Laura Betti
Laura Betti (née Trombetti; 1 May 1927 – 31 July 2004) was an Italian actress known particularly for her work with directors Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci. She had a long friendship with Pasolini and made a documentary about him in 2001. Betti became famous for portraying bizarre, grotesque, eccentric, unstable or maniacal roles, like Regina in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900, Anna the medium in Twitch of the Death Nerve, Giovanna la pazza in Woman Buried Alive, hysterical Rita Zigai in Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina, Therese in Private Vices, Public Virtues, Emilia the servant in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema for which she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and Mildred the protagonist's wife in Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon. Born Laura Trombetti in Casalecchio di Reno, near Bologna, she grew up to be interested in singing. She first worked professionally in the arts as a jazz singer and moved to Rome. Betti made her film debut in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960). In 1963, she became a close friend of the poet and movie director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Under his direction, she proved a wonderful talent and played in seven of his films, including La ricotta (1963), Teorema (Theorem, 1968), his 1972 version of The Canterbury Tales, in which she played the Wife of Bath; and his controversial Salo (1975) ("120 Days of Sodom"). In 1976, Betti portrayed Regina, a cruel and eroto-maniacal fascist in Bernardo Bertolucci's Novecento (1900). She also played Miss Blandish in his Last Tango in Paris (1972), though her single scene was deleted. In 1973 she dubbed the voice of the Devil for the Italian version of William Friedkin's The Exorcist. From the 1960s, Betti dedicated much of her time to literature and politics. She became the muse for a number of leading political and literary figures in Italy and came to personify the revolutionary and Marxist era of 1970s Italy. In 2001, she made a documentary about Pasolini, Pier Paolo Pasolini e la ragione di un sogno. She also donated her papers related to their long friendship along with more than 1000 volumes and many documents connected to Pasolini to the archives of the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, thus creating the Centro Studi Archivio Pier Paolo Pasolini. This Centro, strongly wanted by Betti, owns also thousands of photograph and all the works of Pasolini: poetry, literature, cinema and journalism. After her death in 2004 her brother Sergio Trombetti has donated all the personal documents of her career to the Centro that has absorbed them under the name Fondo Laura Betti. Source: Article "Laura Betti" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
La Dolce Vita
as LauraEpisodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn...
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1900
as ReginaThe epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two...
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Oedipus Rex
as Jocasta's Maid (uncredited)In pre-war Italy, a young couple have a baby boy. The father, however, is jealous of his son -...
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Hatchet for the Honeymoon
as Mildred HarringtonA madman haunted by the ghost of his ex-wife carves a corpse-laden trail.
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A Bay of Blood
as Anna FossatiAn elderly heiress is killed by her husband who wants control of her fortunes. What ensues is an...
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Fat Girl
as Fernando's MotherAnaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older...
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Theorem
as Emilia, the ServantA wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces...
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The Canterbury Tales
as The Wife from BathGlimpses of Chaucer penning his famous work are sprinkled through this re-enactment of several...
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The Witches
as Male Tourist (segment "La Terra vista dalla Luna")Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress...
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Ro.Go.Pa.G.
as Sonia, the 'Diva' (segment "La ricotta")Four short films by four different directors dealing with the principles of modern life.
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The Night of Varennes
as Virginia CapacelliDuring the French Revolution, a surprising company shares a coach, trying to catch up something...
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La Ribelle
as Sister ValidaEnza is a beautiful and lively Sicilian teenager who is starting out in life, but due to her...
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Slap the Monster on Page One
as Rita Zigai1972, Milan. Just a few days before the general elections, a young girl from an esteemed family...
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Marianna Ucrìa
as GiuseppaIn 18th-century Sicily, deaf-mute highborn Marianna Ucrìa is forced to marry at age 13, bearing...
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With Closed Eyes
as BeatriceIn the Tuscan countryside at the end of the 19th century, Pietro, the shy son of a tyrannical...
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Private Vices, Public Virtues
as TeresaThe setting is a Central European kingdom, near the turn of the century. Bored by his very...
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Blame it on Paradise
as direttriceA former convict discovers that his son has been adopted by a couple living on the mountains and...
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Jane B. for Agnès V.
as LardyThe interests, obsessions, and fantasies of two singular artists converge in this inspired...
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The Cousin
as Rosalia ScuderiItalian coming of age story about two cousins, Enzo and Agata, told in three stages.
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The Gang
as FeliciaIn 1945, as World War Two comes to a close, five small time crooks unite to form a gang. After...
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Allonsanfan
as Esther ImbrianiAfter the 1815 Restoration, an aging revolutionary finds himself reluctantly involved in an...
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Caprice Italian Style
as DesdemonaThe film consists of six short stories created by different directors, but all the stories share...
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The Protagonists
as JudgeAn Italian movie crew goes to London to make a documentary about a murder case that took place a...
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Butterfly on the Shoulder
as Mme CarraboOn a stopover in Barcelona, Fériaud Roland discovers a corpse in the hotel room next door. He...
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Orgy
as DonnaThe tragic and self-destructive sexual battle between a man and his wife. A drama for the...
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The Seagull
as IrinaA young writer is trapped between his awful actress mother and the knowledge that he has only a...
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Lovers and Liars
as LauraAn American actress on vacation in Italy falls for her friend's married Italian lover.
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A Man Called Sledge
as SisterJames Garner is Luther Sledge, the leader of a pack of rebels who are planning to steal a stash...
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Marx Can Wait
as Irina (archive footage) (uncredited)"Marx can wait" was something Camillo Bellocchio said to his twin Marco the last time they met...
