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The unforgettable classic that still nobody understands.
— Tagline
Capolavoro-GTAV-Poster

Movie poster.

Capolavoro (Italian for "Masterpiece") is a 1963 black & white classic arthouse film directed by Emanuelle Pasorelli, featured in Grand Theft Auto V.

It is one of three films the player can watch in cinemas, the other two being The Loneliest Robot in Great Britain and Meltdown.

Description[]

Capolavoro-GTAV-PosterAlt

Alt. Poster

Capolavoro is directed by Emanuelle Pasorelli and produced by European Art Haus. The movie is spoken simultaneously in French and Spanish, while using footage from Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption. According to the poster, it was awarded with the title of Best Foreign Film in the Algonquin Film Festival and nominated for Best Marketing Campaign.

The movie can be watched by the player in the cinemas of Los Santos from 1pm to 5pm.

Cast & Crew[]

In game credits[]

  • Dante Bianchini
  • Maria Mecacci
  • Tedaldo Giordano
  • Rafaelo Romano
  • Director of Photography: Silvestre Di Segna
  • Music: Nazario Brioni
  • Director: Emanuelle Pasorelli

Poster Credits[]

The credits on the posters for the movie are a generic list shared with Whose Placenta? and I Married my Dad so do not match the actual film credits played in the cinemas in game.

  • Alejandro Aragada
  • Betsy Tubor
  • Didi Tuener
  • Pedro Flojorooder
  • Alex Krotowski
  • Costume Design: Peter Lloyd
  • Music: David Pointer
  • Editor: Andy Dufrane
  • Production Design: Bernie Gilmartin
  • Co-Producer: Troy Botuda
  • Executive Producers: Louise Madruga, Hansel Keyes, Peter Flossop, Jonathan Constantine, Louise Peters
  • Producers: Steve Kazansky, Helena Bers, Mark Petersburg
  • Writers: Jamie Felon & Susan Anderson
  • Designers?: Klaaz Kreutzenberg & Patricia Fozze
  • Director: Elton Katz

Synopsis[]

Directed by Emanuelle Pasorelli, this arthouse film makes little sense. A man, who may or may not be a thief, with a nagging wife hears a beautiful woman in his head, and both conspire to make him go mad as he lives in anguish over his role in his friend Luigi's death. Actor's mouths rarely move, yet the player can hear their voices, a technique the director used in several films. The ladder in the end symbolizes something, that is unknown of what.

Comments on classicvinewood.com[]

  • thimbledick - "What is with the horse?" - 5/10 stars
  • sippycup8 - "Or the fact that it's in two different languages." - 3/10 stars
  • richardsfan45 - "One of the great stories of our time!" - 8/10 stars
  • Unknown Man - "Well, I was dearly confused, but, I felt better than other people towards the end."

Themes/Influence[]

Capolavoro mostly references 1960s modernist European cinema, often parodying the exaggerated and sometimes incomprehensible direction found in the genre. Its most distinguishable influences might be from Federico Fellini's and Ingmar Bergman's Persona: the slow-paced, meticulous black and white cinematography, the use of a seemingly disjointed dream sequence as an introduction and the reflections on the nature of cinema, a major theme in both movies, are also explored in Capolavoro. The two intervening women might also be a reference to Elisabet and Alma in Bergman's Persona. The use of horses as recurrent symbolism is likely a nod to Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev.

While the film is mostly satirical towards modernist cinema, Capolavoro also presents some philosophical and psychological themes, mostly surrounding the concept of Anima and animus in Carl Jung's analytic psychology. In his work, Jung defines the anima as the unconscious feminine inner personality a man possesses, much like the mysterious woman that Antonio listens to during his dreams. This is further reinforced by her occasional embodiment in the form of a mime, suggesting that she is merely an imitation of Antonio's subconscious. Jung states that the contact with the anima is the "masterpiece", hence the name of the film.

The ladder Antonio is frequently seen climbing can be interpreted as a reference to Jacob's Ladder, perhaps representing Antonio's psychological ascent to his anima. The women's first line of dialogue, "Freud has a lot to answer for!", directly references Freudian psychoanalysis and its divergence from the aforementioned Jungian psychology.

Trivia[]

  • A news article from LS24 after the mission Father/Son, reports that Capolavoro is returning to the cinemas of Los Santos to celebrate its 50th birthday, since the events of the game happen in 2013, this would make Capolavoro a production from the year 1963. Despite this, the in-game website Classic Vinewood, states that Capolavoro was produced in 1964. It is most likely a developer oversight.
    • Capolavoro received award nominations in 1962, however, it is possible the film was premiered in festivals before being released.
  • It is notably one of the films being played at Pollock Cinema in Ludendorff in 2004.
  • Capolavoro is distributed by a company named "Forin & Moodie" (named as an intentional typo of "foreign and moody"). This might be a reference to The Criterion Collection, an American company that specializes in the distribution of national and foreign classic films.
  • The heart of the Statue of Happiness from Liberty City can be seen in the movie, as can other Grand Theft Auto IV locations.
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