Do you know how to turn awesome Italian movies into weapons of mass instruction?
Subtitles for Caro diario Presented in three chapters, Moretti uses the experiences of traveling on his motor-scooter, cruising with his friend. One of the most acclaimed contemporary Italian film director-comedians, Nanni Moretti ('The Sons Room,' 'Caimano II'), directs himself playing himself in this wry look at life. Presented in three.
Well, I’m about to show you—because watching Italian movies can be an incredibly effective way to learn the language.
But you have to know how to approach a film in order to turn those gorgeous moving pictures into your trusty companion for Italian learning.
So let’s take a closer look at why movies are so useful, how to learn Italian by watching movies and a few Italian movie recommendations you don’t want miss!
What Are the Best Movies for Learning Italian?
We’ve picked six absolutely essential films that every Italian learner should watch. Not only are these excellent learning materials, but they also shed light on the culture, history and humor of the Italian language and the people who speak it.
Of course, tastes vary and there’s no single “best” way to do anything. But if you’re not sure where to begin in the vast cinematic repertoire of the Italian language, these movies are a great place to start.
Our six picks, in no particular order, are:
- “La Vita è Bella”(“Life Is Beautiful”)
- “Malena”
- “L’Attesa”(“The Wait”)
- “I Cento Passi”(“The Hundred Steps”)
- “Cinema Paradiso”(“Paradise Cinema”)
- “Il Postino” (“The Postman”)
Intrigued? Want to know more? Later in this post, we share what all these movies are about, where they’re available for purchase or streaming and what kind of language learning benefits you can expect to get from them.
But before we get to that, let’s find out how to use Italian movies to learn the language. Stick around!
Why Learn Italian with Movies: Language Learning Material on Steroids
Movies are multi-sensory and immersive
If you’re looking for excellent online learning tools, you’ll want resources that are multi-sensory and immersive—they’re the best language learning materials on the planet.
And guess what? Learning Italian with movies offers exactly that experience in spades.
We learn so much from what we see, and movies offer that visual context to language learning like nothing else can. You actually see language as it animates the interactions of characters in the film. You see the gestures as wielded by native speakers, the subtle nuances that makes the language so vivid.
Not only that, you actually get to hear exactly what Italian is supposed to sound like. You hear the melodious valleys and peaks of Italian twang and gain more appreciation of it.
And you hear all that—not in repetitive, laboratory-like conditions—but in the very authentic style of the movie where there’s an engaging story and characters go from one misadventure to another.
The first thing you learn when using movies is that the characters talk mighty fast. That’s normal, the movie is primarily intended for native speakers, not language learners. But that’s what immersion is supposed to feel like: training your ears, trying to get used to the language at the pace employed by its native speakers.
In essence, watching movies is really like sitting outside a café by the piazza, watching and listening to an unfolding story.
Movies are nuanced, diverse and flexible language learning tools
There’s this misconception that you only learn so little from the movies, if at all. There’s also the misconception (albeit a little better) that your learning will be limited to the genre of film you’re watching.
So if it’s a love story, you only get to know vocabulary pertaining to love, romance and phrases that have something to do with plucking the stars from the evening sky and making a beautiful necklace out of them.
These are indeed misconceptions and, as we’ll soon find in the next section, there’s a way to learn Italian by actively watching movies that allows you to mine and milk them for every language lesson they contain.
In reality, with movies you have a pretty diverse set of contexts, topics and stories. Think about it: Movies tackle subjects and genres that other learning material cannot even consider.
Regardless of its genre, an Italian movie is a treasure trove of language lessons. A single film can actually tackle many different fields. A single scene can contain vocabulary, phrases and expressions that will add more texture and nuance to your arsenal, and be brought into your daily conversations.
You only need to have the creativity or the insight to apply them to other situations.
There’s a correct way to watch a film for language learning. In the next section, we will look into the details so you’ll know exactly what to do when you’ve got an Italian classic in your hands.
How to Learn Italian with Movies: Top Tips and Techniques
The process outlined below is for milking full-length Italian movies for their language lessons. But if you like learning Italian through real-world videos, we highly recommend checking out FluentU as well!
FluentU takes real-world videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons, as you can see here:
FluentU helps you get comfortable with everyday Italian by combining all the benefits of complete immersion and native-level conversations with interactive subtitles.
