Carmelo Bene
The filmmaking career of Carmelo Bene (1937 - 2002) lasted from 1968 to 1973, six years out of a lengthy time spent in the theater that made Bene one of the most celebrated figures of the Italian avant-garde in the second half of the 20th century.
Bene first made a name for himself with a controversial production of Camus’ Caligula in Rome in 1959. Subsequent productions retained this sense of notoriety, and Bene (like Pasolini) quickly acquired a police record. Bene, however, would come to bemoan the controversy his work created, because it attracted an audience looking for shocks and titillation, while he himself was more concerned with reinventing the vocabulary of the theater: sets, gestures, texts.
Bene’s turn to cinema expanded that quest to reinvent. His films resist synopsis because, although they are often derived from narrative sources, Bene uses these sources against themselves and as a springboard for his critique of the stultifying traps of representation and interpretation. The films are wildly inventive and visually arresting on several levels: the performance styles of his actors, including eccentric movements, gestures and grimaces; the sets, costumes and makeup; the editing; and the use of the camera, with stable shots regularly punctuated by handheld camera work, extreme close ups and the occasional baroque use of zooms, dollies, cranes, elaborate pans and exaggerated camera angles. They resemble something like the work of Jack Smith crossed with the experimental Pasolini of Teorema and Pigsty.
One constant feature of Bene’s work is its satire of heterosexuality. The two sexes keep trying to communicate with each other, but always fail to do so. Bene’s work constantly deflates masculinist pretenses at mastery: his male characters tend to be hapless and often hysterical, while his female characters are alternately predatory and remote, and unknowable in either case. But this satire is merely the most visible form of Bene’s revolt against convention and communication. Over and over again in the films, everyday actions become hopelessly complicated or endlessly interrupted. His characters often end up staring quizzically offscreen or even into mirrors, as if they were no more sure than we are of the meaning of what they see. Indeed, identity and by extension agency seem to get suspended, along with meaning. What is left is glorious spectacle and enigmas for the eyes and ears: endless music; babbling, stuttering text; excessive and exciting images. – David Pendleton
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 6.285 |
Birthday | 1937-09-03 |
Place of Birth | Campi Salentina, Lecce, Italia |
Also Known As |
1967
Oedipus Rex
6.774/334
In pre-war Italy, a young couple have a baby boy. The father, however, is jealous of his son - and the scene moves to antiquity, where the baby is tak...
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Oedipus Rex
1981
Riccardo III
0/0
Riccardo III (da Shakespeare) secondo Carmelo Bene
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Riccardo III
1968
Our Lady of the Turks
6.4/26
A man (Carmelo Bene) can not bear to be part of society. He considers himself a "jerk" and so invents its own philosophy, which involves the destructi...
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Our Lady of the Turks
1970
Don Giovanni
5.1/7
Spectacular Italian comedy-drama directed by Carmelo Bene. The narrative follows how Don Giovanni tries to seduce a young woman who is manically searc...
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Don Giovanni
1970
Necropolis
4.385/13
Frankenstein's monster gropes towards the awareness that his mind is a universe; Attila, naked on a white horse, liberates his people from their ignom...
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Necropolis
1970
Red Hot Shot
4/3
Frank was removed from an investigation into Mac Brown, the owner of a pharmaceutical company, who was suspected of drug trafficking and illegal exper...
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Red Hot Shot
1969
Capricci
5.8/11
After a fight in their apartment, the story of a writer and a painter are divided. The writer is dedicated with his partner Manon to provoke continuou...
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Capricci
1971
Tre nel mille
6/1
A few days after the arrival of the year 1000, bearer of great misfortune according to the Prophets, the cavalryman Fortunato and two soldiers, Pannoc...
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Tre nel mille
1968
Hermitage
7.2/9
Hermitage, defined by Bene as "a rehearsal for lenses", beyond any literal rendition - its narrative trace comes from one of his anti-novels, Credito...
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Hermitage
1972
Salome
7/16
Salome is the daughter of the second wife of King Herod. The King is infatuated with her and, after she fails to seduce the prophet John The Baptist,...
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Salome
1967
Catch As Catch Can
5.5/5
Bob is a successful actor, but his career gets doomed by a strange phenomenon: the animal kingdom is taking on him!
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Catch As Catch Can
1973
One Hamlet Less
7.3/12
The "Hamlet" in this well-mounted Italian spoof is the Danish prince, not a small town or village. The movie irreverently draws on both the Shakespear...
