Saturday | June 20, 2015 7:00 pm

The Professor AKA Indian Summer
(La prima notte di quiete)

Screening on Film

Directed by Valerio Zurlini.
With Alain Delon, Lea Massari, Sonia Petrovna.
Italy, 1972, 35mm, color, 132 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

The three films directed by Valerio Zurlini at Titanus—Violent Summer, Girl with a Suitcase and Family Diary—were products of a fruitful collaboration interrupted by Titanus’ financial crisis of the mid-1960s. The Professor marked the reunion of director and studio after a decade in which Zurlini was only able to make two films. Here he returns to his trademark style: sober melodrama involving complex characters. The focus is on the title figure, a teacher—played by Alain Delon—who arrives for a temporary position in Rimini in the midst of a midlife crisis. Unable to face his depressive mistress, he spends his nights drinking and gambling as a mutual attraction develops between him and one of his students.