The Great Beauty

Journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Since the legendary success of his one and only novel, he has been a permanent ﬁxture in the city’s literary and social circles, but when his sixty-ﬁfth birthday coincides with a shock from the past, Jep ﬁnds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties, and cafés to ﬁnd Rome in all its glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

This exquisitely beautiful film is superbly written, with performances to match and is filled with an astonishing range of music, from the blissful to the ridiculous. Frequently hilarious, the film also engages the emotions and moves you. Magnificent and not to be missed.

PAOLO SORRENTINO

Born in Naples in 1970, Paolo Sorrentino is one of Italian cinema’s most distinctive and stylish ﬁlmmakers. In 1998 his short ﬁlm Love Has No Boundaries established a relationship with Indigo Films, who have produced all of his ﬁlms to date. In 2001, his ﬁrst feature, the dramatic comedy One Man Up, won the Silver Ribbon for Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival. This ﬁlm also marked his ﬁrst collaboration with favorite actor Toni Servillo. The Consequences of Love (2004), Sorrentino’s second ﬁlm, premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and won ﬁve David di Donatello Awards, for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Cinematography. The ﬁlm Il divo (2008), a portrait of the Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti, won the Jury Prize at Cannes and featured a stunning performance by Servillo. Following This Must Be the Place (2011), his ﬁrst ﬁlm to be shot in America, Sorrentino returned to his home country for the acclaimed The Great Beauty (2013).

“I have long been thinking about a ﬁlm which probes the contradictions, the beauties, the scenes I have witnessed
and the people I’ve met in Rome. It’s a wonderful city, soothing yet at the same time full of hidden dangers. By dangers
I mean intellectual adventures which lead nowhere. Initially, it was an ambitious project without limits, which I kept
putting off until I found the binding element that could bring this whole Roman universe to life. And that element was
the character of Jep Gambardella, who was the last piece of the puzzle, and who made the whole concept of the ﬁlm
possible and less confused.”

TONI SERVILLO

Italian Vogue has called Toni Servillo the “most versatile Italian actor in the history of Italian cinema,” and yet he did not star in a ﬁlm until he was over the age of forty. Servillo was born in Afragola, Campania, in 1959, and still makes him home in Caserta, a suburb of Naples.

His breakout ﬁlm role was in Sorrentino’s 2001 ﬁlm One Man Up, which garnered him several nominations in Italy and started a long, close relationship with the director. He received the David di Donatello prize and the Silver Ribbon in 2005 for another leading role with Sorrentino in The Consequences of Love, then again in 2008 for The Girl by the Lake, by Andrea Molaioli, and in 2009 for Sorrentino’s Il divo. In 2008, he won the award for Best Actor at the European Film Awards for his roles in both Gomorrah, by Matteo Garrone, and Il divo, after both ﬁlms premiered
at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2010, he received the award for Best Actor at the Rome Film Festival for A Quiet Life, by Claudius Cupellini.
Servillo continues to work in the theater and to run the Teatri Uniti in Naples. In June 2013, as part of the Year of Italian Culture, Servillo and thirty actors from the company traveled to Chicago for ﬁve performances of Eduardo de Filippo’s Inner Voices; the run sold out immediately, thanks to good reviews. The Chicago Tribune called Servillo “an extraordinary actor . . . a cross between Beckett, Chaplin, and Peter Sellers,” and the Chicago Sun-Times described him as “a sublime leading actor and director.