The Album
From the Cam Sugar journal:
“In 1975 Ennio Morricone composed the music for Storie di Vita e di Malavita, the film with which director Carlo Lizzani followed up his investigation on youth deviance and crime in Milan. The opus documented the city’s lowlives, the malavita, based on a reportage by Marisa Rusconi, a pioneering author and journalist who could seamlessly move from investigative to lifestyle and fashion journalism, as witnessed by her work with the likes of Panorama, L’Espresso and Vogue.
As the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone finally resurfaced in its entirety from the CAM Sugar archive with its first-ever vinyl release on the occasion of Record Store Day, photographer Fabrizio Vatieri reimagines the film’s iconography in the streets of contemporary Milan.”
The Film:
Aka “The Teenage Prostitution Racket,” 1975’s “Storie Di Vita e Malavita” was directed by Carlo Lizzani, who also directed the excellent Italian crime picture “Wake Up & Kill” aka “Svegliati e Uccidi,” the Spaghetti Western “The Hills Run Red,” and the political drama “Mussolini: Ultimo Atto,” all of which, like this picture, feature stunning scores by the Maestro.
Here is the synopsis of the film from the Amazon product description:
“Occupying a creepy cinematic netherworld somewhere between Eurocrime and erotica, Carlo Lizzani’s Teenage Prostitution Racket (Storie di Vita e Malavita) is an unapologetically sordid film that explores the troubled sexuality of a series of young women coming of age in 1970s Milan. Beginning on the outskirts of town, where a peasant woman pimps her thirteen-year-old companion to passing truck drivers, Lizzani s film worms its way into the metropolis, where the oldest profession, in its varied forms, is dramatized in a series of interlocking narratives. A working-class girl is lured into prostitution by a boyfriend; a rich girl uses sex to rebel against her wealthy parents; a photographer s model discovers sex is an unspoken requirement of her job; an ex-convent girl becomes a nymphomaniac after being seduced at school; an independent hooker relies on a vicious dog to defend her against a gang of mobsters. As sensational as the episodes may be, Lizzani doesn’t reduce the characters to mere sex objects. Instead, he endows each woman with enough depth that even the most voyeuristic viewer can t help but become invested in her struggles to survive, and share her resentment toward the shady characters who try to control her. Special Features: Documentary (Italian language with English subtitles) | fotogallery | Cut scenes.”
The Director:
Carlo Lizzani’s bio from Wikipedia:
“Born in Rome, before World War II Lizzani worked as a scenarist on such films as Roberto Rossellini‘s Germany Year Zero, Alberto Lattuada‘s The Mill on the Po (both 1948), and Giuseppe De Santis‘ Bitter Rice (1949), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story.
After directing documentaries, he debuted as a feature director with the admired World War II drama Achtung! Banditi! (1951). Respected for his awarded drama Chronicle of Poor Lovers (1954), he has proven a solid director of genre films, notably crime films such as The Violent Four (1968) and Crazy Joe (1974) or crime-comedy Roma Bene(1971). His film L’oro di Roma (1961) examined events around the final deportation of the Jews of Rome and the Roman roundup, grande razzia, of October 1943.[2] For his 1968 film Bandits in Milan, he won a David di Donatello award as best director and a Nastro d’Argento award for best screenplay.[3]
Lizzani worked frequently for Italian television in the 1980s and supervised the Venice International Film Festival for four editions, from 1979 to 1982.[4] In 1994 Lizzani was a member of the jury at the Berlin Film Festival.[5]
For his 1996 film Celluloide, which deals with the making of Rome, Open City, he received another David di Donatello award for his screenplay.[3]
While preparing for the film L’orecchio del potere (“The Ear of Power”, a project he cultivated since the late nineties with the title Operazione Appia Antica), Lizzani committed suicide in Rome at the age of 91, when he jumped from the balcony of his apartment in Via dei Gracchi on 5 October 2013.[1] On 10 October his coffin was transferred to a room in the Capitol that was set up as a funeral home, and the following day the civil funeral was held. Later, his body was transferred to the Flaminian cemetery for cremation.”
Earlier Album Release:
Posters:
Links:
Listen to “Sotto Controllo” from Morricone’s score for “Storie Di Vita e Malavita” here:
Purchase a copy of the vinyl on Discogs here:
Watch the complete film for free on YouTube here:
Purchase the blu-ray on Amazon here:
