THE STAR MAKER (L' UOMO DELLE STELLE)
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1996 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
THE STAR MAKER (L' UOMO DELLE STELLE) is an Italian film and one of the 1995 Academy Award nominees for best foreign film along with ALL THINGS FAIR (Sweden), ANTONIA'S LINE (Netherlands), DUST OF LIFE (Algeria), and O QUATRILHO (Brazil). It is by the director (Giuseppe Tornatore) of the widely acclaimed and Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso. It is a great little story of a movie talent scout and huckster who scours poor but picturesque Sicily enticing the locals with the promise of great riches.
Sergio Castellitto plays the con artist known as Joe Morelli or Dr. Morelli. He is supposedly an agent for the studios in Rome, and Joe plays his part with great gusto stopping everyone and inspecting their faces from all sides. He finds them all worthy, of course, and invites them to pay for a screen test promising them that the bigwigs in Rome will get back to them in a month, after he is long gone of course.
The movie starts with a scared and terrified guy trying out in front of the camera. From offscreen the talent scout sticks his hand in to pat him on the back and reassure him with a simple, but forceful "very good." Soon we cut to a scene with Joe driving through towns in Sicily in an old beat up truck with big loudspeakers on it which booms out with, "We are here to offer you a fantastic future!" Soon the whole town is practicing the last lines of GONE WITH THE WIND. Some do it straight, "Afterall tomorrow is another day," whereas other embellish it or localize it. There is one especially funny scene with some old tough guys rehearsing Scarlet's lines to each other.
Joe has the whole town convinced that they will be the one to get rich. He is treated like a god, and people dote on his every word. Usually, he cons people out of their hard earned money without remorse, but sometimes his conscience gets the better of him. To one person he tells, "movies are a new business. I don't want to disappoint you," but most people he makes feel sure that they will be the one picked to be the next movie star.
Like a Woody Allen movie, the first thirty minutes or so of the picture is filled with scores and scores of people doing short screen tests. Some people are fun to watch and some are incredibly boring and repetitive which is one of the major downfalls of this format when it is carried on for so long. These scenes needed much stronger editing by Massimo Quaglia. Instead, he keeps too many scenes in and just makes them too short and choppy to conserve time.
Joe sees a dead body floating down a river, but the locals ignore it since it is a Mafia hit. Later, he runs into bandits who want to kill him. How he avoids death makes for a fantastic scene. Joe is confused and frighten by all of this. A local physician whom he gives a lift tells him, "We all understand things when it is too late."
One of the major problems with the film is that the script by Fabio Rinaudo and Giuseppe Tornatore is too talky. The images and the plot are more than enough to carry the show, yet many scenes have way too much dialog which amount to little. The simpler scenes are by far and away the best. Overall, I thought the script was the weakest part of the film and was badly in need of rework. It needed to be much more focused.
Eventually Joe falls in love with a woman named Beata (Tiziana Lodato) so he refuses to take her money for the fake screen test. Beata has a simple view of the movies, "I like love stories where everybody kisses and are happy ever after." Lodato is a great, but simple actress who plays her part with great sensuality and feeling. Quite a compelling performance. Sergio Castellitto gives a sweet performance, but I thought Lodato upstaged him with a smaller role.
THE STAR MAKER has two parts. A long, fanciful, funny, and hopeful part switches to a morose shorter part. I thought the first part worked well, but the writer seemed to run out of energy and ideas toward the end. The first part is imaginative and unique; the last is pure formula. Overall, I thought the plot and the concept were better than the execution. It could and should have been much better, but I certainly enjoyed it, and I hope to see both of the leads again, especially Tiziana Lodato.
The picture is beautifully filmed by Dante Spinotti with sets of tremendous natural beauty. There are beautiful brown and yellow stone buildings in ruins and near ruins. The Sicilian countryside manages to outshine most of the people in Joe's screen tests.
THE STAR MAKER runs 1:48. It is in Italian with English subtitles. It is rated R. It has sex, full frontal nudity, bad language, and some violence, but would be fine for any teenager. Flaws and all, I liked the film, and I think you will too so I am giving it a thumbs up and awarding it ** 1/2.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: March 21, 1996
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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