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by Luchino Visconti.

In any case it was the European cinema school to dominate those years, with the return of the new American cinema, for ex., with the debut of Marlon Brando in "On the waterfront", by Elia Kazan (1954).

In 1958, the star of the festival was Brigitte Bardot, and then, also the great Italian actors like Sophia Loren, Silvana Mangano, Alberto Sordi, Vittorio Gassmann and the film directors, like Mario Monicelli.

In the 1960's the festival develops further in the discovering of new cinema schools, but it's the Italian cinema that finally got great satisfactions, winning 4 consecutive editions from 1963 to 1966.

The contestation of 1968 hit heavily the Festival that, in the period 1969-1979 the prizes were given and even the editions of 1973, 1977, 1978 didn't take place.

The great innovation of the 1970's was the Prize to the Career, given in 1971 to the America film director John Ford and in 1972, to Charlie Chaplin.

This decade was a crisis period for the Venice Festival, that still kept the statute of the Fascist period, but it reached to show the great renewal of the international cinema of these years.

In 1979, (until 1982) the new director of the festival was the film director Carlo Lizzani, who gave again a great impulse and prestige to it, that returned to be competitive in 1980.
These were again the best years and many were the actors and film directors launched by this festival. It was important also for the success in the world of the new German cinema, with film directors like Wim Wenders, Margarethe Von Trotta and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

In the 1990's the Venice Festival saw again a great presence of the Hollywood stars, like Jack Nicholson, Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks.

The Lido zone found a new life, with events and rock concerts, in the square in front of the Casino and the first young jury was created.
The polemics about the prizes given by the jury remain always frequent also in these years like today, but the Festival keeps on rewarding the value of many film makers of all the world (like for the Chinese cinema) and improved and increased much its structures.
In 2006, the Festival presented, for the first time after the II W.W., only world preview films.

Also last year, the film that had got the best public and critic success was not the winner: "Nuovomondo" by Emanuele Crialese was considered as the secure winner, but the prize was given to a Chinese film, inserted in the contest at the last moment, "Still Life", by Jia Zhangke, that nearly nobody noticed during the whole festival.
The Crialese's film was given a Silver Lion, created for that occasion and this increased further the polemics.

Stories like this and even worse happened nearly every year, during the long history of the Venice Cinema Festival.

Learn more about this author, Aldo Bonincontro.
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