Mario, a young philanderer, receives 13 antique chairs in a bad state by inheritance and decides to sell off them to get some money. Afterwards he gets to know that one of them contains documents worth a lot of money. So he begins an adventurous trip to regain possession of the chair. On the way he meets many strange people who would like to help or to swindle him.
When her father dies, Epifania Parerga, an Italian in London, becomes the world's richest woman. She feels incomplete without a husband and falls in love with a humble, Indian physician, Ahmed el Kabir, much loved by his indigent English patients.
This short documentary features interviews with film scholar Callisto Cosulich, BICYCLE THIEVES coscreenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico, and actor Enzo Staiola. The interviews were conducted in Italy in 2005.
In this documentary, giants of italian cinema such as Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini and Zavattini talk about the importance of cinema after WW2, and about huge moments of social rebellion. This movie gives the floor to the creators of italian neorealism.
A group of travelers from the United States race through seven European countries in 18 days.
In late 19th century France, the Countess Louise, wife of a wealthy general, sells the earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day to pay off her secret debts, then claims to have lost them. Her husband quickly learns of the deceit, which is the beginning of many tragic misunderstandings, all involving the earrings, the general, the countess, and her new lover, the Italian Baron Donati.
Deathly ill Count Dracula and his slimy underling, Anton, travel to Italy in search of a virgin's blood. They're welcomed at the crumbling estate of indebted Marchese Di Fiore, who's desperate to marry off his daughters to rich suitors. But there, instead of pure women, the count encounters incestuous lesbians with vile blood and Marxist manservant Mario, who's suspicious of the aristocratic Dracula.
With a maddening sensuality, the unforgettable actress of the film "A Special Day" embodies the golden age of Italian cinema. From the suburbs of Naples to Hollywood, this biographical documentary looks back at the flamboyant career and destiny of Sophia Loren.
An unemployed man gets a job as traffic policeman but the traffic in the big city creates innumerous problems for the poor guy.
A comedy of errors where floundering pediatrician Pietro takes a job as an orphanage health inspector to pay for the debts of his high-spending girlfriend Loletta, only to end up mistakenly engaged with Lilli, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, and pursued by lovestruck 18-year-old orphan Teresa Venerdì.
A famous skier, his mistress and a ski instructor rob a bank in the Alps and hide the loot in a crevasse.
Alberto, a newspaper man, tries a one-time shot of living the good life with the help of his penniless mentor.
A young woman teaches commercial writing and makes her students practice by writing letters addressed to an imaginary recipient from Vienna. One day, the love letter the woman writes to this non-existent man is accidentally sent by one of her students –and falls into the hands of a real person.
Determined to postpone his own wedding, a former marshal leaves his bride-to-be and participates in an international music festival in Spain, where he falls for a young dancer.
Mike Hamilton, a Philadelphia lawyer, comes to Naples to settle the estate of his long estranged "black sheep" brother. Once there, he discovers that the deceased has left an 8 year old boy who is being raised by Michael's sister-in-law Lucia Curcio. To complicate matters, Lucia happens to be a sexy nightclub performer.
Bruno, a chauffeur having some problem in keeping a job, meets one morning Mariuccia, a taxi driver’s daughter working as a perfumery’s shop assistant, and trying to impress her, pretending to be rich, uses his employer’s car to took her on a trip to the lakes, but things don’t work as planned and to conquer Mariuccia’s hearth won’t be so easy…
When young and attractive Lina Stroppiani, a thief like the rest of her family, tries to steal the taxi of Paolo, together with two accomplices, she can't possibly know that this will have far reaching consequences.
How the Italian Fascist Party managed to turn the physical elimination of a political enemy into a test of strength fundamental for the ascent into the totalitarian regime.
Florence in 1848. There is a strong political tension in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Giovanni, a young Neapolitan composer who has just arrived in the city, accidentally comes into contact with some liberals and is convinced to compose the hymn of the Volunteers.
Ukrainian bishop Kiril Lakota, a political prisoner in a Soviet gulag for twenty years, is unexpectedly released and sent to the Vatican, where, upon the sudden death of the Pope, leader of the Catholic Church, he must face a challenging destiny that will put the future of the entire world in his hands.
The fake private detective Mike Spillone is hired by two old ladies to find out if Brigitte, the wife of their nephew Otello Bellomo, has a lover. Brigitte is a physician but the two aunts are unaware of the fact. While investigating, Mike and his assistant Johnny discover Brigitte with a prospective patient, the marquis De Vitti who was shot by the husband of the woman he tried to seduce. Afterwards Spillone finds her with her husband who he believes to be her lover.
A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.
By presenting archive footage along with his own life story, filmmaker Gabriele Salvatores mediates an illustration of the economic boom in Italy during the 1960s.
