Original title: La chiave
Year: 1983
Runtime: 116 minutes
Country: Italy
Language: Italian
Subtitles: English (.srt)
Genre: Drama

Director: Tinto Brass

Cast:
Frank Finlay … Nino Rolfe
Stefania Sandrelli … Teresa Rolfe
Franco Branciaroli … Laszlo Apony
Barbara Cupisti … Lisa Rolfe
Maria Grazia Bon … Giulietta
Gino Cavalieri … Don Rusetto
Piero Bortoluzzi … Memo Longobardi
Irma Veithen … L’infirmiere
Milly Corinaldi … Giustina
Giovanni Michelagnoli … Dr. Fano

Plot/Synopsis:

A husband and wife lock their diaries in a drawer and also know that they read each other’s entries, a device which takes them from one sexual encounter to another.

English actor, Frank Finley plays Nino Rolfe, a middle-aged art expert whose enthusiasm for his marriage, and especially his sex life, is waning. Celebrating their 10th anniversary, the couple have lost their passion, but the sparks begin to fly when Nino discovers that his much younger wife, Therese (Stefania Sandrelli?Stealing Beauty) is attracted to their daughter’s fiance, Laszlo, played by Brass staple, Franco Branciaroli. Finding his jealousy arousing, Nino sets out to encourage his wife’s infidelity. After writing a journal entry criticizing their lackluster sex life, he makes sure the key will be found by his spouse. While uncertain she has read the entries, he also borrows Laszlo’s state-of-the-art camera to take erotic photos of his wife, after drugging her. In an act of faux discretion, he asks Laszlo to develop the pictures, enticing the young man with his wife’s images. When Therese finds out about Laszlo seeing the photos, it ignites both their desires, and she embarks on a torrid love affair, all the while describing her encounters in the diary her husband is now secretly reading. Nino’s ploy appears to be paying off with his wife’s new found enthusiasm for sexual adventure, but her appetite will have dire consequences.

Voluptuous Stefania Sandrelli commands the screen with her daunting womanhood, but Franco Branciaroli is much less effective as her suitor. Finlay carries his starring role well, having no problem portraying a kinky, aging lecher. The period setting and Ennio Morricone’s upbeat score keep the mood light and playful. Filled with nudity and sexuality, and breaking taboos left and right, Brass challenges his audience, not only by involving a mother with her daughter’s future husband, but also with the elder male relentlessly taking advantage of his wife while she is either drugged or asleep. As such, while his sense for eroticism is carried off well, many of the plot points may not be acceptable to many audiences. The story has its comedic merits, enforced by fast motion sequences or slapstick trappings, and the adaptation attempts to draw parallels between the burgeoning fascist movement and the couple’s none too discreet fetishes and infidelities. As with most of Brass’ work, the cinematography and style is carried out with artistic flair; however his obsession with the female posterior is readily evident.

Torrent Download
The Key 1983
Uploaded by: samoh4855

Aka : Le amiche
Year : 1955
Runtime : 1 hour, 39m
Country : Italy
Language : Italian
Subtitles : English (srt)
Genre : Drama

Director : Michelangelo Antonioni

Cast :
Eleonora Rossi Drago: Clelia
Gabriele Ferzetti: Lorenzo
Franco Fabrizi: Cesare Pedoni, the architect
Valentina Cortese: Nene
Yvonne Furneaux: Momina De Stefani
Madeleine Fischer: Rosetta Savoni

Synopsis :
Roman couturier Clelia leaves the big city to work at a boutique in Turin. She moves into a hotel and makes several new friends, but is soon drawn into their extremely unpleasant lives. Clelia enters a doomed relationship with a poor architect’s assistant, sees her new best friend Rosetta commit suicide after being jilted by her married lover, and is eventually fired from her new job when her hysteria over Rosetta’s death interferes with her work. Clelia finally goes back to Rome, and viewers will not blame her a bit. Le Amiche, based on a 1949 article published in La Bella Estate ("Tre Donne Sole" by Cesare Pavese), is perhaps Michelangelo Antonioni’s first great film. Juggling 10 characters with great aplomb, Antonioni and co-screenwriters Suso Cecchi D’Amico and Alba De Cespedes have created a rich, interlocking narrative which manages to rise above mere melodrama through careful attention to the ebb and flow of interpersonal relationships and a keen sense of balance.
~ Robert Firsching, AMG

Torrent Download
The Girlfriends (1955)

Uploaded By : dstead

Aka : La notte
Year : 1961
Runtime : 1 hour, 57m
Country : Italy
Language : Italian
Subtitles : English (srt)
Genre : Drama

Director : Michelangelo Antonioni

Cast :
Marcello Mastroianni: Giovanni Pontano
Jeanne Moreau: Lidia
Monica Vitti: Valentina Gherardini
Bernhard Wicki: Tommaso Garani
Rosy Mazzacurati: Rosy
Maria Pia Luzi: Patient
Guido A. Marsan: Fanti

Synopsis :
One of the masterworks of 1960s cinema, La notte [The Night] marked yet another development in the continuous stylistic evolution of its director, Michelangelo Antonioni — even as it solidified his reputation as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. La notte is Antonioni’s “Twilight of the Gods”, but composed in cinematic terms. Examined from a crane-shot, it’s a sprawling study of Italy’s upper middle-class; seen in close-up, it’s an x-ray of modern man’s psychic desolation. Two of the giants of film-acting come together as a married couple living in crisis: Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau. He is a renowned author and “public intellectual”; she is “the wife”. Over the course of one day and the night into which it inevitably bleeds, the pair will come to re-examine their emotional bonds, and grapple with the question of whether love and communication are even possible in a world built out of profligate idylls and sexual hysteria.

Photographed in rapturous black-and-white by the great Gianni di Venanzo, La notte presents the beauty of seduction, then asks: “When did this occur — this seduction of Beauty?” The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Michelangelo Antonioni’s haunted odyssey in a new digital restoration, uncut for the first time ever on home video. (Masters of Cinema)

Torrent Download
The Night (1961)

Uploaded By : dstead