Tap on any word to instantly see an image, in-context definition, example sentences and other videos in which the word is used.
Access a complete interactive transcript of every video under the Dialogue tab, and review words and phrases with convenient audio clips under Vocab.
Once you’ve watched a video, you can use FluentU’s quizzes to actively practice all the vocabulary in that video. Swipe left or right to see more examples of the word you’re on.
FluentU will even keep track of all the Italian words you’ve learned to recommend videos and ask you questions based on what you already know.
Plus, it’ll tell you exactly when it’s time for review. Now that’s a 100% personalized experience!
The best part? You can try FluentU for free! Start using Fluent on the website, or better yet, download the app from iTunes or the Play store.
Use the method below on Italian movies or any of the authentic clips on FluentU to maximize your learning!
How to milk the scenes
The first time you watch a film, don’t consider it a language lesson. It’s Friday night at the movies. Grab a bucket of popcorn and watch it like any Hollywood flick. Gawk at the beautiful actresses and be genuinely shocked by the twist and turns of the movie. Do this once or twice.
Around the third time you watch the film, that’s when you put your language-learner hat on.
Now is the time to break the film down into manageable chunks. Working the whole movie as if it’s a single language lesson prevents you from milking all the gems contained in the film.
So break the movie into its component scenes. This allows you to devote focused attention to parts of the movie that have a limited number of players, a unifying theme, pivoting around a single thought.
A chase scene, for example, has a single purpose: Get away from the bad guys. A dinner scene, while it may involve many different topics, enables you to tie them all up in your mind and makes the lessons easier to remember.
And while watching each scene, don’t shy away from pressing those pause and replay buttons as many times as possible. Forget about the next scene or the story as a whole. You already know how the movie’s going to turn out. You’re there now for a totally different reason.
In each scene, look for things like mood, goal, conflict or situation. What’s the scene about? Is it a couple fighting? Is it two strangers eating at a restaurant? Is it about a witness being grilled in a court room?
Try to be conscious of these things because the flavor of the language that will be used—the type of vocabulary and expressions employed—depends very much on the function of the scene.
Make no mistake about it—and it will be very clear as soon as you dive in deep—the language used for each scene is very different. (Watch also for mood changes in the same scene, because you’ll be in for some shift in the language.)
Yts Subtitles
This is very important because understanding what the scene is all about helps you find other real-life situations where you can apply the specific words and phrases you learn from that specific scene. If you understand what’s being said and why, you’ll be able to look for other instances that the phrase could fit.
A large part of learning the nuances of a language is to deduce the appropriateness of some word to many other instances.
How to mine the subtitles
As you begin to pay careful attention this third time you watch the film, use the subtitles for countless language lessons.
The sequence for watching with subtitles should be:
- English subtitles
- Italian subtitles
- No subtitles (cue standing ovation!)
Mine the English subtitles first for all they’re worth. Notice the correspondence between the English translation and the Italian delivery by the characters. Do you see and hear words that repeat and often crop up? Especially watch out for short lines in the dialogue where it’s relatively easier to spot the Italian words and their English counterparts.
Watch and listen for English and Italian cognates. These are word pairs that sound similar in both languages, suggesting a shared origin. They’re like word cousins that have the same word grandpa. These are words like familiare and “familiar,” which would make you exclaim, “Hey, these look familiar!”
There are plenty of English and Italian cognates, and you can learn many of them before you switch to the Italian subtitles.
When you switch to the native subtitles, this is where your learning goes to a whole new level. This is also where a lot of writing and researching comes in.
Remember that you’re actively watching the film, not just sitting back and grinning at the antics of Roberto Benigni.
By the way, be aware of how Italian spelling compares with Italian pronunciation. Fortunately, unlike French, Italian has practically no silent letters. So if you see it in the spelling, you’ll hear it when it’s spoken.
Have your paper and pen ready as you dissect a scene. The moment you see an interesting word in the subtitle, hit “pause” and write it down. Look for longer words that you suspect to be verbs, noun and adjectives. (The short words are usually connectives.) Try to have 10-12 words per scene.
After you finish a scene, head online to research the words you’ve written.
You can use Word Reference and play around their Italian-English and English-Italian sections. Their entries offer deep and nuanced insights into the words, with ample sentence examples for study.
The Free Dictionary also has an endearing Italian version. And if you love the crinkle of the page, you can get a copy of Barron’s or Webster’s English-Italian dictionaries.