An English nurse and an American soldier on the Italian front during World War I fall in love, but the horrors surrounding them test their romance to the limit.
Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor and fights the English, Austrians and Russians in 1802.
A lecherous governor of Naples in 1680 lusts after the wives of several peasants, particularly after the miller's wife Carmela. The miller himself plans to avenge his honor by seducing the wife of the governor.
Nero is on holiday at the seaside. Poppea, Seneca and many other guests are with him. Nero is preparing a great show where he will be the star. When Agrippina, his mother, arrives with her German praetorians and decides Nero has to conquer Britain, she is asking for trouble. Many attempts of murder and poisoning will happen on the eve of his great show.
The newly appointed head of a censorship board uses his uncompromising stance against everything "immoral" – from nudity in movies to nightclubs – to hide a rather unseemly double life.
A wardrobe mistress at a Vienna theatre wins a competition, receiving as her prize a luxury tour round Italy. On the train she meets an impoverished young Italian who pretends to be a prince.
A musical comedy divided into five segments: Mariantonia, Cuttica, Il Fine Dicitore, Fregoli and Il Censore.
A television broadcast launches a proclamation for amateurs: "If you know how to speak, you will know how to sing". The award mirage lured many person, with ambitions or financial problems, to enroll in the competition.
Thanks to wartime smuggling Gioconda Perfetti, a roman fruit vendor, becomes very rich. She leaves her shop and moves to a magnificent villa which once belonged to a count. She also becomes involved with some very dubious characters who profit from her ignorance and cheat her out of her money.
A tribute to Naples, this film presents six episodes: a clown exploited by a gangster, a pizza seller losing her husband’s ring, a child's funeral, a gambler beaten by a kid, a prostitute's unusual wedding, and a "wisdom seller" offering advice.
Back to his hometown, a former marshal finds his house occupied by a young woman working as a fishwife.
When a veteran marshal is sent to a small town, he quickly falls for two women: a midwife and an earthy young woman nicknamed "Frisky".
Agnese has many men who woo her and live with her cousin Cesira, who has the opposite problem with men and wishes she would also have men woo her.
A young impoverished aristocrat and struggling writer falls for the charms of an aspiring starlet, whose amoral nature and hungry curiosity drives her from one adventure to another.
Maria is a housmaid and she is being engaged to Berto for fifteen years. Berto has not a lasting job so he is waiting for the death of his uncle Matteo to come into an inheritance. In the meantime Maria goes on with her work, first in the house of an unfaithful wife; then for an actor and his wife on the verge of leaving each other and last for Raffaele who wants to marry her. At last uncle Matteo dies...
September 1943: in the general confusion a thief dressed as a priest and a sergeant exchange clothes and roles.
The relationships between a veteran marshal, his bride-to-be, a rookie and his fiancée are severely tested when the young carabiniere is temporarily sent to a distant town.
The story of "King Lazzarone" Ferdinand I of Bourbon whose pastime was to neglect the government and disguise himself as a poor man and turn to the infamous city premises in search of love adventures. With the De Filippo brothers to complete.
In Naples, a voice from the skies announces one morning that the final judgment will be at 6 p.m. on that day. What follows is a series of vignettes depicting various people's reactions (or lack thereof) to the announcement.
Vittorio De Sica, heir to a large sum of money and owner of a newspaper vending stall, makes enough money out of his business to take a vacation at a fashionable resort. He is given a cruise ticket by an aristocrat who is an old school friend, and is mistaken for the aristocrat when he uses a camera that has his friends name on it. Assia Noris plays a maid who falls in love with him because of who he is and not who others think he is. Happy ending comes when De Sica marries Noris, who is more real than the pampered society belles he has been partying with.
Sandro is a well-known journalist and he is conducting a survey on human selfishness. Every man and every woman he meets turns into a theme for his inquiry. Even his own wife, Titta.
Nine episodes about life in Italy in the period just before its economic boom.
Alberto Moretti arrives in Cortina D'Ampezzo, with daughter Marcella,who has just won a TV contest, the prize of which is a free stay in a luxury hotel.
A kidnapped mobster persuades his captors to help him rob platinum ingots from a train.
Stylish, sophisticated and absolutely broke, Dino and Maria pursue a romance until they realize neither of them has any money, which forces the gold diggers to turn their attention to a wealthy widower and his daughter. A compulsive gambler who owes several anxious investors a small fortune, Dino has trouble cutting his losses, no matter how bad the losing streak.
Four-episode Franco-Italian omnibus film. Four men from different national and cultural background take refuge in a cabin after being sidetracked by bad weather on their way to conference.
A clergyman travels to Spain to join the Loyalist side during the Spanish Civil War and finds himself attracted to a beautiful entertainer.
