Another lovely bit was when a meths drinker by a campfire at a decrepit disused train station in London spontaneously begins singing “Avanti o popolo, Bandiera Rossa,” as, of course, meths drinkers do, complete with British mispronunciation. You’ve all noticed this, I’m sure.



Dropout was filmed partly in English and partly in Italian, and it was filmed in direct sound. There was apparently an English-language release presumably with most of the Italian sequences dubbed into English, and, of course, there’s the Italian release with the English sequences dubbed into Italian. In the Italian dub we can frequently hear the original direct track, but just as an English speaker is about to be dubbed we can hear the soundtrack cross-fade to the Italian post-sync track. I presume the reverse held true for the English version. Dropout was shown here and there and screened at least once (in January 1975) in the US, though where in the US heaven only knows. Titanus, the international rights holder, had a contract with 20th Century-Fox, which had right of first refusal to distribute Dropout in its territories. It exercised its right of refusal, and so the US distributor was an obscure and short-lived outfit called Scotia American, about which I know little. (Peter Kares was president, and Sidney Ginsberg was executive vice president. According to Addison Verrill, “Gene Picker, Scotia Exex Partners in Launching Sub-Distribbery,” Daily Variety vol. 164 no. 29, Wednesday, 17 July 1974, p. 1: “Scotia is a production-distribution operation in the U.K. and Germany dealing primarily with exploitation product.” Exploitation? Dropout hardly qualifies as exploitation. No wonder Scotia never released it. Did Scotia license it in error?) The screening was probably just a one-day or one-week market test in a try-out town, and I have never been able to locate it. A Brazilian version was known as Os Desajustados do Amor, and a Spanish version was known as Al margen de la sociedad in Spain and as Tu, antes que nadie in México. There is also a highly doubtful rumor of a print retitled John and Mary.




The delightful Scottish pop group, Middle of the Road, composed two songs for this movie, within just two months of its formation, and these are probably the first songs the band ever recorded. The band had previously settled in Latin America and performed under the name Los Caracas. By April 1970 the band had moved to Italy where producer Giacomo Tosti took over. I suppose that it was in Italy that Tinto first met Middle of the Road, but I don’t know. The first of the band’s songs in Dropout, “The Sun Is Shining,” is a hoot, but you’d never recognize it as the Middle of the Road. Sally Carr’s ethereal voice is relegated to the distant background, lost amidst the chorus, and the song is reggae, entirely unlike the sound one would expect from this group. Oh, what the heck. Here it is. If any copyright holders object, just write to me and we’ll work something out.



“The Sun Is Shining” by Middle of the Road, from Dropout.
(Something is spliced out part-way through.)
If the video doesn’t display, download it.


The second song was “Do Not Cry,” but you’ll listen in vain for that one. You’ve probably never heard “Do Not Cry,” since nobody outside of Portugal ever heard it (it was released there in 1972), so here it is:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT_GcEk84Q4
Sally Carr, again, is heard only in the distance, at the end, among other voices. Drat!

Except for the final few repeating lines, I think I transcribed this song mostly correctly.
Tonight the final hour will come
by the time of my execution.
My love is with you and your mother.
Stop her crying; tears are no solution.

So, son, you must be brave and strong,
for now it’s time to comfort your mother.
Very soon now I will be gone.
Stay with her; she will have no other.

Do not cry, for many tears have been wasted.
Do not weep, for they are bitter, I have tasted.

And when she’s overcome with grief and sorrow,
walk, son, with her into the quiet countryside.
Gather up some gently moving flowers,
the singing waters rest beside.

The shade of trees will give her comfort.
She will enjoy the peacefulness of nature.
Listen to the birds, they sing in memory.
I will be there, as free as them, with human power.		 Do not cry, for many tears have been wasted.
Do not weep, for they are bitter, I have tasted.

But, son, you must remember,
help the weak ones at your side,
the weak that cry for help from persecution.
In the struggle many of them have died.
They are the comrades that fight and fall,
as your father fell yesterday,
for the conquest of freedom for all,
for the conquest of joy for all.

In the struggle of life you’ll find more love,
in the struggle you will be loved on so.
In the struggle of life you’ll find more love,
in the struggle you will be loved on so.
In the struggle of life you’ll find more love,
in the struggle you will be loved on so.
In the struggle of life you’ll find more love,
in the struggle you will be loved on so.
In the struggle of life you’ll find more love,
in the struggle you will....