After getting the meanings and usage examples, head back to the scene and watch it again. Do this for every scene in the movie and you’ll not only gain more insight into the language, you’ll also appreciate the movie’s writers even more.
How to mimic the sound
There comes a point, maybe somewhere around the fiftieth time you’ve watched a scene, when you can practically talk along with the film. You’ve got all the gestures down pat, and you can time the ebb and flow of conversation to perfection.
I encourage you to talk aloud as the characters talk.
It’s very important that you actually give voice to the Italian that is in your head and in your ears. You have to experience the feeling of actual Italian words coming out of your mouth, rolling off your tongue—imperfect as they may be.
Actually, you need to start talking aloud long before you become super familiar with the lines, when the honest learner in you knows that you’re going to mess it up anyway.
Do it.
Read aloud even when you can barely keep up with the native speakers on the screen. It’s like humming to a song when you don’t actually know the lyrics. So what if the actors talk faster than you can read? Do it anyway.
It will be uncomfortable and awkward, but stay with it. I cannot stress this last point enough. There’s something so visceral with the experience of actually speaking; it solidifies your learning. Again, regardless of the mistakes that you’re bound to make. Do it even if you have to mimic or ape how the character gestures or moves, like a baby learning how to talk.
So read aloud what you can, and repeat until the break of dawn.
And when you’ve memorized the lines, close your eyes, say the lines and make your mama proud.
Why go through all this?
Because when deconstructing a film, there’s a real possibility that you might be content to just understand the lines spoken by the actors. You might think that’s the goal. Nope, that’s just a vital stop to an even more important destination: the ability to speak in Italian.
The danger is to master the movie and not the language.
So speak as much as you watch. If you’ve seen the scene ten times, you should also have read/spoken along with it just as many times. Just remember to do it when you’re alone—and definitely not during your flight to Milan. Trust me.
Next, why don’t we check out some of the titles that could be your next buds in learning Italian?
If you’re looking to learn italian by watching movies, these six beautiful films will provide you with an excellent starting point!
1. “La Vita è Bella” (“Life Is Beautiful”) (1997)
Director: Roberto Benigni
Availability: Amazon, Netflix
This film won a spate of awards including Best Actor for Roberto Benigni at the 71st Academy Awards.
Set in the 1930s, it’s the story of a father protecting his son from the harsh reality of the Holocaust. Guido Orefice (Benigni), a simple Jewish bookshop owner, and his son, were taken to a concentration camp by German officers.
Guido somehow knew there was no good news to be had from the ordeal. In order to protect his five-year-old son, he hatched an elaborate fiction telling the boy that they have entered some sort of reality show where they will undergo a series of tasks (like hiding from German guards) in order to win a real tank (to the utter delight of his boy).
The movie exhibits the length a father goes to protect his son from the inhumanity of it all. It has artfully teased out some Chaplin-esque comedic moments in the midst of misery.
Language learners will take a lot from the effusive Guido who not only talks non-stop but grandly gestures his words. You’ll remember the vocabulary and the catch phrases simply because there’s a highly kinesthetic actor flailing about with his hands.
And, despite being set in the ’30s, the film uses fairly contemporary Italian that you can work comfortably into daily Italian conversations.
2. “Malena” (2000)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Availability: Amazon, Netflix
Malena is a coming-of-age film set in 1940 Sicily. It tells the story of a 13-year-old boy who perpetually fantasizes about a beautiful school teacher, Malena, whose husband was called to war in Africa.
The effervescent Monica Belluci plays the role of a woman who sets gossip afire by simply walking around town going about her daily chores. She’s a shy wife pining for her husband while the whole town talks about her behind—er rather, behind her back.
Renato can’t get Malena off his mind and it’s fair warning to viewers that the film gets heated especially when the contents of the boy’s mind is portrayed.
While Malena barely speaks in this film, you’ll have your fill of period Italian through the lines and the vivid, engaging narrations of the lustful Renato, as well as the jealous town folks.
Who knew gossip would be such a fertile language material?
3. “L’Attesa” (“The Wait”) (2015)
Director: Piero Messina
Availability: Amazon
Piero Messina’s directorial debut tells of a mother’s grief for her dead son.
