$12 / $8 Members
Martin Eden
Buy Tickets Become a Member for Discount Pricing

Adapted from a 1909 novel by Jack London yet set in a provocatively unspecified moment in Italy’s history, MARTIN EDEN is a passionate and enthralling narrative fresco in the tradition of the great Italian classics. Martin (played by the marvelously committed Luca Marinelli) is a self-taught proletarian with artistic aspirations who hopes that his dreams of becoming a writer will help him rise above his station and marry a wealthy young university student (Jessica Cressy). The dissatisfactions of working-class toil and bourgeois success lead to political awakening and destructive anxiety in this enveloping, superbly mounted bildungsroman.

5 day rental • NR • 129 min. • Italian with subtitles


“Critic’s Pick! Audacious and thrilling... An ingenious adaptation of the Jack London novel... pure cinema.”
The New York Times

"Essentially experimental, [Pietro] Marcello assembles this movie as a collage of imagery and topical themes that are cleverly hooked into a driving central narrative."
— Shadows on the Wall

"Packed with a cosmos's volume of emotion and life, that it is as epic as any Sergio Leone or David Lean film."
— Film Inquiry

"Wealthy decadence, left-wing politics, angry speeches (in Italian!), beautiful women, square-jawed men, quotations from Baudelaire... Everything I love in movies, more or less."
— A. O. Scott, The New York Times

“Gorgeous, intellectually rousing classical filmmaking... with a star-making performance from Luca Marinelli.”
— Los Angeles Times

“This could be the international break-out of the season.”
— The Film Stage