L’amore

Two justly celebrated short features by the great Roberto Rossellini, The Human Voice and The Miracle, both starring Anna Magnani, were combined into this 1948 feature, devoted, according to Rossellini, to earthly love and the beginning of divine love respectively. The first is an innovative adaptation of a one-act play by Jean Cocteau with only one on-screen character, recorded in direct sound; the second is a controversial tale (coscripted by Federico Fellini) about the seduction of a naive shepherdess by a man she believes is Saint Joseph. (JR) Read more

Age Of Consent

The second of Michael Powell’s two films made in Australia, this is a lovely erotic and idyllic comedy about a New York painter (James Mason) who has moved to a remote barrier reef island, which he shares with a drunken eccentric (Neva Carr-Glynn) and her beautiful teenage granddaughter (Helen Mirren), whom he paints and sleeps with. James Mason coproduced; Jack McGowran and Frank Thring costar; Peter Yeldham wrote the script, adapted from a novel by Norman Lindsay (1969). (JR) Read more