#RomaFF13 | The Retrospectives

The 13th Rome Film Fest will devote two retrospectives – curated by Mario Sesti – to two paramount figures of European cinema: Peters Sellers (in collaboration with British Embassy in Rome and British Council) and Maurice Pialat (with Cineteca di Bologna and French Embassy and Institut Français Italia).
PETER SELLERS
In collaboration with British Embassy in Rome and British Council
British artist Peter Sellers, featuring in the official poster of the 2018 Rome Film Festa as his worldwide famous character inspector Clouseau, is beloved for his extraordinary comic talent, the brilliant unpredictability of his performances and his excellent portrayal of dramatic roles. This retrospective is first of all an act of love for an actor/filmmaker whose filmography is more akin to a continent. A land inhabited by characters, fantastic and fantastical locations – small provinces and large metropolises – powerful aristocrats and anonymous office clerks, mad scientists and extras who are more lethal than an earthquake, not to mention bumbling investigators and butlers unwittingly turned into radical chic gurus. Chaplin may have embodied the forgotten man, the have-not cut off from the wealth above, a side product of capitalism, but Sellers left us infinite variations of the modest middle-class citizenry, grappling with life’s enigmas and power’s anarchy and chaos – never failing to get a laugh, with those half-closed eyes, that extravagant smile, and that absurdly optimistic stride of his.
THE FILMS

BEING THERE
by Hal Ashby, United States, 1979, 130’
Cast: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard Dysart, Richard Basehart
STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB
by Stanley Kubrick, United States, United Kingdom, 1964, 95’
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Peter Bull, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn
I’M ALL RIGHT JACK
by John Boulting, United Kingdom, 1959, 105’
Cast: Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers, Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price
LOLITA
by Stanley Kubrick, United Kingdom, 1962, 154’
Cast: James Mason, Sue Lyon, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, Marianne Stone, Diana Decker
TOPAZE
by Peter Sellers, United Kingdom, 1961, 97’
Cast: Peter Sellers, Nadia Gray, Herbert Lom, Leo McKern, Martita Hunt
MURDER BY DEATH
by Robert Moore, UNITED STATES, 1976, 94’
Cast: Alec Guinness, Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, David Niven, Maggie Smith, Elsa Lanchester
THE LADYKILLERS
by Alexander Mackendrick, United Kingdom, 1955, 91’
Cast: Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Danny Green
THE MILLIONAIRESS
by Anthony Asquith, United Kingdom, 1960, 90’
Cast: Sophia Loren, Peter Sellers, Alastair Sim, Vittorio De Sica, Dennis Price
THE MOUSE THAT ROARED
by Jack Arnold, United Kingdom, 1959, 83’
Cast: Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg, William Hartnell, David Kossoff, Leo McKern
THE PARTY
by Blake Edwards, United States, 1968, 99’
Cast: Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Marge Champion, Buddy Lester, Denny Miller, Gavin MacLeod
THE PINK PANTHER
by Blake Edwards, United States, 1963, 113’
Cast: David Niven, Peter Sellers, Claudia Cardinale, Capucine, Robert Wagner, Riccardo Billi
WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT
by Clive Donner, United States, France, 1965, 108’
Cast: Peter O’Toole, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Ursula Andress, Romy Schneider, Paula Prentiss, Capucine
 
MAURICE PIALAT
With Cineteca di Bologna, French Embassy and Institut Français Italia
Maurice Pialat, the French filmmaker, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the Sun of Satan), is an auteur whose cinema deliberately eschews labels, but always deals with themes and feelings charged with exceptional emotional tension.
His films defy all attempts to categorize them. They did so when they were made. They will do so fifty years from now. Pialat’s films are powerful and unique, and their absolute uniqueness lies in their dogged way of ripping film out of real life, using nothing other than the medium itself, to an extent so extreme as to be unheard of. First of all, the editing: the action in Pialat’s films involves no anticipation, preparing of the terrain, or continuity. Every scene disrupts the flow and hurls the viewer into the story mid-stream, with no preliminaries.
Then the shooting: every account of Pialat’s sets reports his obsession with a search for the truth, which makes his films a fanatical application of Rivette’s famous saying that every film is a documentary of its own making. His films are hard on our eyes, hostile, unsparing. In the uneven texture of Pialat’s shots, in the shrill cacophony of his lovers’ fights; in the imminence of death, or daily lives made up of impasses, scorn, submission and bad feeling; in his marvellous, exhausted casts, or his off-centre camera shots – there is a radical conception of cinema that will never be repeated.
THE FILMS
À NOS AMOURS | TO OUR LOVES
by Maurice Pialat, France, 1983, 99’
Cast: Sandrine Bonnaire, Maurice Pialat, Christophe Odent, Dominique Besnehard, Cyril Collard, Jacques Fieschi
L’ENFANCE NUE | NAKED CHILDHOOD
by Maurice Pialat, France, 1968, 83’
Cast: Michel Terrazon, Linda Gutemberg, Raoul Billerey, Pierrette Deplanque, Marie-Louise Thierry, René Thierry
LE GARÇU
by Maurice Pialat, France, 1995, 102’
Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Géraldine Pailhas, Antoine Pialat, Dominique Rocheteau, Fabienne Babe, Elisabeth Depardieu
LA GUEULE OUVERTE | THE MOUTH AGAPE
by Maurice Pialat, France, 1974, 82’
Cast: Nathalie Baye, Hubert Deschamps, Philippe Léotard, Monique Mélinand, Henri Saulquin, Alain Grestau Sceneggiatura
LOULOU
by Maurice Pialat, France, 1980, 110’
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Guy Marchand, Humbert Balsan, Bernard Tronczyk, Christian Boucher
NOUS NE VIEILLIRONS PAS ENSEMBLE | WE WON’T GROW OLD TOGETHER
by Maurice Pialat, France, Italy, 1972, 106’
Cast: Marlène Jobert, Jean Yanne, Christine Fabréga, Patricia Pierangeli, Jacques Galland, Maurice Risch
PASSE TON BAC D’ABORD… | GRADUATE FIRST
by Maurice Pialat, France, Canada, 1979, 86’
Cast: Sabine Haudepin, Philippe Marlaud, Annik Alane, Michel Caron, Christian Bouillette, Jean-François Adam
POLICE
by Maurice Pialat, France, 1985, 113’
Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Sophie Marceau, Richard Anconina, Pascale Rocard, Sandrine Bonnaire, Franck Karoui
SOUS LE SOLEIL DE SATAN | UNDER THE SUN OF SATAN
by Maurice Pialat, France, 1987, 98’
Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Sandrine Bonnaire, Maurice Pialat, Alain Artur, Yann Dedet, Brigitte Legendre
VAN GOGH
by Maurice Pialat, France, 1991, 159’
Cast: Jacques Dutronc, Alexandra London, Bernard Le Coq, Gérard Séty, Corinne Bourdon, Elsa Zylberstein