Michele Placido Filmography

Sorrow of Mme Schneider

Actors: Anna Geislerová, Nik Xhelilaj, Bára Stepánová, Tomas Topfer, Michele Placido

Synopsis: This feature marks a historical first, as the premier co-production between Albania and Czechoslovakia. As a coming-of-age-themed roman-a-clef by helmer Piro Milkani (who co-directed with his son Eno Milkani), the film's autobiographical quotient recalls both the Apu and the Antoine Doinel series. Read More

Il Caimano

Actors: Silvio Orlando, Margherita Buy, Daniele Rampello, Giacomo Passarelli, Jasmine Trinca

Synopsis: Controversial Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berluscoi is just one of the targets of writer and director Nanni Moretti's satiric focus in this sharp comedy-drama. In the 1970's, Bruno (Silvio Orlando) was one of Italy's most daring and best-respected filmmakers, while his wife Paola (Margherita Read More

The Goodbye Kiss

Actors: Alessio Boni, Michele Placido, Isabella Ferrari, Alina Nedela, Carlo Cecchi

Synopsis: A fugitive from justice discovers he has to leave his principles behind to come out of the underground in this drama from Italy. Giorgio (Alessio Boni) was a member of a radical left-wing group who was forced to flee the country when a bomb he planted unexpectedly killed an innocent party. After Read More

Crime Novel

Crew: Director

Actors: Kim Rossi Stuart, Anna Mouglalis, Pierfrancesco Favino, Claudio Santamaria, Stefano Accorsi

Synopsis: Giancarlo De Cataldo's best-selling tale about three lifelong friends effectively take control of organized crime in modern-day Rome comes to the screen in this sweeping crime drama from director Michele Placido. Libanese (Pierfrancesco Favino) is the cold-hearted leader of a juvenile delinquent Read More

L'Odore Del Sangue

Actors: Michele Placido, Fanny Ardant, Giovanna Giuliani, Sergio Tramonti

Ovunque sei

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Il Posto dell'anima

Actors: Michele Placido, Silvio Orlando, Claudio Santamaria, Paola Cortellesi, Imma Piro

Synopsis: Italian filmmaker directs Il Posto Dell'Anima (The Soul's Place), a drama about a group of dedicated union workers. Set in the small mountain town of Campolaro, the film follows Carair tire factory co-workers Salvatore (Michele Placido), Antonio (Silvio Orlando), and Mario (Claudio Santamaria). Read More

Searching For Paradise

Actors: Susan May Pratt, Chris Noth, Jeremy Davies

Synopsis: Gilda (Susan May Pratt of Center Stage) is a confused young woman, obsessed with iconoclastic actor Michael De Santis (Chris Noth). She repeatedly watches a tape of De Santis being interviewed by an unctuous, James Lipton-type talk show host (played by legendary indie producer's rep John Pierson). Read More

Un Viaggio Chiamato Amore

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Laura Morante, Stefano Accorsi, Alessandro Haber, Galatea Ranzi, Diego Ribon

Synopsis: Italian director Michele Placido explores the legendary -- yet brief -- affair that occurred between writers Dino Campana and Sibilla Aleramo in the early part of the 20th century in his 2002 romantic drama, A Journey of Love. Early Italian feminist Sibilla Aleramo (played by Laura Morante) Read More

Liberate i Pesci

Actors: Laura Morante, Francesco Paolantoni, Michele Placido, Lunetta Savino, Emilio Solfrizzi

Synopsis: Cristina Comencini follows up her critically acclaimed 1998 opus Marriage (a funny though sensitive look at marriage in modern life) with this star-crossed comedy. Mafioso Michele Verrio (Michele Placido) has both a wife (Angelica Ippolito) and a long-suffering mistress, Lunetta (Lunetta Savino). Read More

Panni Sporchi

Actors: Michele Placido, Mariangela Melato, Paolo Bonacelli, Alessandro Haber, Marina Confalone

Synopsis: Panni Sporchi is a satiric comedy from veteran director Mario Monicelli about the public and private squabbles of a family-owned cough drop company. The Razzi family's business has been the economic backbone of a small Northern Italian city for years, but when Amedo (Paolo Bonacelli), the aging Read More

