Il Generale Della Rovere to be screened at MoMA’s 10th anniversary International Festival of Film Preservation

Posted October 13, 2012 by Waffles F. Creamcheese in Events

RaroVideo and The Museum Of Modern Art in New York are teaming up for not one, but two screenings of Roberto Rossellini’s award winning 1959 WWII epic Il Generale Della Rovere for the 10th anniversary of MoMA’s International Festival of Film Preservation.. In addition to this being the first time it has been screened in the good ol’ US of A, it’s also the first time that it has been presented since its premiere at the 1959 Venice Film Festival where it won the coveted Golden Lion Award (for best picture). The print being shown is a brand new 35mm copy (sponsored by the MoMA film archive) painstakingly restored by La Cineteca Nazionale, Rome, and RaroVideo in collaboration with Il Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin, and La Biennale di Venezia and is the original cut featuring 10 additional minutes of footage unseen in the original Italian theatrical release.

Starring Rossellini’s friend and fellow Neorealist film maker, Vittorio De Sica, Il Generale Della Rovere is the story of a man, Victorio Emanuele Bardone, who is impersonating an Italian Colonel during WWII in order to cons money out of the families of those jailed by Nazis. He then gets busted by the Gestapo and is told they won’t kill him if he impersonates General Della Rovere, the leader of the resistance, whom the Nazis had just killed, as they need Rovere to identify another resistance leader in a Nazi political prison.

Both screenings are open to the public, the first on Monday, October 22nd, will feature an introduction to the film by Raro video President, Stefano Curti, and takes place at 6:45 pm in Theater 1, T1. The second screening will be Friday, October 26 at 4:00pm in Theater 2, T2. The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019. Be there or be square.

Raro Video will also be releasing the restored version of Il Generale Della Rovere for your home collection in November complete with many special features. I’m stoked, aren’t you?