The Empty Canvas is an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Damiano Damiani. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by Damiani, Tonino Guerra

Tonino Guerra

Tonino Guerra is an Italian poet, writer and screenwriter who has collaborated with some of the most prominent film directors of the world.-Biography:Guerra was born in Santarcangelo di Romagna....

, and Ugo Liberatore is based on the best-selling novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 La Noia by Alberto Moravia

Alberto Moravia

Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism....

.

Synopsis

Mediocre artist Dino is obsessed

Fixation (psychology)

Fixation: 'concept originated by Sigmund Freud to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits'. Subsequently '"Fixation" acquired a broader connotation...

 with young model Cecilia and distraught that she shares her sexual favors not only with him but with actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 Luciani as well. In an effort to derail her plan to vacation in Capri

Capri

Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...

 with his rival, Dino proposes marriage, and when she rejects his offer he invites Cecilia to join him at the Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 estate of his domineering mother, a wealthy American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, in the hope he can seduce her with his glamorous lifestyle. Despairing that he will never have a monogamous

Monogamy

Monogamy /Gr. μονός+γάμος - one+marriage/ a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. In current usage monogamy often refers to having one sexual partner irrespective of marriage or reproduction...

 relationship with her, he crashes his sportscar into a wall. While recovering in the hospital

Hospital

A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

, he realizes his feelings will never be reciprocated. When Cecilia returns from her trip assuming their liaison will continue, Dino announces the affair

Affair

Affair may refer to professional, personal, or public business matters or to a particular business or private activity of a temporary duration, as in family affair, a private affair, or a romantic affair.-Political affair:...

 is over.

Production notes

The film was released in Italy as La noia (Boredom) and in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 as L'ennui et sa diversion, l'érotisme (Boredom and its Diversion, Eroticism

Eroticism

Eroticism is generally understood to refer to a state of sexual arousal or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love...

).

A dubbed English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 version of the film was released in the United States by Embassy Pictures

Embassy Pictures

Embassy Pictures Corporation was an independent studio and distributor responsible for such films as The Graduate, The Lion in Winter, This Is Spinal Tap and Escape from New York.-Founding:The company was founded in 1942 by producer Joseph E...

 in 1964.

Principal cast

• Bette Davis
  Bette Davis
  Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
  
   - Dino's Mother
• Horst Buchholz
  Horst Buchholz
  Horst Werner Buchholz was a German actor, remembered for his part in The Magnificent Seven and Nine Hours to Rama. He appeared in over sixty films during his acting career from 1952–2002.-Life and work:...
  
   - Dino
• Catherine Spaak
  Catherine Spaak
  -Biography:Spaak was born at Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine . She is the niece of Belgian politician Paul-Henri Spaak.She spent most of her career in Italy, where she became a teenage star...
  
   - Cecilia
• Luigi Giuliani - Luciani
• Isa Miranda
  Isa Miranda
  Isa Miranda was an Italian actress with an international film career.A native of Bergamo, Isa Miranda worked as a typist whilst attending the drama academy in Milan and training as a stage actress. She went on to play bit parts in Italian films in Rome...
  
   - Cecilia's Mother
• Georges Wilson - Cecilia's Father

Principal production credits

• Producer
  Film producer
  A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
  
   ..... Carlo Ponti
  Carlo Ponti
  Carlo Ponti was an Italian film producer with over 140 production credits, and the husband of Italian movie star Sophia Loren.-Career:...
  
  , Joseph E. Levine
  Joseph E. Levine
  Joseph E. Levine was an American film producer.He was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His Embassy Pictures Corporation was an independent studio and distributor responsible for such films as Hercules , The Carpetbaggers, Harlow, The Graduate, A Bridge Too Far and The Lion in Winter.Levine is famous...
  
  
• Original Music
  Film score
  A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
  
   ..... Luis Enríquez Bacalov
  Luis Enríquez Bacalov
  Luis Enríquez Bacalov is a prolific Argentine, naturalized Italian, composer of film scores. Early on in his career, he composed scores for Spaghetti Western films. In the early 1970s, he collaborated with Italian progressive rock bands. Bacalov has been nominated twice for the Academy Award...
  
  
• Cinematography
  Cinematography
  Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
  
   ..... Roberto Gerardi
• Art Direction
  Art director
  The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
  
   ..... Carlo Egidi

Critical reception

In his review in the New York Times, Howard Thompson observed, "under Damiano Damiani's studied direction, the incidents move in stilted, crabwise fashion...Miss Davis...is truly a sight, looking like a Pekingese

Pekingese

The Pekingese, or "Peke" is an ancient breed of toy dog, originating in China. The breed was favored by the Chinese Imperial court, and its name refers to the city of Beijing where the Forbidden City resides...

 under a blonde bob and growling an atrocious Southern

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

 accent...At times, especially under-scored by Miss Davis's withering expression and lava lingo, the picture's overripe sexuality is downright funny."

Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

magazine said it "is one of those "international" movie projects that appears to have been dreamed up by its principals...in a spirit of reckless unity...It is chiefly notable for the fun of watching Davis breast the New Wave

French New Wave

The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...

plot with bitchy authority...Stretched too far to be believable, Canvas is the kind of overdrawn foolishness that frequently proves diverting."

External links

• The Empty Canvas at the Internet Movie Database