I Knew Her Well, Blu-ray (1965/2016)

by | Feb 15, 2016 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews

A 1965 classic which helped define Italy in the ‘60s.

I Knew Her Well, Blu-ray (1965/2016)

Director: Antonio Pietrangeli
Cast: Stefania Sandrelli, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Brialy
Video: 1.85:1 for 16:9 screens, 1080p HD black & white
Audio: Italian PCM mono
Studio: RAI Cinema/ The Criterion Collection 801 (2/23/16)
Subtitles: English
Extras: New interview with Stefania Sandrelli, New interview with film scholar Luca Barattoni on director Pietrtangeli, Archival footage of Sandrelli’s audition, Essay in printed booklet by journalist and author Alexander Stille
Length: 115 min.
Rating: ****

Italy was having a crucial transformation at this time, with things moving toward more of an urban and moneyed environment and away from the neo-realist films which their filmmakers had been doing earlier. Basically, this is an intimate portrait of a party girl in 1960s Rome, making it a woman at its center rather than the male of La dolce vita. The beautiful and seemingly liberated Adriana has a wide variety of men, and goes to parties, modeling jobs, and circulating among the rich and famous.

This ends up being a character study of Adriana, as we move with her thru scenes that are funny and also tragic in some ways. The well-known actor Ugo Tognazzi plays a washed-up actor who tap dances at a party to please a successful actor who might give him work, to the point that he nearly has a heart attack – and all for nothing.

Pietrangeli stuffs his film with scenes we may feel we’ve seen before, but he was one of the first. An unforgettable one is Adriana sitting in an armchair above a car moving at full speed at night, feeling the exhilaration of it all. Like other commedia all’Italiana films of the time, he combines humor and satire of Italian society, but this one has a definite downer of an ending.

—John Sunier

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