Since Italians know more about American history than Americans do, of course it was a friend from Trieste who pointed out that this ballad was an ode to Sacco and Vanzetti. The lyrics are adapted from a letter, written on 18 August 1927, from Ferdinando Nicola Sacco, then awaiting execution at the Charlestown State Prison, to his 14-year-old son Dante:

My Dear Son and Companion,
...Well, my dear boy, after your mother had talked to me so much and I had dreamed of you day and night, how joyful it was to see you at last. To have talked with you like we used to in the days — in those days. Much I told you on that visit and more I wanted to say, but I saw that you will remain the same affectionate boy, faithful to your mother who loves you so much, and I did not want to hurt your sensibilities any longer, because I am sure that you will continue to be the same boy and remember what I have told you. I knew that and what here I am going to tell you will touch your sensibilities, but don’t cry Dante, because many tears have been wasted, as your mother’s have been wasted for seven years, and never did any good. So, Son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother, and when you want to distract your mother from the discouraging soulness, I will tell you what I used to do. To take her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there, resting under the shade of trees, between the harmony of the vivid stream and the gentle tranquility of the mothernature, and I am sure that she will enjoy this very much, as you surely would be happy for it. But remember always, Dante, in the play of happiness, don’t you use all for yourself only, but down yourself just one step, at your side and help the weak ones that cry for help, help the prosecuted and the victim, because that are your better friends; they are the comrades that fight and fall as your father and Bartolo fought and fell yesterday for the conquest of the joy of freedom for all and the poor workers. In this struggle of life you will find more love and you will be loved....


The Middle of the Road soon restructured. Sally Carr became the principal vocalist, as well she should have, heavens be praised, and the songs became cheerful and upbeat. Amazing. Best voice I’ve ever heard.

What made it into the movie was an Italian adaptation, “Non piangere,” sung by Luigi Proietti. The Italian rendering was rewritten to become an ode to Giuseppe Pinelli, falsely arrested and tossed out of the window to his death by a police interrogator. I would never have recognized that, had not a Sicilian friend explained the reference. That is when I suddenly remembered hearing about this incident way back when. Of course, I had never had the details and I completely forgot about it afterwards.

The movie cuts the song into three pieces. For YouTube, someone, somewhere put the pieces back together, and by doing so helped us discover that pretty much the entire song is there. That video was taken down, and so I reconstructed it. An Italian colleague warned me about translating the subtitles literally. Some phrases that sound perfectly straightforward to an American’s ears have entirely different implications for an Italian. He told me how to reflect the intention rather than the words. Take a look, and take a listen:



“Non piangere” in three clips from Dropout.
If the video doesn’t display, download it.


Now that we’re on the topic of music, something has been bugging me. Vanessa Redgrave’s character is here named Mary Hopkins. Why? Why did that name sound vaguely familiar? Probably because there was at that time a British pop singer named Mary Hopkin. Remember her? Have you ever heard a 1925 Russian song named “Дорогой длинною”? Probably not, right? Yet you have heard something remarkably similar, namely the British adaptation, “Those Were the Days.” Oh yes. Back circa 1968 that was all over the dial, and I found it quite attractive, beautifully wistful. I remember that on The Jackie Gleason Show in 1968 or maybe 1969 Gleason and Milton Berle performed their own version, reminiscing about vaudeville and early radio. I’d sure love to see that again.

I’m also curious about Tinto’s choice of the name Bruno Caruso for Franco Nero’s character. Why? Because Luc Merenda’s character in Tinto’s 1979 movie Action had the same first name: Bruno Martel. Is this a reference to a real-life Bruno? Maybe Bruno Barcarol? Maybe Bruno Nicolai? Why Caruso? Franco Nero began his career as a singer of American pop tunes, though he just mumbled meaningless English-sounding syllables, since he couldn’t speak the language at the time. Yet I can’t imagine him holding a tune. So maybe the name was a joke? Maybe it tied in with the opera pieces excerpted in the movie?

ROBERTO LERICI, the noted playwright, lent his hand to the script. He and Brass would continue to collaborate on five more films, and Brass also thrice directed one of Lerici’s stage plays. Sadly, he died in 1992, in his early sixties.

Now it is time to refresh our memories about another movie. I assume that if you’re reading through this site, you’ve probably seen the movie version of A Clockwork Orange. Several images from that movie leave a lasting impression, including three pieces of art, which it turns out were not created for the production at all. They were pre-existing, and the movie company rented them for use on set. Here are the three pieces I refer to:


“Christ Unlimited” by Cornelis’s brother Herman Makkink.

