Once Ignored, a Film Takes ‘Flight’ : Movies: Italian filmmaker Carlo Carlei’s thriller gains acceptance in Hollywood after being rejected at home. Now the director is in demand.

Last year at this time Carlo Carlei was having a tough time. The 31-year-old Italian’s directorial debut, “Flight of the Innocent,” had been panned by Italian critics. Although the film did well in the small towns and villages in the south, where Carlei is from and the film largely is set, it opened in only one theater in Rome and lasted just three weeks.

Surprising, in light of the beautifully photographed film’s many appealing elements. The fast-paced thriller, which opens in Los Angeles, concerns a young boy in rural Calabria, Vito, who witnesses the brutal murder of his family in a feud. He flees north, pursued by his family’s assassins. His journey eventually takes him to the home of a young boy who had been caught in the feud’s cross-fire and killed. His dream is to substitute himself for the lost boy.

Undaunted by the bad reviews and lack of interest in the film, Carlei took it to festivals. Word of mouth spread. At Cannes, the film was seen by Disney’s president of International Theatrical, Bill Mechanic, who “thought it was terrific. Everyone thought the film was quite accomplished for such a young director.” When Carlei brought the film to New York last fall, to the Public Theater’s New Italian Cinema Events, “there were quite a few agents and producers wanting to meet me,” he recalls. By the time he landed in Los Angeles in February, the buzz was deafening. “The first day there were 10 phone calls,” he says, “the second day there were 20. . . .”

Last weekend, the film won the Golden Arrow Audience Award for best director, as well as the prize for best film, at the new Hamptons International Film Festival on Long Island.

By now, the director’s life has changed considerably. For starters, there’s his new office in MGM’s Santa Monica offices where pre-production is under way for “Fluke,” based on the best-selling novel by Frank Herbert about a man reincarnated in a dog’s body. Columbia has dibs on Carlei’s services for “Max Lakeman and the Beautiful Stranger.” There is also a science-fiction film, a thriller, an MGM remake of a classic and even an adaptation of one of Carlei’s favorite Marvel Comics. While MGM is distributing “Flight” in this country, Disney has broken new ground by redistributing the film in Italy.

“I hoped people would like this movie, but I thought it would take me three or four films before I would get a chance to work in America,” says the soft-spoken and articulate Carlei. Despite his enthusiasm, Carlei is not duped by his instant popularity. “I am not interested in money or status. The most important thing to me is to preserve my integrity and sensitivity. The only thing that makes me as happy as making a movie is to see a great movie by someone else.”

Carlei realizes that in addition to his artistic sensibilities, Hollywood is also impressed by his financial acumen. “Flight of the Innocent,” a film that could easily pass for a $30-million production here, was made for $1.8 million. “This is part of my character,” he says. “I am from the south, and we know we have to work hard with very little. I respect money because I grew up without any.”

Several conflicts from “Flight of the Innocent” are from memories of Carlei’s own childhood in Calabria. Carlei remembers similar family feuds from his own childhood and tales of entire families massacred because “perhaps a man from one family insulted another by not wanting to sit down next to him.” The kidnapings are an ongoing tragedy of Italian life. Since 1966, there have been 689 kidnapings for profit. The kidnapers are largely from the poor south of the country such as Calabria and Sicily, while the victims are mostly the wealthy from the north.

It wasn’t long after Carlei arrived in Rome to study law that he switched to Rossellini’s Gaumont Film School. Far from being the backward boy from Calabria, he excelled due to an unexpectedly strong cinematic background. “Every day when I was a boy my parents would leave me at the cinema from 2:30 until 8. Mostly I saw bad spaghetti Westerns, sometimes good films. When I saw (Stanley) Kubrick’s ‘2001,’ it was a catharsis. I didn’t understand any of it, but I went back to see it 100 times.”

Carlei’s first theatrically released film, an homage to Kubrick, titled “Through the Light,” was one quarter of an anthology film of science-fiction shorts. After working at a film distribution company, Carlei took a substantial bonus and optioned “Fluke.” After gaining more experience and confidence directing a 50-minute TV movie called “Captain Cosmos,” Carlei felt ready to make “Flight of the Innocent.”

Because his filmmaking has been so influenced by such directors as Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and William Friedkin, Carlei was not terribly surprised that the Italian critics would take him to task for his international influences. “One critic even accused me of being a racist toward the people of the south. Of course, he had no idea I was from Calabria.”

Now, however, Carlei is enjoying a little revisionist history. Several influential Italian newspapers and magazines have praised Carlei’s work and criticized its peers for once treating a native talent so badly. Still, Carlei has no plans to return to Rome as the conquering filmmaker.

“It has always been my dream to come to Hollywood to make movies,” he says. “I feel like the boy in ‘Cinema Paradiso,’ like I’m in a dream.”