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Sonny and Jed
as BettyJed (Tomas Milian) is an unlikely hero in this Italian western. As thoroughly unlikeable a...
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The Art of Love
as ClioYoung student Claudine has a dream in which the Roman student Cornelius, fascinated by the...
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The Woman with Red Boots
as LéonoreAn elderly millionaire manipulates an avant-garde writer and a happily married man.
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Gallant Ladies
as Catherine de MedicisDespite being busy with his profession of soldiery, Brantome manages to find much more time for...
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Mother Ebe
as Lidia CorradiBased on the story of the woman recently brought to trial on charges of moral plagiarism and...
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Class Relations
as BruneldaA young man, recently arrived in New York from Europe, becomes swept up in a series of events...
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Widow's Walk
as KeliMolinat is assigned to the case of a man found with a bullet in his ear on the shore of a little...
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The Great Pumpkin
as AidaAn epileptic 12-year-old girl, Pippi, is hospitalized in the psychiatric ward instead of the...
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La Rabbia di Pasolini
as Self (archive footage)An attempt to reconstruct the complete version of Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of La rabbia.
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Maresco / Pasolini
as SelfFranco Maresco celebrates the heritage of Pier Paolo Pasolini on the 99th anniversary of his...
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Woman Buried Alive
as Giovanna la PazzaDuke Philippe marries Cristina, the daughter of a fisherman. But his brothers, seeing that they...
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Jenatsch
as Mademoiselle von PlantaA journalist is assigned to interview an eccentric anthropologist who has exhumed the skeleton...
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Renzo e Lucia
as Madre SuperioraLoose adaptation of Italy's national epic, Alessandro Manzoni's “The Betrothed”. In war-torn...
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The Murri Affair
as Tisa BorghiBased on a true incident, this tells the story of a troubled young man who kills his sister's...
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RARA
as uncreditedIn all of his work, Bussotti makes frequent reference to the body, to sexuality. This to remind...
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The Return
as ClaraA man receives a telegram that his father is dying, and travels with his wife to his hometown....
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Suffocating Heat
as LauraOn June 30, 1990, in Rome, Marie Christine is getting ready to take her son Pietro and Paolo to...
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In the Name of the Father
as Franco's MotherIn 1958 Angelo, a rich and spoiled boy, enters a religious school, where students are tired of...
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What Are the Clouds?
as DesdemonaSome puppets come to life in a theater with no windows. This time the puppets interpret William...
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Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die
as SelfPhilo Bregstein tells us this film looks at Pasolini's life and art to explain why he died. The...
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Escape by Night
as TeresaIn Nazi-occupied Rome, a beautiful bootlegger, to the chagrin of her lover, gives sanctuary to...
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Un eroe borghese
as Dottoressa TrebbiAn intriguing look at a sinister web of power,linking politics and the mafia in modern day Italy.
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Sweets from a Stranger
as JolandaA serial killer is terrifying the prostitutes in a big Italian city. After few barbaric...
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At Night All Cats Are Crazy
as JacquelinePlaywright Charles Watson entertains his niece Lily by telling her about the adventures of...
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Paulina Is Leaving
as HortensePaulina leaves the apartment where she lives with her two brothers, Nicolas and Olivier. Her...
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I cammelli
as MilenaFerruccio, who knows everything about camels, and Camillo, who acts as his manager, go to Milan...
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Household Accounts
as uncreditedPeriod giallo about a young cook who's accused of killing her wealthy husband.
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My Name Is Anna Magnani
as SelfTraces the life of Anna Magnani, her creations, her successes, her triumphs, her boycotted...
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Raul - Right to Kill
as UsuraiaIn a fascist Rome anxiously awaiting Hitler's visit, Raul is a young man not aligned with the...
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Red Lips
as The PainterA lawyer heads out on the road in an attempt to find his daughter who has been missing for quite...
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Happiness Costs Nothing
as Suora guardianaA man in his forties has had enough. He leaves his loveless family, uninspiring job and fake...
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Stop the World... I Want to Get Off!
as uncreditedThis lysergically madcap Italian flick largely eschews any traditional plot. The most noticeable...
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Ecco
as SelfA documentary highlighting some of the oddest, strangest and more grotesque examples of human...
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The Little Archimedes
as La signora BondiThe action takes place in Florence in the 1930s. Alfred, an Englishman who moved to that city in...
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Mario, Maria and Mario
as LauraMario and Maria Boschi, a 30-year-old couple with small children, are hit by a crisis: husband...
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We Free Kings
as Una delle ragazze del coroThree tumblers wander throughout Italy with their show. A priest asks them to perform the Three...
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The Carpathian Mushroom
as OlympiaA miraculous mushroom is discovered by a film director's daughter.It would be used to cure an...
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Fratella e sorello
as Presidente del TribunaleThe story of an unlikely friendship between two men: Giocondo, a wealthy upper middle class man...
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Loin de Manhattan
as Madame HanskaChristian, an art critic, must write a study on the painter René Dimanche in order to understand...
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Laura's Passion
as Self (archive footage)A portrait of Laura Betti with archival footage and stories of friends: Bernardo Bertolucci...
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The Earth As Seen from the Moon
as un turistaCiancicato Miao and his son, after the death of his wife and mother by mushroom poisoning, are...
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The Word
as MariaA document is discovered that appears to be an ancient eyewitness account of the life of Jesus...
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The Charterhouse of Parma
as The VivandièreStendhal's epic tale of a young French officer in the Napoleonic wars, and his aunt - a duchess...
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