The Italian Film Festival resumes this month with the film "Lo Scopone Scientifico.”

The Film Festival is open to the public .
Where: The Williamsburg Library @ 515 Scotland Street, Williamsburg

Lo Scopone Scientifico - 1972 In Italian with English subtitles.

The Scientific Cardplayer is an obscure dark comedy from Italian director Luigi Comencini. It deals with the eternal struggle between the classes in an unusual and often quite amusing manner. Bette Davis plays an unnamed American millionairess who travels the globe with her male companion (Joseph Cotten) playing locally popular card games for high stakes with the poor citizens of each nation she visits. She arrives in Italy annually to play a variation of an old Italian card game called Scopa. Awaiting her are an impoverished married couple played by Alberto Sordi and Silvana Mangano The Millionairess always floats them 1 million lire but invariably wins it back and then some. But hope springs eternal and this poor couple keeps coming back for more with dreams of one day fleecing the American capitalist of all her money. As Peppino and Antonia start to win, they continue to bet double or nothing until the stakes are in the hundreds of millions of lire. The entire village is soon caught up in the drama and excitement. In the end, the Millionairess wins as always, the couple come to realize that the game is rigged, and their oldest daughter, a lame girl named Cleopatra, exacts deadly revenge. Despite the presence of its two American stars, The Scientific Cardplayer has rarely been shown in the United States.