''A Girl Called Jules'' ( it, La ragazza di nome Giulio) is a 1970 Italian

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

directed by

Tonino Valerii Tonino Valerii (20 May 1934 – 13 October 2016) was an Italian film director, most known for his Spaghetti Westerns. Tonino (Antonio) Valerii started his film career as an assistant director on Sergio Leone's ''A Fistful of Dollars'', before mo ...

Cast

Silvia Dionisio Silvia Dionisio (born 28 September 1951) is an Italian actress who appeared in several movies in the 1970s. Born in Rome, Dionisio made her debut in the world of cinema when she was only 14 years old in the movie ''Darling''. Her career followe ...

as Jules * Gianni Macchia as Franco *

Esmeralda Ruspoli ''Donna'' Esmeralda Giovanna Amelia Palma Maria dei Principi Ruspoli-Poggio Suasa (24 June 1928 - 1 September 1988) was an Italian actress and noblewoman. A granddaughter of Mario Ruspoli, 2nd Prince of Poggio Suasa, she was a member of the black ...

as Laura, mother of Jules *

Anna Moffo Anna Moffo (June 27, 1932 – March 9, 2006) was an American opera singer, television personality, and actress. One of the leading lyric- coloratura sopranos of her generation, she possessed a warm and radiant voice of considerable range and agil ...

as Lia *

Maurizio Degli Esposti Maurizio is an Italian masculine given name, derived from the Roman name Mauritius. Mauritius is a derivative of Maurus, meaning ''dark-skinned, Moorish''. List of people with the given name Maurizio Art and music * Maurizio Arcieri (born 1945) ...

as Lorenzo *

John Steiner John Steiner (7 January 1941 – 31 July 2022) was an English actor. Tall, thin and gaunt, he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and performed on-stage for the Royal Shakespeare Company, but was best known to audiences for his roles i ...

as the guardian *

Roberto Chevalier Roberto Chevalier Di Miceli (born 14 May 1952) is an Italian actor and voice actor who is best known for providing the Italian voice of Tom Cruise in most of his movies. Biography Born in Rome, Chevalier entered his profession as a child actor i ...

as Camillo * Livio Barbo as Amerigo * Riccardo Garrone as Carvalli * Raúl Martínez as Luciano *

Malisa Longo Malisa Longo (born 13 July 1950) is an Italian actress, model and writer. Life and career Born Maria Luisa Longo in Venice, at young age Longo moved to Rome where she started a career as a model; she entered the Miss Italia beauty contest, win ...

as Serafina * Nino Nini as priest of Santa Maria del Giglio *

Umberto Raho Umberto Raho (4 June 1922 – 9 January 2016) was an Italian stage, film and television actor. Life and career Born in Bari, the son of an Italian father and a Bulgarian mother, Raho graduated in philosophy and then, immediately after the w ...

as Father Dario, the confessor *

Ivano Staccioli Ivano Staccioli (3 January 1927 – 15 July 1995) was an Italian film actor. Staccioli made 70 appearances between 1960 and 1991, mostly in film. He is best known for his appearances in historical adventures and action or western films in the 1 ...

as Professor of philosophy *

(cameo)

Production

After directing three

Spaghetti Western The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...

films, director

was worried about being typecast as a director of only Spaghetti Westerns. He began exploring other genres and was initially interested in adapting

Livia De Stefani Livia De Stefani (23 June 1913 – 28 March 1991) was an Italian writer. Early life Livia De Stefani was born into a wealthy landowning family in Palermo, and educated at a convent. Career In midlife, De Stefani began writing fiction, and p ...

's novel ''

Black Grapes Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have ...

''. The original story of ''Black Grapes'' involved gangsters, a topic that became popular in Italy after the release of

Damiano Damiani Damiano Damiani (23 July 1922 – 7 March 2013) was an Italian screenwriter, film director, actor and writer. Poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini referred to him as "a bitter moralist hungry for old purity", while film critic Paolo Mere ...

's ''

The Day of the Owl ''The Day of the Owl'' ( it, Il giorno della civetta ) is a crime novel about the Sicilian Mafia by Leonardo Sciascia, finished in 1960 and published in 1961. As the author wrote in his preface of the 1972 Italian edition, the novel was writ ...

''. Valerii was introduced to producer

Francesco Mazzei Francesco, the Italian (and original) version of the personal name "Francis", is the most common given name among males in Italy. Notable persons with that name include: People with the given name Francesco * Francesco I (disambiguation), sever ...

Riz Ortolani Riziero Ortolani (; 25 March 192623 January 2014) was an Italian composer, conductor, and orchestrator, predominantly of film scores. He scored over 200 films and television programs between 1955 and 2014, with a career spanning over fifty year ...

. When approaching him for ''Black Grapes'', Mazzei countered the offer to film an adaptation of ''

La ragazza di nome Giulio ''A Girl Called Jules'' ( it, La ragazza di nome Giulio) is a 1970 Italian drama film directed by Tonino Valerii. Cast * Silvia Dionisio as Jules * Gianni Macchia as Franco * Esmeralda Ruspoli as Laura, mother of Jules * Anna Moffo as Lia * Ma ...

''. Screenplay credits on the actual film prints state that

Marcello Coscia Marcello is a common masculine Italian given name. It is a variant of Marcellus. The Spanish and Portuguese version of the name is Marcelo, differing in having only one "l", while the Greek form is Markellos. Etymology The name originally means ...

Bruno Di Geronimo Bruno may refer to: People and fictional characters *Bruno (name), including lists of people and fictional characters with either the given name or surname * Bruno, Duke of Saxony (died 880) * Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne, ...

, Maurio Di Nardo, Francesco Mazzei and Valerii are responsible for the film's screenplay. Valerii disregarded this stating that these people "did not actually write the film!" and that the film was written by Giuseppe Murgia and Beppe Bellecca.

Joan Fontaine Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (October 22, 1917 – December 15, 2013), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the "Golden Age". Fontaine appeared ...

was originally cast to play Laura, the title character's mother, but she left the set a few days before the end of shooting due to economic disagreements with the producer

;Roberto Curti, ''Il mio nome è Nessuno. Lo spaghetti western secondo Tonino Valerii'', Unmondoaparte, Roma 2008. she was replaced by Esmeralda Ruspoli and all her scenes had to be reshot. The film received mixed reviews.

Release

''A Girl Called Jules'' was distributed theatrically in Italy by PAC where it was first shown in Italy on 26 June 1970. The film grossed a total of 542.076 million

Italian lire The lira (; plural lire) was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. It was first introduced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different states that would eventually f ...

domestically. It was entered into the

20th Berlin International Film Festival The 20th annual Berlin International Film Festival was supposed to be held from 26 June to 7 July 1970. The festival opened with ''Klann – grand guignol'' by Patrick Ledoux. However, on 5 July the competition was cancelled and no major prizes ...

where it was supposed to be screened on the last day of the festival, but the screening was eventually cancelled as the festival was interrupted on 5 July 1970.

References

Footnotes

Sources

External links

*
DVD of the film
{{DEFAULTSORT:Girl Called Jules, A 1970 films 1970 drama films Italian drama films Films directed by Tonino Valerii Films scored by Riz Ortolani 1970s English-language films 1970s Italian films