Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part II)

Mudar de Vida

My favourite things: Personal recommendations and favourite discoveries from among the more than 500 films awaiting you at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. Part one here. – EK

11

Anémic cinéma

Dir: Marcel Duchamp | France, 1926

The only film directed by Marcel Duchamp – the early Dadaist, later Surrealist, and, much later, solitary painter and chess player – this classic of the weird consists of two alternating sets of images: one of rotating and interlocking geometric forms, amounting to a kind of cinematic pop art avant la lettre; the other of words and sentences inscribed on spinning discs. The film offers an opportunity to confront one of cinema’s most fundamental questions: what are space and time in film? The restored 35mm print may contain the answer.

12

Phantom of the Rue Morgue

Dir: Roy Del Ruth | USA, 1954

A fantastically brazen and lewd 3-D horror film based on Poe’s short story.

13

L'innocente

Dir: Luchino Visconti | Italy, 1976

A brand-new 4K restoration of the final film by the Italian master, who is the subject of his own strand at this year’s festival. Laurence Schifano describes the film as Visconti’s “announcement of his own [imminent] death.”

14

Young Man with Ideas

Dir: Mitchell Leisen | USA, 1952

One of Leisen’s least-known yet finest films. Glenn Ford’s timid office worker receives a glorious, characteristically understated performance. A favourite of Manny Farber’s.

15

Whistle Down the Wind

Dir: Bryan Forbes | UK, 1961

BFI will bring a brand-new 35mm print of this almost British New Wave film to the festival. The story, set in rural England, is about three siblings who discover a stranger hiding in their barn. They come to believe he is Jesus resurrected.

16

Liebe macht blind

Dir: Lothar Mendes | Germany, 1925

A lost film now found (and restored) in Chile – much as the lost-and-found John Ford last year. This comedy stars a surprisingly un-creepy Conrad Veidt as a psychiatrist who falls in love with a married woman.

17

La venganza

Dir: Juan Antonio Bardem | Spain, 1958

Perhaps my favourite Bardem film, and the work of a painter. You will see Spanish wheat fields in colour in a film so subversive that it is hard to believe it was made under the Franco dictatorship.

18

Ball of Fire

Dir: Howard Hawks | USA, 1941

We screened this in 2015 as part of a jazz-on-film sidebar. It returns to celebrate Barbara Stanwyck as Sugarpuss O'Shea, who teaches the shy, absent-minded linguist Gary Cooper the meaning of boogie. And when Coop thinks he knows it all, she introduces him to the more difficult woogie part.

19

Mudar de Vida [Change of Life]

Dir: Paulo Rocha | Portugal, 1966

“One of the freest and most secret films in Portuguese cinema.” — Pedro Costa

20

Tarva yeghanakner [Seasons of the Year]

Dir: Artavazd Pelechian | Armenia, 1975

Only half an hour long and already the greatest film ever made. Presented in a new L’Immagine Ritrovata restoration.