Pietro Germi Retrospective at the Film Forum

On Friday (11/2/07), New York’s premier repertory film house, Film Forum in the West Village, will begin its Pietro Germi festival. If you’re thinking “Pietro who?” you’re not alone! (“Pietro Germi never became a Brand Name” — Film Forum.)

One of the best things about Film Forum is that it allows you to catch up with films and filmmakers you might not be familiar with. Next week it’ll be showing eight Germi films, spanning from 1949-1972, including the classic (at least according to The New Yorker!) Seduced and Abandoned.

For the following two weeks, they’ll be showing Germi’s best known film, 1961’s Divorce–Italian Style.

Germi was an Italian director who died in 1974. He’s often called a neo-realist, as many Italian directors were in the ’40s and ’50s, but he was also a genre filmmaker as well, making Westerns and crime pictures; he is best known for blending the two.