“The Rocking Machine” by Herman Makkink. (The two paintings are by Cornelis, by the way.)

Remember those? Thanks to my friend Marco Fornier, I learned who did the sculptures: Herman Makkink. It took me forever to figure out who did the painting, but a query from a reader compelled me to check for the umpteenth time on Google, and there was the answer — on the same web site no less: Herman’s brother Cornelis Makkink, who had a total of nine of his paintings in the movie. In case you don’t know, A Clockwork Orange was filmed in 1971, a year or so after Dropout, and opened during the Christmas season, December 1971. According to the IMDb, Kubrick and his wife visited the Makkink studios at SPACE in 1969, and thus their discovery of this artwork perhaps preceded Tinto’s discovery. I had previously wondered if Kubrick, who served as his own projectionist in the screening room built into his house so that he could check out what every other filmmaker was doing, may have borrowed the idea to use these artworks for A Clockwork Orange only after having seen Dropout. Alas, the best explanation is probably that Stanley and Tinto separately discovered the Makkinks’ work at about the same time, and each licensed the rights to use the same pieces. Life is nothing but coincidences. Remember also that back in 1968, Paramount Pictures, which then held the film-rights option on Burgess’s novel, had hired Tinto to direct the picture, which was to have starred Mick Jagger as Alex and the Rolling Stones as the Droogs. Tinto totally bungled that opportunity and he was fired as soon as he was hired. Life is nothing but coincidences.

And below, look carefully, not only at the sculpture on the right, but at the painting on the wall behind it

The painting on the left is “Odalisque as Big as a Truck” (1970) by Cornelis Makkink. The smaller painting, on the right, is our old friend from A Clockwork Orange, as is the sculpture in front of it. I assume that the images of hearts and cards are also the works of Cornelis, especially since you can see the letters “CORNELIS M” at the top. Hmmmmmmm.... Might this have been shot right inside the SPACE studios that Cornelis and Herman were renting in London at the time?

Dropout is one of the rarest and hardest-to-find movies on the planet, yet, just by examining these stills, we can gain a sense of things. It’s interesting to study the compositions and framings, and this helps us understand why Stanley Kubrick is so widely regarded as a genius while Tinto Brass is widely regarded as a hack. My own assessments are not so extreme, but they certainly reverse the order. Kubrick, in collaboration with his cinematographer John Alcott, was after iconic visuals, and achieved those iconic visuals by licensing or commissioning other people’s works of art, filling the screen with them, and holding on them for lengthy amounts of time. He also had a photographer’s eye (as he should have, since he had begun his first photo business when he was still a school child), and shot moving images as though they were still photographs, perfectly lit, perfectly composed, perfectly framed. All else, including narrative, was secondary to the photographic perfection. Tinto, on the other hand, is an impressionist/expressionist who’s more concerned with emotions, confusion, disorientation, ambiguity, and a desire to inspire among his audiences empathy with his characters. A study of his earlier films, 1963 through 1979, reveals a fascination with messes, untidyness, lower-class squalor, dilapidated edifices, bleak landscapes, and the hopeless desperation to escape from all the madness. Yet his freest characters — Bonifacio and Kim in In capo al mondo, Vittoria in Il disco volante, the Yankee in Yankee, Bernard in Heart in His Mouth, Barbara and the American in Nerosubianco, Coso in L’urlo, Immacolata in La vacanza, Hans Reiter in Salon Kitty, Drusilla in Caligula, Ophelia in Action — will never escape. They are trapped. But it is only in being trapped that they can gain any sort of sane perspective on the society around them — or, if not a sane perspective, at least a poetic sensibility. Such content forbids iconic images, and you can search Tinto’s entire canon in vain for the one singular image that sums up his body of work. You will find unforgettable characters, unforgettable situations, unforgettable gags, unforgettable insights, but no unforgettable images that could become popular poster items. Tinto litters his set with unusual objets d’art and objets trouvés to create a general sense of disorder. Stanley Kubrick, on the other hand, lights them brightly and displays them as though he were shooting a documentary on the artists. Critics and intellectuals (I am neither, I hope) tend to prefer order, or the appearance thereof, over randomness, and that’s why slick images trump any other quality in a movie, as far as many people are concerned. We should also remember that Tinto’s mentor was Roberto Rossellini, who in his own movies despised anything that looked well-made. He wanted his stories to be well-staged, but he never wanted them to look like professional studio products, and sometimes he went out of his way to make them look cheap and inept. That, surely, is why his movies were so hard to find, until just the past four or five years when he was finally rediscovered by a small coterie of admirers and his movies started being released on DVD. It is impossible — absolutely impossible — to have a good understanding of Tinto’s movies until you’ve delved into the baffling, vague, occasionally painfully bad, occasionally debilitatingly boring, but ultimately brilliant works of Roberto Rossellini.