Well, that’s a whole movie right there. But what if your son’s French girlfriend, who still doesn’t know her boyfriend is dead (but is wondering why he’s suddenly not answering his phone), shows at the doorstep of your Sicilian villa in order to spend Easter there, and you don’t tell her that her boyfriend is not coming, ever? Now that’s a great story to tell!
When I mentioned earlier that movies are immersive, this is one of those. The cinematography is beautifully executed—at times screaming, at times subtle.
The austere nature of the film makes for dialogues that are controlled and deliberate. The pace is oftentimes just right for language learners.
And if you need language learning inspiration, take a page from Juliette Binoche, who plays the mother in this film. She’s French, but she learned Italian to hit the right notes on this one.
4. “I Cento Passi” (“The Hundred Steps”) (2000)
Director: Marco Tullio Giordana
Availability:Amazon
The title refers to the distance between a political activist’s house and the house of an influential Mafia boss.
“I Cento Passi” is the story of Peppino Impastato, who at a time when nobody else was brave enough to even acknowledge the existence of the Mafia, headed a radio program that revealed their criminal activities and abuses.
Ultimately, Impastato was liquidated by the Mafia, in what was originally ruled as a suicide. Twenty years after the event, the case has been reopened and a conviction was handed down for murder.
The movie is peppered with charged language and is a treat for those of you who want to acquaint yourselves with the Sicilian dialect.
And just as a sidebar, in the opening of the movie, you can hear the young Peppino sing “Nel blu dipinto di blu” (“In the blue that is painted blue”) which you may know as “Volare.”It’s a great Italian song that’s worth a study.
5. “Cinema Paradiso” (“Paradise Cinema”) (1988)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Availability:Amazon
“Cinema Paradiso” is a classic from Tornatore about a man’s journey from a boy slipping into the projection booth, to working as a projectionist himself, to being an acclaimed director.
But just as well, it tells the story of a love lost and the perpetual thought of “where could she be,” a movie that can make you fall in love with the characters as well as the story.
It continues to be discussed in film circles today, with cinephiles debating over deleted scenes. It’s been remastered so generations of movie goers can experience Tornatore.
Language learners will truly appreciate how beautiful the Italian language is. Not only are famous lines from other movies quoted, the movie itself is a basket of beautiful prose.
Look especially at the lines of Alfredo, the original movie projector operator who mentored the young protagonist.
6. “Il Postino” (“The Postman”) (1994)
Director: Michael Radford
Availability:Amazon (Region B/2)
And talking about the power of words and the beauty of the Italian language, we come to “Il Postino.”
It’s a fictionalized story of a mailman and the renowned poet Pablo Neruda, who was politically exiled to a small Italian island. Mario, a simple island folk, would find himself lucky for getting the job of biking to the poet’s house and personally delivering letters from the hordes of Neruda admirers, most of them women.
“Il Postino” is a movie about courtship. But as it turns out, it’s not really about the courtship between Mario and Beatrice, the woman our protagonist wanted to seduce through his poems. It’s the courtship between Mario and Neruda, who initially responded to Mario’s interest and admiration with elitist nonchalance.
But the poet’s cold exterior melted and soon he began to take Mario under his wing, teaching him not only poetry but also his political philosophies.
You’ll have so much more appreciation to the written word after this movie. You’ll begin to comprehend how governments, hearts and mindsets fall with the strike of a well-written word.
You can also watch the theater production version of the movie on Amazon and compare the two versions!
And those are just six of the most awesome offspring of Italian cinema. Each one has a certain slant, flavor, style or lesson that will help you learn Italian by watching movies—in other words, the fun and engaging way!
I trust that with the tips gained here, you’ll be able to attack any Italian film and milk it for all it’s worth.
Good luck!
If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to learn Italian with real-world videos.
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No one has ever captured on film, to my knowledge, why and how doctors, famed and not famed, traditional and alternative, are so dammed frustrating when you have a problem that doesn't quit. I found myself relating totally to Moretti's utter frustration and since it ended without resolution re: his cancer, I can only assume he beat it.
Many times I or someone I love has this same tortuous struggle to find A SINGLE healer who really knows what gives. I found the cancer scenes very touching but it was the 8 months of itching and trying so many meds and accupuncture most true to our lousy medical situations. So many and none got it, until one did correctly diagnose him. I relate! And he's not Woody Allen, whose films I usually soak up, he's unique and brave and extremely intelligent. Thanks for listening.
