To Each His Own Dolce Vita: in the Golden Age of Italian Cinema 1948-1972

Declining to come of age in an England locked in austerity and sexual repression John Francis Lane moves to Paris meets Robert Bresson Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf and embarks on a lifelong feasting on the best that the art world can offer. He devours landmark works by Maria Callas and Luchino Visconti Eduardo De Filippo Franco Zeffirelli Dario Fo. He moves to Rome when Hollywood arrives to make Ben-Hur Roman Holiday and Elizabeth Taylors Cleopatra a film in which John Francis Lane is cast as Bacchus. He parties wth Grace Kelly Jean-Paul Sartre Alberto Moravia and Gina Lollobrigida. As a foreign correspondent for Films and Filming magazine he befriends Fellini Antonioni Pasolini Francesco Rosi and appears in their finest films. He works with Sophia Loren Monica Vitti Silvana Mangano Anna Magnani and Claudia Cardinale. He acts with the three biggest box office stars of the era Alberto Sordi Vittorio Gassman and Totò. He is employed by the great producers Dino De Laurentiis David OSelznick Alfredo Bini and Carlo Ponti and works with Sean Connery Orson Welles John Wayne Alain Delon Richard Burton Warren Beatty Peter Ustinov and Rock Hudson. He is robbed by Pasolinis street boys causes a riot and finds it impossible to resist a man in uniform. This new edition of John Francis Lanes memoirs adds more than a third of a million words restores dozens of adventures and includes references to more than a thousand films as he observes from the inside the rise and fall of the Golden Age of Italian Cinema from Bicycle Thieves to Steve Reeves from Mondo Cane to Spaghetti Westerns from La Dolce Vita to Fellinis Roma a film that ends with John Francis Lane toasting the end of the world with Gore Vidal.