A Pure Formality
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A Pure Formality
Plot
The sweet sentimental gauze of director Giuseppe Tornatore's international hit Cinema Paradiso (1988) is nowhere to be found in this dark, Kafkaesque crime thriller that takes place, stage play-style, mostly in the confines of one room. Gerard Depardieu stars as Onoff, a famed author who has become a recluse in recent years, publishing nothing. Late one night he is picked up by police officers, who find him running across the French countryside in the rain, breathless and apparently suffering from short-term memory loss. A murder has been committed in the nearby woods, and suspecting Onoff's involvement, the authorities detain him at a leaky, dark command post to await the arrival of an inspector (Roman Polanski), ironically a fan of Onoff's work, who will interrogate his subject and try to arrive at the truth. Una Pura Formalita (1994) was produced simultaneously with Polanski's Death and the Maiden (1994), another film with a stage-bound quality featuring a long, stormy night's interrogation in a single room. ~ Karl Williams, RoviCast
- Gérard Depardieu - Onoff
- Roman Polanski - Inspector
- Sergio Rubini - Andre, the Young Policeman
- Nicola di Pinto - Captain
- Paolo Lombardi - Marshall
Credit
Jean-Louis Livi - Associate Producer, Alexandre Mnouchkine - Associate Producer, Beatrice Bordone - Costume Designer, Giuseppe Tornatore - Director, Giuseppe Tornatore - Editor, Bruno Altissimi - Executive Producer, Claudio Saraceni - Executive Producer, Ennio Morricone - Composer (Music Score), Andrea Crisanti - Production Designer, Blasco Giurato - Cinematographer, Giuseppe Giglietti - Production Manager, Mario Cecchi Gori - Producer, Vittorio Cecchi Gori - Producer, Pierre Gamet - Sound/Sound Designer, Giuseppe Giglietti - Supervisor/Manager, Pascal Quignard - Screenwriter, Giuseppe Tornatore - Screenwriter| A Punta de Pistola (1998 Film), A Pug's Life: The Dogumentary (2003 Film) | |
| A Pushkin Trilogy (1986 Film), A Pyromaniac's Love Story (1995 Film) |
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A Pure Formality
| A Pure Formality | |
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| Directed by | Giuseppe Tornatore |
| Produced by | Bruno Altissimi Mario Cecchi Gori Vittorio Cecchi Gori Jean-Louis Livi Alexandre Mnouchkine Claudio Saraceni |
| Written by | Giuseppe Tornatore Pascal Quignard |
| Starring | Gérard Depardieu Roman Polanski Sergio Rubini Nicola Di Pinto Tano Cimarosa Paolo Lombardi Maria Rosa Spagnolo |
| Music by | Ennio Morricone |
| Cinematography | Blasco Giurato |
| Editing by | Giuseppe Tornatore |
| Release date(s) | May 18, 1994 (France) January 12, 1995 (Germany) March 30, 1995 (Spain) |
| Running time | 108 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | French |
A Pure Formality (Italian: Una Pura Formalità) is a 1994 thriller film directed and written by Giuseppe Tornatore. It stars Gérard Depardieu as a reclusive writer and Roman Polanski as a police detective.
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Contents
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Plot summary
Depardieu's character is Onoff, a famous writer who is now a recluse. The Inspector (Polanski) is suspicious when Onoff is brought into the station one night, disoriented and suffering a kind of amnesia. As the head of an isolated, rural police station the Inspector tries to establish events through careful interrogation and deduction. By painstaking inquiry, he clears up a mysterious killing and brings the writer a new and strange realisation.
Cast
- Gérard Depardieu - Onoff
- Roman Polanski - Inspector
- Sergio Rubini - Andre, the Young Policeman
- Nicola Di Pinto - Captain
- Tano Cimarosa - Servant
- Paolo Lombardi - Marshall
- Maria Rosa Spagnolo - Paula
- Alberto Sironi
- Giovanni Morricone
- Mahdi Kraiem
- Massimo Vanni
- Sebastiano Filocamo
Reception
A Pure Formality was nominated for a Golden Palm at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.[1] It also received a David di Donatello for Best Production Design (Andrea Crisanti).
Several films are inspired by A Pure Formality's idea (1994) of the mystery of the living versus the dead. The best example is The Sixth Sense (1999) from M. Night Shyamalan, another is The Others (2001) from Alejandro Amenábar.
References
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: A Pure Formality". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2963/year/1994.html. Retrieved 2009-08-30.
External links
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Mentioned in
Gérard Depardieu
(Actor, Director, Writer, Drama/Comedy)
Roman Polanski
(Director, Writer, Actor, Drama/Thriller)
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