Archive of films Good News / Buone notizie

Italy
1979, 106 min

Section: Tribute to Elio Petri
Year: 2014

Elio Petri’s final film, a bitterly reflective morality play with elements of black humor and wry sarcasm, focuses on a nameless TV station employee (Giancarlo Giannini) whose paranoid neuroses assist the director in fleshing out his own disillusion and brooding pessimism when faced with society’s consumerism.


Synopsis

"You look mean. You’re mean inside. You woke up looking mean and you’re dying to take it out on somebody,” says the attractive Fedora (Angela Molina) to her somewhat older husband (Giancarlo Giannini). The nameless man works at an anonymous Rome-based TV station where his job description involves constantly watching a half dozen TV sets broadcasting news reports about assassinations, murders, and other unpleasantness. He’s a paranoid neurotic troubled by his own sexuality and by the fear of death and the dark. One day, an old but long-unseen friend, Gualtiero, tracks the couple down in order to confide his fears that someone is planning to kill him. This biting, blackly-humorous meditation is the last film Petri shot before cancer prematurely ended his life. After the unsuccessful Property Is No Longer a Theft and the unfortunate fate of the prophetic yet accursed Todo modo, the filmmaker had become disillusioned about the ability of film to artistically capture reality and to communicate with the viewer. Good News is Petri’s last cinematic testament – a film playing out in a grim-looking Rome full of people behaving like animals, on sidewalks strewn with litter, and to the incessant deafening blare of police sirens. Drawing on a melancholy sarcasm, Petri depicts the pessimism and disillusion he felt when regarding a society voluntarily drowning in consumerism. His unjustly forgotten final work contains a comprehensive and hard-hitting analysis of a society facing its own ruin, and even after 35 years it’s lost not one iota of its relevance.

Contacts

Istituto Luce Cinecitta Srl
, 001 73, Rome
Italy

VIDEODUE s.r.l.
Via Milano 2, 20090, Milan
Italy
E-mail: [email protected]

About the film

Color, 35 mm

Section: Tribute to Elio Petri
   
Director: Elio Petri
Screenplay: Elio Petri
Dir. of Photography: Tonino Nardi
Music: Ennio Morricone
Editor: Ruggero Mastroianni
Producer: Giancarlo Giannini, Elio Petri
Production: Medusa Film
Cast: Giancarlo Giannini, Angela Molina, Aurore Clément, Paolo Bonacelli, Ombretta Colli
Contact: Istituto Luce Cinecitta Srl, VIDEODUE s.r.l.

Guests

Paola Pegoraro

Other

Milena Gregor

Film Institution Rep.


YouTube

© 2024 FILM SERVIS FESTIVAL KARLOVY VARY, a.s. [email protected] +420 221 411 011 All contacts

AccommodationsAccommodations Festival Pass, tickets, reservationsFestival Pass, tickets
HistoryHistory ContactsContacts
Archive of filmsArchive of films KVIFF TalksKVIFF Talks
Industry Days Programme 2021Industry Days Programme KVIFF Eastern PromisesKVIFF Eastern Promises
VideogalleryVideogallery PhotogalleryPhotogallery
ContactsContacts Posters of the 57th KV IFFPosters of the 57th KV IFF
HistoryHistory Festival GuideFestival Guide