Los Angeles, Nov 27 (IANS): The Torino Film Festival, under the direction of Steve Della Casa, launched its 40th edition at the sumptuous Teatro Regio not with a film screening, but with an evening devoted to music, reports Variety.

To evoke the links between cinema and music, a talk was organised around the theme of the Beatles versus the Rolling Stones, and the bands' love of cinema, which led them to work with Jean-Luc Godard and Martin Scorsese, among others.

The guest of honour, Malcolm McDowell, who is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of 'A Clockwork Orange', spoke about how Mick Jagger wanted to star in the film, and the time when Paul McCartney almost composed the score to another one of McDowell's films, 'The Raging Moon', added Variety.

Following the conclusion of the official part of the evening, which included speeches by the president of Italy's National Museum of Cinema, Enzo Ghigo, and the mayor of Turin, Stefano Lo Russo, the Beatles-Rolling Stones tribute was broadcast live on the Rai radio show 'Hollywood Party'.

In front of the crowd, according to Variety, the guests shared some memorable and sometimes unpublished anecdotes about their history with the music of the two English bands. The director David Grieco made the audience laugh by telling why, while he was initially a Beatles fan in his teens, he became a Stones fan.

He had bought his ticket a year in advance for the Beatles' double concert at Rome's Teatro Adriano in 1965, "but in the middle of the first song, a woman in the audience, taller than me, threw up on me. It was all over me. I spent the whole concert in this state. That's why I became a Rolling Stones fan."