Mary meets Bruno, and thus begins a deep friendship.
Mary and Bruno visit Niagara Falls.

They also visit Buffalo.
The police offer some help.
Listening to Gigi the Pimp’s monologue underneath the train tracks. (In the final film, we see only Bruno’s face, not Mary’s. Why? Because in this still, Mary’s face is pasted in. She was not in the original shot.)

A gourmet meal.

Gigi Proietti and his cane.

Gigi Proietti as the City Slicker, who marries farm girl Tillie for her inheritance which he plans to steal for his true love, Mabel Normand, in this recently restored 1914 six-reel comedy from Mack Sennett’s Keystone studio, with undetermined scenes directed by an uncredited Roscoe Arbuckle.

I keep seeing this still credited to Dropout, but I think it’s just a snapshot taken during a visit with Stephen Frears, the guy sitting with Vanessa on the couch. This has nothing to do with the movie as far as I can tell.

Io sono Jennifer Johnson.
The only proper stage for Bizet’s Carmen.
The three co-producers




Wednesday, 13 May 1970



Variety, Wednesday, 23 September 1970, p. 31:

TINTO BRASS — Withdrew his last film “The Shriek” at Cannes and entered it at the Berlin Film Festival instead. While Berlin reached its chaotic finale, Brass was in England filming “Dropout,” the story of an Italian immigrant in London who escapes from a lunatic asylum and runs off with a married woman.

Variety, vol. 261, no. 9, Wednesday, 13 January 1971:



from: Chris Davies
date: Wed, May 21, 2008 at 4:16 AM

Did you find a copy of Dropout? I believe I’m in it if they kept the scenes in the old warehouse with the hippies & skinheads.

Thanks,

Chris Davies

to: Chris Davies
date: Wed, May 21, 2008 at 7:03 AM

Hi Chris,

Great to hear from you! No, Dropout is one of the few Tinto movies I have never been able to see. Franco Nero misplaced his copy. Vanessa Redgrave is impossible to contact. I imagine, though, that if I can get to Rome again, I could convince Tinto to run it for me.

What was your rôle precisely? Tell me everything you can remember! By any chance might you remember a part-time costumer by the name of Lee?

Please keep in touch.

Ciao!

from: Chris Davies
date: Wed, May 21, 2008 at 9:36 PM

Hi RJ,

I was only a 5-pound-(10-dollar)-a-day extra but I should be visible. I was a hippy playing the guitar and then I was arrested by the police. Lee rings a bell but it’s going back a loooong time. Both Franco and Vanessa were in the scene. We were sitting around playing guitars and pretending to be stoned. Some were of course and one guy, an American who called himself Martin R. Gas, was really whacked. When the skinheads ran in and pretended to beat us up and Vanessa or Franco got hit with a fake bottle, Martin went nuts and ran around the warehouse screaming, “Peace! Love!” and waving his arms (as you would) and we all thought “What the f**k?” and didn’t know whether to laugh or whether we were really being attacked! Then the Italian crew ran in dressed as English cops and started arresting everyone and chaos reigned supreme. The whole scene could have been great or a complete dud because it could have looked very real or really hammy. If they kept it in, I think I’d have been in it because the cameraman gave me a thumbs up for my tussle with the cop. Who knows? Maybe he was just being nice. Anyway, it was a fun couple of days,

PS : I do know that a print was doing the rounds of the English Universities in the late seventies.

Chris

to: Chris Davies
date: Thu, May 22, 2008 at 12:05 AM

Hi Chris,

My this is exciting! Five pounds a day? That was a third of the budget of the entire movie! This all sounds fascinating. There was a print floating around in the late 1970s? Oh how I wish I could have seen that. Alas....

Would you mind if I include the bulk of our exchange on my web site?

