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THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASS

Part Seven
EROTIC AND COMMERCIAL EXPERIMENTS

Jump ahead to:

Miranda

(1985)

This was obviously an attempt to capitalize on the success of The Key, and it worked! The Key had a depth and complexity that an artist can attain perhaps once in a lifetime — if he’s lucky. Miranda doesn’t even try to come close, but it’s certainly charming. The sex-film industry concentrates on corporate-ladder-climbing hard-bodied early-twentyish kids with only one thing on their mind — and it has a propensity to present sex as a freakshow. Miranda, on the other hand, deals with ordinary-looking and more mature folk in ordinary situations, and presents sex as natural and unsensational, as a positive expression of affection. The film is filled with wonderful set pieces and vignettes. In the early 1950s innkeeper Miranda hopes that her MIA husband Gino will one day return. Still in the town are leftovers from the war — American servicemen, some young French women, and various other international travelers, all of whom are at complete ease with one another. Scenes of a country sunrise, singing at the inn, dancing at a picnic, dashing about town in a motorcycle, evoke a wistfulness that is rare in movies. And the bit where Miranda and her friend Leda fantasize about what the guys on the beach look like without their swimming trunks is a scream. If you’re attuned to quiet, understated, leisurely, unpretentious entertainment, this one’s for you.

Would you like to read the play this was based on? I just discovered, a few moments ago, that you can! Click here to read the original Italian edition with grammatical endnotes to help the English-speaking student along, or click here to read the English translation by Clifford Bax. Now, tell me, how did we survive prior to the Internet?

REVENGE: At the end of the film, on the monument to those departed in battle, in addition to the name of Miranda’s husband (Gino Rostagni) are the following names: Enrico Bottoli, Luciano Maffezzoli, Stefano Panizzi, Marino Rasoli, Guido Ravasi, [???] Sanfelici, S[???] Scaroni, Pavel Soliani, Cesare Spegni, Aldo Orlandelli, Tullio Cosulich, G. Rondi Don, and Callisto Kezich). In the supplemental section of the American DVD released by Cult Epics, Brass explained that three of those names (Rondi, Cosulich, Kezich) are plays upon the names of critics who had lambasted The Key. It’s nice to have the last word, isn’t it?

Five cameras to shoot Malisa Longo’s lengthy striptease, and this is all that’s left of it
We joined the Navy to dance	A scene taken directly from Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees — family connections, you see
	Jean-René Lemoine (in the white suite), one of the most appealing actors ever to grace a cinema screen. He pops up again in Così fan tutte.

CURIOSITY: A sequence of sound effects during the ice-cream-parlor scene is lifted from NEROSUBIANCO.

The original announcement of the only authorized DVD edition of Miranda, but this artwork seems to have been rejected in favor of the design on the right. The notation on some official sites that the DVD is 1.85:1 rather than 1.66:1 is dead wrong, so don’t worry. (Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)	The same as the video on the left, but this is definitely the artwork that was approved and actually issued on 11 October 2006. (Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)
A box set, which was to be released on 6 December 2006. Sadly, plans were changed, and instead we’ll get the box set to the right. (Region-2 PAL DVDs, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)	This is the box set that will actually be released on 6 December 2006. (Region-2 PAL DVDs, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)

The police return from La vacanza to gun down Jack in Miranda
Arrow DVD “Full-Screen” but needlessly column-boxed to about 1.25:1.	Cult Epics DVD 1.85:1 with a black border on the bottom.	Raro DVD 1.66:1 with black borders on the sides. All the action is there, but the image is so overly color-corrected that the sky disappears.

ANICA — Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Multimediali

Giovanni Bertolucci presenta
un film di Tinto Brass

Miranda

Copyright © 1985 by San Francisco Film srl

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