Alberto Lattuada Films | Alberto Lattuada Filmography | Alberto Lattuada Biography | Alberto Lattuada Career | Alberto Lattuada Awards

One of the most consistently commercially successful directors in Italy, Lattuada has continued to enjoy a freedom of subject matter and style despite ideological shifts and methodological changes. His main films during the neorealist period, which he claims never to have taken part in, succeeded in further establishing the Italian cinema in the international market and, unlike many of his colleagues' works, also proved popular in the domestic market. Il bandito and Il mulino del Po, for example, combined progressive ideology, realistic detail (due to location shooting and attention to quotidian activities), and tight narrative structure through careful attention to editing. In fact, Lattuada's entire career has demonstrated an on-going interest in editing, which he considers more fundamental than the script and which gives his films a strictly controlled rhythm with no wasted footage. He shoots brief scenes that, he claims, are more attractive to an audience and that can be easily manipulated at the editing stage.

Lattuada's background stressed the arts, and his films display a sophisticated cultural appreciation. As a boy, he took an active interest in his father's musicianship in the orchestra of La Scala in Milan. As a young man, Lattuada worked as a film critic, wrote essays on contemporary painters, co-founded cultural magazines, and worked as an assistant director and scriptwriter. Lattuada co-scripts most of his films and occasionally produces them. He also co-founded what became the Milan film archive, the Cineteca Italiana.

As a director, Lattuada is often called eclectic because of his openness to projects and his ability to handle a wide variety of subject matter. His major commercial successes have been Bianco, rosso e..., which he wrote especially for Sophia Loren; Matchless, a parody of the spy genre; Anna, the first Italian film to gross over one billion lire in its national distribution; La spiaggia, a bitter satire of bourgeois realism; and Mafioso, starring Alberto Sordi and filmed in New York, Sicily, and Milan.

Lattuada has also filmed many adaptations of literary works that remain faithful to the original but are never simply static reenactments. These range from the comically grotesque Venga a prendere...; a version of Brancati's satirical Don Giovanni in Sicilia-, the horror film Cuore di cane, taken from a Bulgakov novel; the spectacular big-budget La tempesta, from two Pushkin stories; and Chekhov's metaphorical journey in La steppa. His 1952 version of The Overcoat is considered his masterpiece for its portrayal of psychological states and the excellence of Renato Rascel's performance. Lattuada is famous for his handling of actors, and has launched the career of many an actress, including Catherine Spaak, Giulietta Masina and Nastassia Kinski.

Notwithstanding the diversity of subject matter he has directed, Lattuada's main interest has been pubescent sexuality, the passage of a girl into womanhood, and the sexual relationship of a couple as the primary attraction they have for each other. Thus, his films deal with eroticism as a central theme and he chooses actresses whose physical beauty and sensuousness are immediately apparent. This motif appeared in Lattuada's work as early as his second feature and has been his main preoccupation in his films since 1974.

His films have been critically well-received in Italy, although rarely given the attention enjoyed by some of his contemporaries. In France, however, his work is highly acclaimed; Il bandito and Il cappotto received much praise at the Cannes festivals when they were shown. With a few exceptions, his more recent work is little known in Britain and the United States, although when Come Have Coffee with Us was released commercially in the U.S. ten years after it was made, it enjoyed a fair success at the box office and highly favorable reviews.-ELAINE MANCINI