Un Uomo Perbene

Actors: Michele Placido, Stefano Accorsi, Mariangela Melato, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Leo Gullotta

Synopsis: Based on a true-life court case that rocked Italy during the 1980s, this film recounts the tribulations of Enzo Tortora, a popular television host who was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

The Nanny

Actors: Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Maya Sansa, Jacqueline Lustig, Piergiorgio Bellocchio

Synopsis: One of the masters of Italian cinema, Marco Bellocchio, who has made his name with political films, has been continuing his work with mostly adaptations from literature. La Balia, inspired by a novella of Luigi Pirandello, continues this tradition. The period costume drama takes place during a Read More

Le Plaisir

Actors: Vincent Cassel, Francois Renaud, Julie Gayet, Mathieu Kassovitz, Caroline Cellier

Synopsis: Director Nicolas Boukhrief, who debuted with the 1995 Up Yours, returned with this French-Italian-Luxembourgian-Belgian drama in seven segments. In a variation on Schnitzler's La Ronde, each segment introduces a character seen in the next episode: In the opening, a murderer strangles a woman. A Read More

Del Perduto Amore

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Rocco Papaleo, Enrico Lo Verso, Rino Cassano

Synopsis: Actor-turned-director Michele Placido directed this Italian political drama inspired by Liliana Rossi, a crusading woman from Puglia, Placido's hometown. Priest Don Gerardo (Placido), at age 50, reflects on his life, looking back to 1958, his childhood, and the discipline of his father (Fabrizio Bentivoglio Read More

La Lupa

Synopsis: The title creature is not a canine but rather a passionate, strong-willed Sicilian woman who turns her home village on its ear with her constant battles against sexual repression. This sensual Italian drama chronicles some of La Lupa's seductive hunts. Her prey includes a strapping young buck just Read More

Poliziotti

Synopsis: Two policemen, one experienced with scores to settle, the other new and vulnerable, provide the impetus for this arresting action movie set in Italy. The story begins with a shoot out in a raunchy disco. There undercover cop, Lazarus, kills three crooks. His reward is a transfer to a desk job in Read More

Un Eroe Borghese

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The ruination of Michel Sindona, a powerful Italian financier with underworld connections, is chronicled in this historical drama. The tale begins in 1974 after Sindona's banking empire has just collapsed. The state sends in Milanese attorney Giorgio Ambrosoli to supervise the official Read More

Lamerica

Actors: Enrico Lo Verso, Michele Placido, Carmelo Di Mazzarelli, Piro Milkani

Synopsis: An opportunistic Italian swindler heads to Albania and finds himself involved with the life of an impoverished local in this somber political drama. Gino (Enrico Lo Verso) and his partner in crime Fiore (Michele Placido) come to Albania with a money-making scheme designed to capitalize on the Read More

Padre E Figlio

Actors: Michele Placido, Stefano Dionisi, Enrica Origa, Carlotta Jazzetti, Giusy Consoli

Synopsis: The relationship between a working class father and son provides the focus of this Italian drama set in Genoa. Corrado works as a night watchman on the Genoan harbor. His wife works at a dry cleaners. He is close to retiring, but finds he misses the factory where he spent his youth. He gets his Read More

Giovanni Falcone

Actors: Michele Placido, Anna Bonaiuto, Giancarlo Giannini, Massimo Bonetti

Synopsis: This political docudrama follows the real-life circumstances that led to the assassination of the anti-Mafia crusading judge Giovanni Falcone (Michele Placido) and his wife, in addition to the assassination of another such judge. A number of high-ranking Italian public figures were under Read More

Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel, Part 1

Actors: Julie Carmen, Dennis Farina, John Glover

Synopsis: Meticulously researched and elaborately produced, the two-part TV movie Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel is based on a true story. In addition, to quote the original print ads, "This is the one we won!" Incorruptible agents of the DEA declare war against Colombia's Medelin drug lords. To undermine Read More

Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel, Part 2

Synopsis: The expensively assembled two-part TV movie Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel is the true story of a successful "bust" engineered by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Part One detailed an undercover attack on the Colombian drug lords' refineries (see separate entry for further details). In part Read More

Le Amiche Del Cuore

Crew: Director

Actors: Asia Argento, Michele Placido, Enrico Lo Verso, Carlotta Natoli, Claudia Pandolfi