Let’s see: Oscar Cosulich, who knows Tinto and is a fan of his movies, was stunned when I told him that I had never seen Dropout. “But you must!” he exclaimed. “It’s the BEST!” Franco Nero called Tinto a genius and told me that Dropout was better than La vacanza — and I think La vacanza is one of the five or ten greatest movies I’ve ever seen. Radley Metzger saw Dropout probably about the time it was released in Europe, I guess, and he found it fascinating, but he told me that it was “very much of its time,” so psychedelic that “I don’t think it could play today.”... For 29 years now, I’ve been searching for this movie. It’s one of those rare elusive treasures that eludes my grasp every time. It’s nearly as frustrating to me as the alternative versions of the Marx Brothers’ Paramount films, which I saw decades ago, and which were noticeably different from anything available now; and it’s nearly as frustrating to me as Harry Langdon’s Heart Trouble, which seems to have vanished, and which I would give my right arm to see.

Ciao!

from: Chris Davies
date: Fri, May 23, 2008 at 8:41 PM

Hi RJ,

Feel fee to use the conversation. I find it frustrating too since it might be my 5 minutes of fame, ha ha.... Nice to talk to you,

PS: I reckon there were about 30 extras and we were all “real” hippies and skinheads. Also if you see it, watch out for a blonde whose clothes suddenly change. We were there 2 days and she forgot to wear the same clothes on the second day!

Nota bene: The scene Chris described was deleted from the film.


CAREFUL!!!!! Don’t get confused!!!!! In 1969 there was a Dutch movie called Drop Out that was once available on VHS. Then there was a Gary Graver drugsploitation movie from 1970 called The Hard Road (available for download), which was reissued as Drop-out. In 1971 or 1972 or 1973, there was a porno movie called Drop Out, which seems never to have been issued on video. Tinto, on the other hand, rendered the title as a single word, Dropout.








ANICA — Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Multimediali

Dropout

Distributed by Medusa (Italy), Titanus International (International),
and Scotia American (USA)
Released in France on 18 December 1970
Released in Italy on 22 February 1971 (censor visa 57592 granted on 30 January 1971)
Screened in the USA in January 1975
Running time: 1:52 (at 24fps)

Looks to me like it was 16mm, but Franco Nero remembered that it was Super 16.
Blown up to 35mm.
Allociné previously indicated that the 35mm prints were 1:1.33,
but more recently that was revised to 1:1.66.
Without access to the masters and the prints, I have no way to know for certain.

Regia (direction) Tinto Brass
Sceneggiatura (screenplay) Tinto Brass and Franco Longo
Dialoghi (dialogue) Roberto Lerici
Prodotto da (produced by) Tinto Brass for Colt Produzioni Cinematografica, Lion International Film, and Medusa Produzione
Direttore della fotografia
(director of photography)		 Silvano Ippoliti
Musica (music) Don Fraser
Canzoni (songs) NON PIANGERE
sung by Luigi Proietti
THE SUN IS SHINING
sung by Middle of the Road
Musica di repertorio (music excerpts) Il barbiere de Siviglia,
Il trovatore,
Rigoletto,
La traviata,
Carmen
Aiuto registi (assistant directors) Franco Conge, Giorgio Patrono, Peter Elford
Aiuti montatrice (assistant editors) Elsa Armanni, Fulvia Armanni (miscredited as Fulvio)
Costumi (costumes) Maricia D’Alfonso
PERSONAGGI E INTERPRETI
Bruno Caruso Franco Nero
Mary Hopkins Vanessa Redgrave
Gigi the Pimp Luigi Proietti
Robert Hopkins Frank Windsor
??? Carlo Quartucci
??? Gabriella Ceramelli
Jennifer Johnson’s landlady Patsy Smart Darcus
??? Giuseppe Scavuzzo
??? Mariella Zanetti
??? Zoe Incrocci
??? Sam Dorras
??? Libba
Movie Crew Tinta Brass (Carla Cipriani)
Movie Actor / The “Prime Minister” Tinto Brass

Original research and commentary copyright © 2009, 2017, 2022 by Ranjit Sandhu. All rights reserved.

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This was shown at the New Beverly
in Los Ángeles, California, in December 2012:



To set the record straight, once and for all: This “retrospective” was only two shorts and three features. It was presented by Todd Leibensperger of HRIFF, courtesy of Alex Tuschinski. Yes, Todd and HRIFF rented the New Beverly cinema for these showings, and, yes, the New Beverly is owned by Quentin Tarantino — but Quentin had NOTHING to do with these screenings. Quentin probably didn’t even know what movies the HRIFF had scheduled, and he was certainly not there. Please. Stop the rumors already.