The Great Beauty

The Great Beauty
Italian theatrical release poster
Directed by	Paolo Sorrentino
Produced by	Nicola Giuliano Francesca Cima Fabio Conversi
Screenplay by	Paolo Sorrentino Umberto Contarello
Story by	Paolo Sorrentino
Starring	Toni Servillo Carlo Verdone Sabrina Ferilli Carlo Buccirosso
Music by	Lele Marchitelli
Cinematography	Luca Bigazzi
Edited by	Cristiano Travaglioli
Production company	Indigo Film Medusa Film Babe Films Pathé
Distributed by	Medusa Film
Release date	21 May 2013 (2013-05-21)[1]
Running time	142 minutes
Country	Italy France
Language	Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese
Budget	€9,200,000
Box office	$24,164,400[2]

The Great Beauty (Italian: La grande bellezza [la ˈɡrande belˈlettsa]) is a 2013 Italian art drama film co-written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Filming took place in Rome starting on 9 August 2012. It premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it was screened in competition for the Palme d'Or.^[3] It was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival^[4], the 2013 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (winning Grand Prix), and at the 2013 Reykjavik European Film Festival.

The film won Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards,^[5] as well as the Golden Globe and the BAFTA award in the same category. It is a co-production between the Italian Medusa Film and Indigo Film and the French Babe Films, with support from Banca Popolare di Vicenza, Pathé and France 2 Cinéma.^[6][7] With a production budget of €9.2 million, the film has so far grossed over $24 million worldwide.

Plot summary

The film opens with a quote from Céline's Journey to the End of the Night: "To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength."^[8] The main character is an aging socialite, Jep Gambardella, who wrote a famous novel in his 20s, only to retire into a comfortable life writing cultural columns and throwing parties in Rome. After his 65th birthday party, he walks through the ruins and city streets, encountering various characters, reflecting on his life, his first love, and sense of unfulfillment.^{[9][10][11] [12]}

Cast

• Toni Servillo as Jep Gambardella
• Carlo Verdone as Romano
• Sabrina Ferilli as Ramona
• Carlo Buccirosso as Lello Cava
• Giovanna Vignola as Dadina
• Iaia Forte as Trumeau
• Pamela Villoresi as Viola
• Galatea Ranzi as Stefania
• Franco Graziosi as Count Colonna
• Sonia Gessner as Countess Colonna
• Giorgio Pasotti as Stefano
• Giusi Merli as Sister Maria
• Luca Marinelli as Andrea
• Massimo Popolizio as Alfio Bracco
• Serena Grandi as Lorena
• Ivan Franek as Ron Sweet
• Roberto Herlitzka as Cardinal Bellucci
• Isabella Ferrari as Orietta
• Fanny Ardant as herself
• Antonello Venditti as himself
• Francesca Amodio as Carmelina

Music

Reception

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 91% approval rating, based on 113 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 7.8/10. The critical consensus states, "Dazzlingly ambitious, beautifully filmed, and thoroughly enthralling, The Great Beauty offers virtuoso filmmaking from writer/director Paolo Sorrentino."^[15] The film holds a score of 86/100 on Metacritic based on 34 reviews, signifying "universal acclaim."^[16]

Robbie Collin at The Daily Telegraph awarded Sorrentino's film the maximum five stars and described it as "a shimmering coup de cinema". He likened it to Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita in its ambition to record a period of Roman history on film. "Rossellini covered the Nazi occupation of 1944; Fellini the seductive, empty hedonism of the years that followed. Sorrentino's plan is to do the same for the Berlusconi era," he wrote.^[17] Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter stated "Sorrentino's vision of moral chaos and disorder, spiritual and emotional emptiness at this moment in time is even darker than Fellini's (though Ettore Scola's The Terrace certainly comes in somewhere)."^[18] Critics have also identified other purposefully explicit film homages: to Roma, 8½,^[19][20] Scola's Splendor,^[20] Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte.^[21] Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar named the film as one of the twelve best films of 2013, placing it second in his list.^[22] In 2016, the film was ranked among the 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international critics poll by 177 critics around the world.^[23]

Film critics' top lists

Various critics named the film as one of the best of 2013.

• 1st: Time Out London's 10 Best films of 2013^[24]
• 1st: Robbie Collin, The Telegraph^[25]
• 2nd: Xan Brooks, The Guardian^[26]
• 2nd: Richard Corliss, Time^[27]
• 3rd: Chris Vognar, The Dallas Morning News^[28]
• 4th: Sight & Sound^[29]
• 4th: Lisa Schwarzbaum, BBC^[30]
• 6th: Jake Coyle, Associated Press^[31]
• 7th: Stephen Holden, The New York Times^[32]
• 8th: Simon Abrams & Alan Scherstuhl, The Village Voice^[33][34]
• 9th: Robert Gifford, The Diamondback^[35]
• 9th: Empire's 50 Best Films Of 2013^[36]
• Best films of 2013: Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian^[37]
• Best Film of 2013: Justin Chang, Variety^[38][39]

Accolades

See also

• List of submissions to the 86th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Italian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References

External links

• The Great Beauty on IMDb
• The Great Beauty at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Great Beauty at Metacritic
• The Great Beauty at AllMovie
• The Great Beauty at Australian distributor Palace Films