The Gold Rimmed Glasses [Gli occhiali d’oro] *** (1987, Philippe Noiret, Rupert Everett, Valeria Golino, Nicola Farron, Stefania Sandrelli) – Classic Movie Review 12,806

The beautiful, thoughtful 1987 Italian drama film The Gold Rimmed Glasses [Gli occhiali d’oro] stars Philippe Noiret and Rupert Everett as an ageing gay doctor and a Jewish student who suffer persecution in Fascist Italy.

It is set in Ferrara, Bologna and in a nearby Italian Adriatic coast seaside resort in 1938, and starts with fishermen bringing out of the river Po the body of a drowned man, whose broken gold rimmed glasses lie in the mud next to him. The man is prosperous middle-aged Doctor Athos Fadigati (Philippe Noiret). His Death in Venice-style story is told in flashback, as he becomes obsessed with one of the local students, Eraldo (Nicola Farron), an amateur boxer, eventually causing a scandal at the posh resort hotel that destroys Fadigati’s reputation.

Rupert Everett plays the other main character, Davide Lattes, a Jewish literature student at the university of Bologna, who dreams of becoming a writer, and turns out to be the only one who gives a damn and comes to visit and befriend the fallen doctor.

It is a sumptuous, grand looking, stylish film, in a way that would have appealed to Luchino Visconti, though that slightly gets in the way of its twin tales of persecution. It feels a bit lightweight and over-romanticised for such serious topics, and there are a few too many of Philippe Noiret’s sad, longing looks in closeup, good though this actor is. We get it, he fancies the boy, and the boy is a worthless nasty little user.

Rupert Everett gets a lot of closeups too, looking properly anguished. He has twin problems too, though both are connected with him being Jewish and how to respond to the fascist regime’s tightening grip on the Jewish community. Davide finds himself expelled from the university in Bologna along with all the other Jewish students. And his romantic problem is he is in love with Nora (Valeria Golino), who chooses survival over love by converting to Catholicism and marrying her fascist suitor to escape the persecution of the Jews.

Nevertheless, it is a rather beautiful film, thoughtful and intelligent, and even quite moving, if not quite as subtle or hard hitting as you might hope. It also has shades of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, but both that film and Death in Venice inevitably put this one in the shade.

Meticulously crafted, it won two Golden Osellas for Best Costume Design and Best Set Design at the 1987 Venice Film Festival. Ennio Morricone won the David di Donatello for Best Score.

The screenplay by Enrico Medioli Valerio Zurlini adapts Giorgio Bassani’s novel The Gold Rimmed Spectacles [Gli occhiali d’oro].

The cast are Philippe Noiret as Doctor Athos Fadigati, Rupert Everett as Davide Lattes, Valeria Golino as Nora Treves, Nicola Farron as Eraldo, Stefania Sandrelli as Signora Lavezzoli, Rade Markovic as Davide’s father Bruno Lattes, Roberto Herlitzka as Professor Amos Perugia, Luca Zingaretti as Molon, and Ivana Despotovic as Carlotta.

Giuliano Montaldo directed the heist movie Grand Slam (1967) and the gangster film Machine Gun McCain (1969) in the US, and returned to Italy to direct The Fifth Day of Peace (1970), Sacco and Vanzetti (1971), Giordano Bruno (1973) and And Agnes Chose to Die (1977), followed by Closed Circuit (1978), A Dangerous Toy (1979), The Gold Rimmed Glasses (1987), Control (1987), and Time to Kill (1989).

He was born on February 22, 1930, in Genoa, Italy, and died on September 6, 2023, in Rome.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,806

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