A Place for Lovers
A Place for Lovers | |
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Directed by | Vittorio De Sica |
Written by |
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Produced by | |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Pasqualino De Santis |
Edited by | Adriana Novelli |
Music by | |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release dates |
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Running time | 88 minutes[1] |
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Languages |
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A Place for Lovers (Italian: Amanti, French: Le Temps des amants) is a 1968 French-Italian romantic drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica, written by Brunello Rondi, Julian Zimet, Peter Baldwin, Ennio De Concini, Tonino Guerra, and Cesare Zavattini. The film is based on the play Gli Amanti by Brunello Rondi and Renaldo Cabieri and it was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The film stars Faye Dunaway as a terminally ill American fashion designer in Venice, Italy, who has a whirlwind affair with a race car driver (played by Marcello Mastroianni).[2]
Plot[]
Fashion designer Julia is tired of living because she knows she is suffering from a malignant cancer. When she leaves for her last holiday in Cortina d'Ampezzo, she meets the vital Valerio. The two fall in love instantly, but Julia does not reveal her secret to Valerio. When Valerio finds out that she is sick and dying, he decides to pretend to know nothing, continuing his love affair with Julia to the end.
Cast[]
- Faye Dunaway as Julia
- Marcello Mastroianni as Valerio
- Caroline Mortimer as Maggie
- Enrico Simonetti as party host
- Karin Eugh as Griselda
- Esmeralda Ruspoli as attorney's wife
- Yvonne Gilbert as Marie
- Mirella Pamphili as party guest
- David Archell
- Martha Buckman
Soundtrack[]
Ella Fitzgerald provides two songs, the title song and "Lonely Is" ("What lonely is, is me!"). Both songs can be heard on the Verve release Jukebox Ella: The Complete Verve Singles, Vol. 1.[3]
Reception[]
The film opened to generally negative reviews. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said it was the "most godawful piece of pseudo-romantic slop I've ever seen!",[4] and Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times referred to it as "the worst movie I have seen all year and possibly since 1926."[5] Rex Reed wrote the film "Looks not so much directed as whittled to death." Time magazine called the film "Woefully inept ... Marcello Mastroianni displays all the zest of a man summoned up for tax evasion. The five scriptwriters who supposedly worked on the film must have spent enough time at the water-cooler to flood a camel." Katherine Caroll's review in the New York Daily News called the film "about as exciting to watch as a game of tiddly-winks."[6]
Manny Farber stated that "one of the best laughs is watching Dunaway working on the subject of despair".[7]
A Place for Lovers is widely considered to be one of the worst films of all time and was listed in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, which called the film "a putrid tearjerker." The Italian edition of Vanity Fair also included it on its list of the 20 worst movies ever.[8]
Home media[]
It is available via streaming on Amazon Prime by Warner Bros.[9]
See also[]
- Cleo from 5 to 7-Agnes Varda's 1962 film similar in content
- Italian neorealism
- 8 1/2-Federico Fellini's 1963 film featuring Mastroianni
References[]
- ^ "A Place for Lovers". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
- ^ "A Place for Lovers". Variety. (31 December 1968).
- ^ Jukebox Ella: The Complete Verve Singles, Vol.1 - Ella Fitzgerald. AllMusic.
- ^ "A Place for Lovers Movie Review (1969) | Roger Ebert".
- ^ Medved, Harry (1978). The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Fawcett Columbine.
- ^ Chris Tookey. "Place for Lovers". Movie-Film-Review.
- ^ Manny Farber (October 1969). "The Wild Bunch, Easy Rider, More, the Gypsy Moths, the Rain People, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice". Artforum.
- ^ Pellegrini, Francesca (25 February 2018). "I 20 film più brutti di sempre". Vanity Fair (in Italian). Retrieved 29 January 2019.
- ^ Prime Video at Amazon.com
External links[]
- 1968 films
- 1960s romantic drama films
- Italian films
- Italian romantic drama films
- French films
- French romantic drama films
- 1960s English-language films
- English-language French films
- English-language Italian films
- Italian-language films
- Films directed by Vittorio De Sica
- Films about cancer
- French films based on plays
- Films set in Venice
- Films shot in Italy
- Films shot in Rome
- Melodramas
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
- Films with screenplays by Cesare Zavattini
- 1968 drama films