Antonio Pietrangeli uses the seductive appeal of mid-century Italian style to show a country and a woman that are tricking themselves into flashy identities made of denial. But despite changing hairstyles, day jobs, outfits, and men, she’s doing her chasing in a hollow world, one that sees young beauties as someone to enjoy or use or dispose of along the way. She tries, valiantly, to attain the life of fantasy that the pop songs and glamorous images sell as desirable and attainable. At least, that’s what the film wants us to think, and it’s how Adriana convincingly pretends to be. Each experience in Adriana’s life exists unto itself, as if there is nothing before or after the moment she’s currently in. The imaginary space between scenes could fool us into thinking months and years are passing between them. It needs to be untethered and disarming to work. We don’t know where she comes from at the start – that would lock Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli) and the film into too much familiarity and structure. In I Knew Her Well, a country girl tries her hand at this kind of life. Maybe it’s time Sidney Lumet was en vogue again.īy the 1960s, Italian cinema was fully projecting its desired postwar metamorphosis, one that had all eyes on Rome as the epicenter of freewheeling high-fashion cool. The fact that Lumet also released The Pawnbroker the same year, another unbearably bleak film. The Hill has so much to dig into that I can really only use the paragraph to list things about it. There is a happy ending, but it takes place in the first five minutes without you realizing it. When escapism occurs it’s only through the hysteria of fatigue and deprivation. Sean Connery gives maybe one of my favorite performances ever desperately but steadfastly trying to take a stand despite being physically and emotionally obliterated.

The relationship between Harry Andrews and Ian Brennan alone is enough to fuel the entire film. As the film builds to a breaking point, it folds in and challenges the complex dynamics and beliefs of those with either all the power or a portion of it. Every shot has an uncomfortable immediacy. Gigantic faces, frantic POV, ‘how did they do that’ crane choreography, and 360 shots emphasize futility and entrapment. He had this ability to blend impeccable classical filmmaking with an elaborate, alive, and at times confrontational, camera. The only time I ever hear anybody bring him up is when, like once a year, somebody has a “ Network is bad actually” take. Lumet seems perpetually out-of-fashion for film folks. I knew of this film only fleetingly, always described as an underappreciated Sidney Lumet gem. The rat-a-tat rhythmic back-and-forth, and the intensity of the military protocol (I’ve never heard more shouting in a film) abstracts portions of the dialogue into a claustrophobic pitch that, again, exists to overwhelm and suffocate. Here, the men, both literally and figuratively, occupy and oppress the land, the frame, and each other. There, the vistas seem even more sweeping while the men become mythic by association. The framing of men in extreme close-up, against the landscape or other men, has the opposite effect as For a Few Dollars More.

It reminds me of what it felt like to watch mother! Every ounce of sun, sweat, and exhaustion comes through. Nobody can catch a break or a moment to breathe, and that includes us. The British military prison setting (and thus the British Army as a whole) exists for the sole purpose of eradicating any remaining traces of autonomy, will, and spirit. The Hill is an exercise in sustained suffocation and delirium.

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