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I could go on talking about this film and it comes in as one of my five best Cinema Paradiso, Unbearable Lightness of Being, Manhattan, and The Year of Living Dangerously.
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I call it a relaxing comedy because it depends on vignettes for comedy and then intersperses great scenery and music in between. The comedic moments are just pointed enough to keep the film interesting, e.g., the very precise translation of 'mezzo scemo' by Jennifer Beals; the island of misfit parents whose children reign; and the inside view of Roman medical care. Now all that's needed is a prequel to Roman culture. We have seen the Rome of the 1930s through the 1970s in Fellini's 'Roma'. Caro Dario takes us from the 1960s to the 1990s. Perhaps a good satire on the culture at the time Verdi through to World War I.
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The film is not like any other director's take on society while blending his personal stories in it. Imagine Moretti being your guide and taking you around Rome and Italian islands, introducing layers of the Italian society with razor sharp and witty observations.
Many of the characters in the film will seem familiar to people around the world. Being unable to afford an apartment in his home town, frustration with doctors and their addiction to prescribe drugs, parents becoming hostage to their child, extreme want for change and development, people offering hedonistic capitalism, frustrated narcissists living in isolation. And TV addiction! The scene where Moretti rides his scooter to the place where Passolini is murdered has almost a dreamy barren atmosphere to it and possibly is the saddest part.
And there are hilarious moments, especially the visits to the islands are a real treat! It was also great to see Jennifer Beals, Flashdance being one of my favorites too.
This is a gem, or better yet, a cult movie.
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The only redeeming factor was that the scooter scene was set to Keith Jarrett's 'Koln Concert'. Prompted me to go home and rediscover that marvelous album. The best thing you can say about the director/actor/egotist is that he's got great taste in music.
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In the first chapter, he rides his Vespa scooter in the suburbs of Rome. He likes to explore different neighborhoods and think about what kinds of people live in each. When he finds homes of particular interest, he makes up a story about his being a filmmaker and considering that apartment to be a set to make an excuse to see the inside.
I like the second chapter the best, where Nani goes to visit a friend in the Italian islands who is studying James Joyce's 'Ulysses' for 30 years (if memory serves me right). He wants to share quiet time to work on his own project, making a film based on collected clippings of strange real-world stories from the newspapers.
In their quest to find the ideal island to work on, I found the funniest part of the film, where they are on an island where it seems everybody has a child. When people call each other, the children always pick up and inevitably the adults find themselves playing a game of 'what does the cow say?' 'moo!' 'what does the duck say?' 'quack!', the children urging them on and not passing the phone on. I laughed quite a bit when Nani finds three folks near each other all on public telephones trying, in vain, to talk to their adult friends; he pauses, then makes an animal noise as his contribution!
The third chapter is slightly less interesting than the other two. In this concluding portion, Nani is faced with a terrible itch when he sleeps. He consults doctor after doctor - skin doctors, allergists, acupuncturists, ... - and gets different advise from each. After collecting a large collection of creams, pills, and tinctures, he ends up visiting a surgeon.
It was a fun film that the whole family would enjoy, with a bizarre, wry, humor. Though I didn't enjoy it as much as the film 'Amelie', the quirkiness in 'Caro Diario' reminds me a little bit of 'Amelie', especially in the 1st chapter. This film is in Italian with English subtitles. I would gladly see it again - it was a lucky video find! (7 stars out of 10.)
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I read some of the comments on this board about this films and I wondered if they saw the same movie as I did.
See this film (yawn) at your own risk........one thing for sure- it really is rated correctly= G RATING! (Which most stand for GOD AWFUL BORING!)
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Speaking about 'Caro diario' only loses for the pleasure of watching the film performed by the Italian Nanni Moretti in 1993. Morreti is already referenced a few years ago as a representative figure of the new phase of Italian cinema. I confess that I had only previously watched a Morreti film, being presented to the director through his Italian classes, and in which we watched 'Habemus Papam' in 2011.
'Caro Diário' is a unique work that is done through three episodes with an autobiographical character and in dialogue with the documentary. Moretti could run the risk of doing something dangerously narcissistic, but by having a look, writing and personality so interesting, 'Caro' turns into a jocular free movie to mock its own author, from His homeland, his friends, the public ... The mosaic of the world that circulates Moretti is so true that in several moments the reciprocity and familiarity of situations not only cross the protagonist of this story, but also the one that watches. As, for example, we do not identify with the inability of physicians to listen to their patients, but, in contrast, the doctors' ability to speak and recite medicines that do not help our illnesses, especially in Responsibility for healing.