Synopsis: Without any uncomfortably explicit scenes, this film clearly shows the toll that a fifteen-year-old girl's incestuous relationship with her outwardly serene father takes on her. When Sabrina goes on a date with a boy, she becomes violently ill when the unwary lad tries to kiss her. Her father is Read More

Afganskiy Izlom

Actors: Michele Placido, Tatyana Dogileva, Mikhail Zhigalov, Filipp Yankovsky, Alexei Serebryakov

Synopsis: For almost a decade, the U.S.S.R. was involved in a long and apparently pointless war in Afghanistan, which began with an effort to keep a communist puppet government in power and ended with the huge Russian war machine slinking out of the primitive country in disgrace. The war may have been the Read More

Pummaro

Crew: Director

Actors: Gerardo Scala

Synopsis: In this drama, Kwaku (Thywill Abraham Kwaku Amenya), a Ghanian medical student in Italy, plumbs the depths of Italian racism as he searches the country from top to bottom for his missing brother Pummaro, or "Tomato", who has been working at a menial job to support him in medical school and to Read More

Mery per Sempre

Actors: Michele Placido, Claudio Amendola, Francesco Benigno, Roberto Mariano

Synopsis: Forever Mary was based on Aurelio Grimaldi's novel Mery Per Siempre, which was also the original Italian title of this powerfully gripping film. Michele Placido plays an idealistic teacher who goes to work at the Rosapina School, a hellhole boy's reformatory. Though almost overwhelmed by the Read More

Big Business

Actors: Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin, Fred Ward, Edward Herrmann, Michele Placido

Synopsis: Thanks to a mix-up at birth, two sets of twins are separated and grow up in radically different social circles. The four baby girls grow up to be Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin-and Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin. One of the Midlers is a ruthless New York CEO, while one of the Tomlins is her air-headed Read More

Private Affairs

Synopsis: In this Italian romantic drama the beautiful mistress of an internationally recognized surgeon becomes insanely jealous when he suddenly takes up with a young swimming teacher. Soon she begins engineering elaborate plots to get him back. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Y'a Bon Les Blancs

Actors: Maruschka Detmers, Michele Placido, Juan Diego, Michel Piccoli, Jean-François Stévenin

Synopsis: A European humanitarian organization tries to bring relief to the famine-stricken Sahel region of North Africa in this satirical comedy. The convoy of five trucks is victimized by rebel guerillas and marauding tribes and is soon lost in the desert. When two party members try to leave, they end up Read More

Ti Presento Un'amica

Actors: Giuliana de Sio, Michele Placido, Kate Capshaw, David Naughton, Luca Barbareschi

Synopsis: A group of characters come in and out of each other's lives in this Italian sex comedy. Nagra (Giuliana De Sio) is an ambitious journalist who is not opposed to sleeping her way to the top. Brunetta (Kate Capshaw) is victimized by her lover Lionel (Michele Placido) when he dumps her for young Read More

Notte d'Estate Con Profilo Greco, Occhi a Mandorla, e Odore di Basilico

Actors: Mariangela Melato, Michele Placido, Roberto Herlitzka, Massimo Wertmuller

Synopsis: Mariangela Melato plays a female industrialist subjected to a kidnapping. Tired of watching her "class" being persecuted, Melato wreaks vengeance by abducting the head kidnapper, Sicilian bandit Michele Placido. She forces the gang to pony up $100,000, but the crooks manage to have the last laugh. Read More

Grandi Magazzini

Actors: Alessandro Haber, Laura Antonelli, Enrico Montesano, Paolo Villaggio, Nino Manfredi

Synopsis: Perhaps taking a cue from the popular 1970s Brit television comedy "Are You Being Served?," this Italian department store comedy is a series of skits involving customers and store personnel from several departments. In one skit, Elena (Laura Antonelli) and her husband the personnel director, are Read More

Pizza Connection

Actors: Michele Placido, Simona Cavallari, Ida Di Benedetto

Synopsis: The real-life tragedies wrought by organized crime are mirrored in this fast-paced, suspense-filled action thriller by Damiano Damiani about Mario (Michele Placido), a young man from a Sicilian family who runs a pizza place in Brooklyn. All seems normal until Mario is called to Palermo by the Read More