Giuseppe, an Italian gas station attendant, is invited to the United States to reconcile with his father, who he believed had been dead for years.
Leo is a young man trying to make a living without any success. Through fortuitous circumstances, he is assigned by the director of a big firm to accompany for one night the daughter of the firm's accountant, Titi. Leo pretends then to be the son of a tycoon and takes her to a luxurious restaurant.
A meek professor is swept over his feet by a very vivacious girl.
Naples of the early twentieth century. A thug keeps a girl completely submissive and, having discovered that she is the daughter of a nobleman, tries to blackmail the father.
Francesco, a young doctor, is appointed doctor to the imaginary village of Pianetta in the province of Avellino, but is immediately in competition with Don Antonio, a so-called "healer".
Sophia Loren, who was born in Rome and lived there as a child, returns to the city that will forever be in her blood and gives her impressions of and reactions to the mosaic of Rome and the people she encounters there during her visit. She meets Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio de Sica as she visits the sights, affectionately commenting on the grandeur of the Eternal City and the irrepressible nature of its people.
The adventures of a young couple of high school students: her father is not opposed to their love, but the other, a doctor of prestige, is not at all happy about it.
A Russian grand duchess, in order to avoid a marriage imposed on her by her family, pretends to have fallen in love with a movie actor and tells her relatives that she has married him. When they arrive, they are able to meet the grand duchess's supposed husband, as she has forced the actor to play the thankless role. But from the pretense and the often awkward incidents it causes, a lively and genuine affection develops between the two protagonists. And the grotesque episode ends with a real wedding.
Based on a Pirandello play, Vittori De Sica plays a wealthy young social lion who has to constantly fight off a horde of women who are eager to marry him because of his position and money. He weds Elisa Cegani, a servant girl, who turns out to be a more appealing wife than any of the others could have been. Assis Noris decorates the screen well as one of the chasers and pursuers. In 1937, De Sica and Noris made a film, "II Signor Max," which, other than the setting and character role names, basically has the same plot as this film.
Six episodes (adapted from as many short stories: Gozzano, D'Annunzio, Guido Rocca, Marino Moretti, Alba de Céspedes and Oreste Biancoli), six love stories set in different moments in italian recent history.
Intersecting lives on an island holiday: A lawyer anxious he caused a youth's death.An engineer suspecting his wife after being teased by pranksters.A young man falling for a nurse.A Frenchman seeing his wife wooed by a local.
Catherine Miller's triumph at the Casino de Paris leads fashionable playwright Alexandre Gordi to ask her to create his next play. Flattered, Catherine moves into Gordi's villa near Cannes, escorted by her entire family. Only Jacques Merval, Gordi's secretary, disagrees. This is understandable, as it is he who writes the plays that Gordi, rather tired, simply signs. Jacques is a one-man band in every sense of the word, allying himself with the Casino manager to bring Catherine back to her music-hall successes. Despite a few clouds, and thanks to Gordi's generous intervention, he succeeds. Wasn't his only thought the happiness of the woman he loves?
The adventures of three university students who live in the same boarding house. Ugo, the most serious one, is in love with Lea, daughter of the lodger. Aldo is a practical joker, Bartolozzi is the shiest. Ugo and Lea's love story becomes stormy because of Aldo.
A comedy of errors about marriage and infidelity.
An old woman's poignant reminiscence of her youth in a convent school, the happy moments and the sad, and her tragic love for a Garibaldian.
The young and poor Pietro Haguet accepts a job offer from the rich Marion, who wants to free herself from the suffocating presence of so many suitors, evidently interested only in her assets. Pietro's job therefore consists in posing as her boyfriend. Then things change and the two fake boyfriends discover that they are really in love with each other.
A comedy about a hobo and a millionaire who swap roles after the millionaire rescues the hobo from a suicide attempt.
A young man unwantedly gets caught up in an international gang war in this humorous crime farce!
When his wife storms out of a dinner planned in honor of his American boss (because their dog is not allowed to be at the table) an engineer pretends that his secretary is the missus.
An elderly chestnut vendor lives in poverty but once a month puts on a show with silk and a carriage to impress her daughter in a convent. One day she is robbed of her meager savings.
In a massive department store the driver romances the shopgirl. The problem is that the manager also has his eye on her, and some employees seem to be pilfering goods from the place.
Danae, a woman who came from the sea is a beautiful blonde girl at the center of a spy story during the second world war. In Gibraltar, Italian and British divers perform mutual sabotage actions. The secret agents, on the other hand, face off on the mainland and the Italian spies have the best thanks to the girl's intervention.
A comedy in which a young lawyer, with a very jealous wife, ends up hosting a woman from his building for a night, with strange consequences
A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family.