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One Hamlet Less
1999
Pinocchio, ovvero lo spettacolo della Provvidenza
7.7/3
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Pinocchio, ovvero lo spettacolo della Provvidenza
1978
Amleto di Carmelo Bene (da Shakespeare a Laforgue)
6.5/6
An experimental video variation on Shakespeare's Hamlet.
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Amleto di Carmelo Bene (da Shakespeare a Laforgue)
1983
Manfred, versione per concerto in forma di oratorio
0/0
Drama by Lord George Byron, music by Robert Schumann. Filmed at Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 1979.
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Manfred, versione per concerto in forma di oratorio
1997
Macbeth Horror Suite
0/0
Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurre...
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Macbeth Horror Suite
1997
In-vulnerabilità d'Achille (tra Sciro e Ilio)
0/0
One of the last TV performances by Carmelo Bene, from Publio Papinio Stazio and Henrich Von Kleist, mixing the myth of the amazon Pentesilea with the...
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In-vulnerabilità d'Achille (tra Sciro e Ilio)
1990
Hommelette for Hamlet, operetta inqualificabile (da J. Laforgue)
4/2
A TV movie variation on Shakespeare's Hamlet. The movie is a part of Carmelo Bene's multi-medial project on Hamlet, also including the theatrical movi...
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Hommelette for Hamlet, operetta inqualificabile (da J. Laforgue)
1977
Bene! Quattro diversi modi di morire in versi: Majakovskij-Blok-Esènin-Pasternak
0/0
Performance shot in 1977, in which emblematic actor Carmelo Bene, in the charming reconstruction of the ruins of a theater on fire accompanied by the...
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Bene! Quattro diversi modi di morire in versi: Majakovskij-Blok-Esènin-Pasternak
1969
Umano Non Umano
6.5/8
Artists and poets meet in a dreamlike space between walks and performances.
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Umano Non Umano
1973
Ventriloquio
0/0
Adapted from the ninth chapter of the novel "Controcorrente" (1884) by Joris Karl Huysmans. Its narrative concentrates almost entirely on its principa...
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Ventriloquio
1990
Cos'è il teatro?!
0/0
Rome, December 12th - 15th 1990.
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Cos'è il teatro?!
1996
Ai Rotoli
0/0
A visit to the Rotoli cemetery in Palermo, while film director Carmelo Bene reads a fragment of Antonio Pizzuto's book "Signorina Rosina".
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Ai Rotoli
1998
Voce dei Canti
0/0
On the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth, Carmelo Bene returns to the verses of the poet from Recanati. In this film the most beautiful poems b...
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Voce dei Canti
2003
Lorenzaccio, al di là di de Musset e Benedetto Varchi
0/0
Video registration of Carmelo Bene's play 'Lorenzaccio, al di là di de Musset e Benedetto Varchi', performed in Florence in 1986.
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Lorenzaccio, al di là di de Musset e Benedetto Varchi
1996
Carmelo nei Canti Orfici
0/0
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Carmelo nei Canti Orfici
1965
Un'ora prima di Amleto, più Pinocchio
0/0
Backstage short documentary on Carmelo Bene’s theatre works Amleto and Pinocchio.
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Un'ora prima di Amleto, più Pinocchio
1966
Bis
0/0
In 1966, Bene presented The Pink and the Black, his successful theatrical adaptation of Matthew Gregory Lewis’ lurid Gothic novel from 1796. Experimen...
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Bis
1982
La poesia dimenticata
0/0
Carmelo Bene reads poems by Dino Campana
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La poesia dimenticata
1985
L'Adelchi di Alessandro Manzoni in forma di concerto
0/0
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L'Adelchi di Alessandro Manzoni in forma di concerto
2002
Otello o la deficienza della donna
1/1
Produced by RAI and filmed in the Turin studios in 1979 but edited years later, in 2001-2002, this is the staging for TV of Carmelo Bene's play of the...
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Otello o la deficienza della donna
1980
Modi di vivere - Giorgio Colli. Una conoscenza per cambiare la vita
0/0
Realized in 1980 for Rai 2, it recalls the main phases in the life of Giorgio Colli.
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Modi di vivere - Giorgio Colli. Una conoscenza per cambiare la vita
2023
The Last Days of Humanity
7.4/11
The panorama of human affairs encounters the “man with a movie camera”. His playground has no boundaries, his curiosity no limits. Characters, situati...
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The Last Days of Humanity
2022
BENE! Vita di Carmelo, la macchina attoriale
7.5/1
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BENE! Vita di Carmelo, la macchina attoriale
1967
Carmelo Bene, il canto d'amore di Alfred J. Prufrock
0/0
Carmelo Bene read a text by T. S. Eliot
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