China is Near

China is Near (Italian: La Cina è vicina) is a 1967 Italian drama film written and directed by Marco Bellocchio. It is a satirical movie about the struggle for political power. It focusses on the conflict between a middle class professor running for office as a socialist and his brother, who is a Maoist.

Plot

A pair of working class lovers - a secretary and an accountant, scheme to marry into the rich landed gentry. Their targets are a professor, Vittorio Gordini Malvezzi ,(Glauco Mauri), who is running for municipal office as a Socialist candidate, and his sister Elena, (Elda Tattoli), a great lady who lets every man in town climb on top of her but won't marry because socially they're all beneath her. Vittorio doesn't get what is going on. Their little brother Camillo, a seventeen year old seminary student turned Maoist provides the title of the film when he scrawls 'China is Near' on the walls of the Socialist Party building, his brother's campaign headquarters.

Cast

• Glauco Mauri as Vittorio
• Elda Tattoli as Elena
• Paolo Graziosi as Carlo
• Daniela Surina as Giovanna
• Pierluigi Aprà as Camillo
• Alessandro Haber as Rospo
• Claudio Trionfi as Giacomo
• Laura De Marchi as Clotilde
• Claudio Cassinelli as Furio
• Rossano Jalenti
• Mimma Biscardi

Critical response

The film was warmly reviewed by Pauline Kael in The New Yorker on its release: " China is Near has the boudoir complications of a classic comic opera...Bellochio uses the underside of family life for borderline horror and humor. His people are so awful they're funny...[Bellochio]..only twenty-eight - perhaps only a very young director can focus on such graceless, mean-spirited people with so much enjoyment..he probably exhibits the most fluid directorial technique since Max Ophuls.." The film was selected as the Italian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 40th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.^[1]

See also

• List of submissions to the 40th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Italian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References

External links

• China is Near at the Internet Movie Database