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Wild Blood

Wild Blood (Sanguepazzo)

Movie · 2008 · 3 people

Marco Tullio Giordana directed Wild Blood (original title Sanguepazzo, released in France as Une histoire italienne), a biographical drama made in 2008 as a French-Italian co-production. Shot in Italian, it runs a little under two and a half hours. Rai Cinema and Canal+ are among the production companies, and the film was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Leone Colonna, Enzo Ungari and Giordana wrote the script together.

The story draws on the real lives of Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida, two of the most popular screen actors of the Mussolini years. On 30 April 1945, five days after the country's liberation, two bloodied bodies are found just outside Milan: partisans have executed the pair. The film looks back at how they got there. Valenti and Ferida were stars of the regime-backed 'white telephone' films, and their lives on and off screen were associated with drugs, sexual excess and scandal, or so the rumours went. The question that drives the film is how much of that talk was true.

Monica Bellucci plays Luisa Ferida and Luca Zingaretti plays Osvaldo Valenti. The cast also includes Alessio Boni, Maurizio Donadoni, Luigi Lo Cascio, Luigi Diberti and Lavinia Longhi.

DirectorMarco Tullio Giordana
Production companyRai Cinema

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Cast

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Monica Bellucci Monica Bellucci Actor · 62 years old Luigi Diberti Luigi Diberti Actor · 87 years old Lavinia Longhi Lavinia Longhi Actor · 46 years old

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Through different eyes

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

The film draws on the real lives of Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida, two of the most popular actors of the Mussolini years, and opens with their execution by partisans on 30 April 1945. Its most interesting aspect is that it takes as its subject the stars of the regime-backed 'white telephone' films, in other words fascism's entertainment world. The question of how much of the talk of drugs, excess and scandal was true also invites reflection on how public opinion and propaganda fed each other in that era. The artist's ties to the regime, and the reckoning that came right after liberation: Marco Tullio Giordana handles this delicate ground within a biographical frame. Thought-provoking for anyone interested in Italian history.

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Marco Tullio Giordana chooses to tell a story whose ending we know from the start by looking back, a structure that shifts our curiosity from 'what will happen' to 'how did these two get here', and I think that's the right call. But a running time approaching two and a half hours sometimes struggles to carry that question; the middle stretch tends to sprawl and repeat itself. Monica Bellucci carries Luisa Ferida's star image well, and Luca Zingaretti gives Valenti the necessary unease. The ambition to separate rumour from truth is interesting, yet the film often uses that ambiguity less as a method than as an evasion. An ambitious but uneven period drama, screened at Cannes.

Family Viewer Asks whether the whole household can watch it; cares about humour and heart.

This isn't one for family viewing. The subject revolves around drugs, sexual scandal and an execution, and the story opens with two bloodied bodies. It runs close to two and a half hours, far too heavy and far too long for children. Adults interested in history should watch it on their own. Even with teenagers, it's worth being careful.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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