References are not always pleasant, as they generally tend to reduce the merit of people, in the case of Moretti, is sincere how much Woddy Allen inspired the director or is only personal connections of the public, since in various moments of the film, we have Memory and familiarity of typical approaches to Allen's autobiographical films, such as his direct narrative, his insertion as a man and character, his sarcastic comments, the division of chapters using nominative posters, the ability to laugh at himself, and endings that always follow The opposite of expected or desired.
The use of a soundtrack that at different times is something that arises externally, and that ends up influencing or creating moments of the music itself, a dialogue between character and melody, work excellently and much say of the relation and influence of Latin rhythms or Of old songs in Moretti's lineup. One of the most beautiful moments of the film is Moretti's homage to Italian filmmaker Paolo Pasolini, a motorcycle (scooter) to the place where the director was murdered to the sound of Korn's concert Keith Jarrett.
The wasp: vehicle for only one person. The island: a metaphor for the individual, solitude. The doctor: professional who takes care of the body of each individual; Every very particular body of each person. The titles of each part in which the Daily Diaries divide are, in some way, a notion of the individual, of the particular, as a diary also does. Here, however, it is not an intimate narrative: Moretti may be egocentric, but this does not make him self-absorbed. His idiosyncratic, peculiar way is, in fact, a way that could be anyone's; We notice it in Moretti simply because he exposes himself.
Both the photography and the lighting are punctual, not going beyond what is necessary so little innovation, in the specific lighting is notorious the use of natural light, which greatly collaborates in the creation of a documentary and biographical character very close to the street documentaries or programs The first chapter, which uses an interesting camera work, both for the movement and the break of open and closed plans, this first part, refers very much to the television programs, which usually Present the neighborhoods of a large city through a personality.
'Caro diario' is mainly a conversation between the director and the audience, which creates an opportunity for intimacies that we can rarely experience, either through documentaries or the various film genres. A film of sensitivity even when dead seams, even when it is set inside out. A diary that we help to write and that certainly is a pleasure to accompany. Congratulations Moretti!
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I don't know if I got out of this what I was supposed to, but I really enjoyed the exploration of film in this travelogue sort of way. Jennifer Beals? 'Henry'? Things you do not expect to find when traveling around Italy. And I really liked the attempt to get advanced information on soap operas. That was pretty clever.
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Segment two of the diary is Ninni' s venture to the nearby islands by cruise ship. He meets a mother and father who describe in full detail the spotty training of their young son. What follows is rapid fire shots of adults at phone booths trying in vain to get the kids who answer to bring parent to the phone. Overindulgent mommies and daddies dominate the island portion of the diary. Morretti also visits Stromboli's volcano. Alicudi is the last island, totally isolated, without electricity and filled with hermits. The third and final chapter is the doctors where Morretti undergoes chemotherapy for cancer. H's also suffers from severe itching on his hands and feet and proceeds to visit several doctors for a cure, trying every type of medicine possible. He finally gets an answer at the end.
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The vespa scenes are amazing...
This film concentrates all the ingredients of European cinema at just the right portions. The honesty of this film makes it so much more than it might appear to be. Moretti 'elevates' the viewer to his place and I think this is wonderful (apart from difficult). I find Caro Diario simple, sensitive, interesting, amusing, romantic, thought provoking, funny (I could go on ..) and therefore believe it deserves our appreciation.
If you're a classic Hollywood blockbuster buff this might not appeal to you, still if there's any film that might take you to the other side this is it.
after all this is cinema for humans.
El Diario English Version
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This film is full of in-jokes that only Italians or people who have lived there will get. The boy Gianni (I can't spell his surname but I'm sure he'll forgive me) now spends a lot of time organising people to hold hands around buildings in political protests: I haven't read the Italian papers for a while but I suspect he harbours certain aspirations. He is essentially playing himself or his public persona because he's at times long-winded but generally entertaining.
It's a film for people with an interest in Italy. The subtle things that are so clear to a foreigners probably passed over the heads of those on set, which is what makes it so endearing. But don't rent it because the Incredibles was out or because you feel sophisticated in watching something with subtitles.
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