Dear Maestro

Les Amants Terribles

Actors: Stanko Molnar, Jean-Noel Picq, Manuela Gourary, Michele Placido

Synopsis: Not to be confused with another French film of the same title -- a 1936 adaptation of Noel Coward's Private Lives, this standard romantic drama focuses on three different couples who happen to come together in a small hotel in Rome and play out their differences in that setting. The couples are Read More

La Piovra [TV Series]

Actors: Michele Placido, Barbara de Rossi, François Perier, Florinda Bolkan

Sciopen

Actors: Michele Placido, Tino Schrinzi, Giuliana de Sio, Lino Troisi, Adalberto Maria Merli

Synopsis: A small town has its placid waters rocked when a 120-piece orchestra is slated to visit on a regular basis to offer special concerts to the community and its environs. The honor of conducting the orchestra seems like it will fall to Francesco (Michele Placido), the community's most Read More

Les Ailes de la Colombe

Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Dominique Sanda, Michele Placido, Jean Sorel, Loleh Bellon

Synopsis: Very loosely based on the plot of Henry James' Wing of the Dove, this film resets the story about two lovers trying to steal everything from a dying millionairess, by putting it in the late-20th century instead of late-19th century; it has the lovers be a French prostitute and Italian low-life Read More

Three Brothers

Actors: Philippe Noiret, Michele Placido, Charles Vanel, Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Andréa Ferréol

Synopsis: Director Francesco Rosi earned a Best Foreign Film Academy Award nomination for his drama Tre Fratelli (Three Brothers), an adaptation of a work by Andrei Platonov. When the matriarch of an Italian family dies, the husband brings his three boys, each of whom are facing difficult personal problems Read More

Cargo

Actors: Michele Placido, Corinne Dacla, Jean-Pierre Bagot

Fontamara

Actors: Michele Placido, Antonella Murgia, Ida Di Benedetto, Imma Piro, Antonio Orlando

Synopsis: Fontamara is a tiny Italian village during the Mussolini years. The deprivations of the War are hardly anything new to the citizens of Fontamara, since they've been in a state of poverty ever since the city was founded. Nonetheless, the townsfolk are supremely resourceful, and as such they tend to Read More

Salto nel Vuoto

Actors: Michel Piccoli, Anouk Aimée, Michele Placido, Gisella Burinato

Synopsis: The old Guy De Maupassant story The Devil would seem to be the springboard for the Italian-made Leap Into the Void. Michel Piccoli plays an Italian jurist whose sister Anouk Aimee is a bit "light in the belfry". Piccoli entreats Michele Placido to convince the awkward Aimee to kill herself. The Read More

Sabato, Domenica E Venerdi

Actors: Barbara Bouchet, Edwige Fenech, Michele Placido, Milena Vukotic, Adriano Celentano, Lino Banfi

Synopsis: This Italian anthology uses the standard sex comedy format but lacks the subtle social commentary present in its predecessors. In the "Saturday" episode, a modest accountant is sent by his boss to entertain a visiting Japanese engineer who turns out to be a pretty woman (Edwige Fenech). In the Read More

Il Prato

Actors: Michele Placido, Saverio Marconi, Isabella Rossellini, Giulio Brogi

Synopsis: The Italian "directing siblings" Paolo and Vittorio Taviani were responsible for this intriguing slice of working-class life. Saverio Marconi plays Giovanni, a Milan youth who heads to poverty-plagued Tuscany to sell some property. Giovanni falls in with several smalltown "rebels", including clerk Read More

Letti Selvaggi

Actors: Ursula Andress, Laura Antonelli, Sylvia Kristel, Monica Vitti, Orazio Orlando

Synopsis: In this standard but toned-down sex comedy, seven different vignettes starring female leads like Monica Vitti, Ursula Andress, Laura Antonelli, and Sylvia Kristel portray various questionable exploits headed by women with minds of their own. Antonelli, for example, plays a dynamic businesswoman Read More

Ernesto

Actors: Martin Halm, Michele Placido, Virna Lisi

Synopsis: Ernesto (Martin Hahn) is a young Italian Jew of the early 1900s who works in his uncle's factory in Trieste. Not entirely secure with his sexual orientation, Ernesto enters into an affair with one of his uncle's employees--then experiments with heterosexuality, courtesy of an obliging prostitute. Read More

Un Uomo in Ginocchio

Corleone

Actors: Giuliano Gemma, Claudia Cardinale, Francisco Rabal, Stefano Satta Flores, Michele Placido

Synopsis: In this fast-paced action/drama, a downtrodden farmer turns to crime and quickly rises to prominence in the Sicilian mafia. Along the way, he learns the importance of political connections and of having legitimate businesses to funnel ill-gotten cash into. Determined to do away with the old and Read More

Io Sono Mia

Actors: Stefania Sandrelli, Maria Schneider, Michele Placido

Synopsis: Giacinto (Michele Placido) has taken his wife Vanina (Stefania Sandrelli) along on his scuba-diving trip, mostly for the purpose of keeping his vacation cottage clean. At first, Vanina doesn't mind much, but she encounters Suna (Maria Schneider), a wealthy feminist, who encourages her to go out Read More

La Ragazza Dal Pigiama Giallo

Actors: Ray Milland, Dalila di Lazzaro, Michele Placido, Howard Ross, Ramiro Oliveros

Synopsis: The patient and non-pugilistic methods used by Inspector Simpson (Ray Milland) finally help him discover who killed the unidentified woman whose body was found on a Sydney beach. She was wearing only a scrap of pajamas, and her face was mutilated beyond recognition. The girl, an immigrant Read More

Il Casotto

Actors: Jodie Foster, Paolo Stoppa, Ugo Tognazzi, Mariangela Melato

Synopsis: This farce features Jodi Foster, Catherine Deneuve, and Ugo Tognazzi. Tersina (Foster) is a pregnant teen whose parents want her married, pronto. Cerquette (Tognazzi) is an insurance man who wears a chastity belt to keep him from ravishing the two women he desires. A pair of bachelors liven up the Read More

Kleinhoff Hotel

Synopsis: A co-production between Italy and Monaco, this steamy study of sexual obsession was directed by Carlo Lizzani (Crazy Joe). It takes place in a Berlin hotel where Penthouse pet Corinne Clery is an architect's wife who becomes overwhelmed by her attraction to a leftist guerrilla (Bruce Robinson), a Read More

L'Agnese Va a Morire

Marcia Trionfale

Actors: Franco Nero, Miou-Miou, Michele Placido, Patrick Dewaere

Synopsis: The drawbacks and difficulties of military life are explored in this film. Paolo Passeri (Michele Placido) is a college graduate, somewhat spoiled, somewhat effete, who finds himself in an officer training program under the stern martinet, Captain Asciutto (Franco Nero). He gradually becomes Read More

Divina Creatura

Actors: Laura Antonelli, Terence Stamp, Marcello Mastroianni

Synopsis: A beautiful woman (Laura Antonelli) is engaged to one man, but has an affair with both a young nobleman (Terence Stamp) and later his cousin (Marcello Mastroianni). This Italian production, also known as Divina Creatura, appears in both subtitled and dubbed versions. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Sins Within the Family

Romanzo Popolare

Actors: Ornella Muti, Michele Placido, Ugo Tognazzi

Synopsis: Northern Italian Giulio (Ugo Tognazzi) thought himself very broad-minded about things like marital fidelity until he married a much younger woman (Ornella Muti). Now he suffers the beginning pangs of jealousy when he and his wife become friends with young Giovanni (Michele Placido), a Sicilian who Read More

Processo Per Direttissima

Dio Mio, Come Sono Caduta In Basso

Synopsis: Frustrated desire motivates the Sicilian newlyweds in this improbable sex comedy when they are discovered to be brother and sister just before their marriage can be consummated. They receive this news in a very unwelcome telegram, and spend much of the rest of the film trying to alleviate their Read More

Teresa la Ladra

Actors: Isa Danieli, Monica Vitti

Synopsis: Teresa the Thief is a true story set during World War II. The eponymous Teresa, played by Monica Vitti, is an Italian woman who is determined to survive by any means. Thievery not only becomes a way of life for Teresa, but her claim to fame as well. Stefano Satto Flores and Isa Danieli costar in Read More