Vittorio De Sica is a teacher struggling to take care of his family and always dreaming that Parliament will increase the salaries for teachers and life will become easier for his wife, Maria Mereander, and kids. An Indian prince (Sabu) visits Italy, is assisted by the teacher and gives De Sica a baby elephant as a reward. This upsets the landlord, Nando Bruno, the other tenants, and the neighborhood. He takes the elephant away but, like Lassie, it comes home.
A pimp named Horny Hector operates a brothel on property coveted by Cardinal Giove. The Cardinal comes up with a plan to force Hector into selling him the land by kidnapping Helen, triggering a small gang war.
Against the backdrop of the French revolution, young Caroline tries to reunite with her first love, despite her arranged marriage to an older politician.
The monotonous life of a bourgeois family is disturbed by the announcement of the imminent return from America of Mr. Lohengrin, who had left Italy years earlier, leaving behind the reputation of being an irresistible womanizer. Lohengrin's cousin, worried about the stability of his marriage, convinces some relatives who live in the countryside to welcome the dreaded guest into their home and then, to avoid meeting him, leaves. Meanwhile, in the country house everyone eagerly awaits Lohengrin, and envy and spite are unleashed during the wait. In particular, while the young landlady prepares the house, the woman's husband begins to be tormented by jealousy. But the arrival of the long-awaited guest will be a huge disappointment for everyone: the once seductive man is now just an aged, with glasses and a prominent belly.
The Clemenceau Affair (Italian: Il processo Clémenceau) is a 1917 silent Italian adventure film directed by Alfredo De Antoni. The film features the first onscreen performance from Vittorio De Sica.
Marco and Luciana are married and in love, but the passion of Marco for football distract him, and make him impossible to keep a job for a long time: that's why the young couple keeps arguing.
A host of college girls take different life paths in the Italy of the 1930s.
Documentary about the life and career of Italian film director Vittorio De Sica.
Young Aladdin has a series of wild adventures after he discovers a magic lamp containing a genie.
Airy comedy of a man a woman and the lengths they'll go to for a really great apartment! Located in the center of Rome with amazing views both want it and strike the compromise of marrying each other platonically to get it. The woman still hopes for true love and the man agrees to step aside should that special someone come along but he is secretly smitten with her and surreptitiously makes her various suitors look like fools. All goes well until he comes up against Rosanno Brazzi and finds him a tough challenge to overcome.
Accused of having stolen 3 million liras, a bank employee serves five years in prison. Having served his sentence and believed to be rich, he was showered with care and attention by everyone, even his wife. When the real perpetrator of the theft is found, he is despised and mocked. Then he actually steals some money and runs away with his wife.
Maria and Paul love them, but they are very young and, moreover, Maria is the daughter of the municipal sweeper while Paul is the lawyer Bonelli, vice mayor and head of the opposition. To complicate the story there is the reconstruction of a hermitage destroyed during the war. Reconstruction would take the view of the Paseroni villa, big industrial and political traffic. Bonelli's lawyer, a great speaker, becomes a mayor for the death of his predecessor and is bought by Paseroni, while rejecting the love of Paul and Mary for social differences and why Paul should stay behind Doddy Paseroni. At this point, Paul and Mary flee to kill, just as Bonelli has to hold a talk on the radio for the inauguration of Paseroni's villa ...
Believed dead, a husband poses as his own brother, to cash in on an insurance policy.But when his former boss,a rich man, asks the so called brother for help in wooing the widow, the new fortune from the insurance loses some of its appeal.
During the period between world wars, vaudeville sketches were popular before film showings.Gastone is one of the characters played by the famous Ettore Petrolini who figures in these sketches.
Colonels, majors, lieutenants: all of them live in the same building. Some of them have a wife or children or none, but everyone has his orderly. Major Penna is harassed by Osvaldo's mother. Lt. Martucci gets involved in the love affair between Antonio, his orderly, and Lauretta.
An unemployed youth tries different jobs such as waiter, hairdresser, porter, salesman and when desperate, he goes to sleep in a flop-house, where he finds a job as a night watchman.
There is a lot of excitement in the high society of Venice: An Arab prince, who always travels incognito, is said to be in the city. By chance, the elegant Isabella gets to know the handsome heir to the throne - and it does not take long for her to fall madly in love with him. Isabella has no idea that her dream man is really the impostor Gérard, who looks remarkably like the prince and was hounded by the sleazy crook Alfredo on Isabella to steal their precious jewelry.
Three girls are on a hitchhiking trip through northern Italy, the riviera, Venice, Pisa and Rome.
Valerio Rossello is a judge, with a rigid and uncompromising mentality. He is married to Lucia, a woman who instead follows the model of a loving and protective mother. From their union only one child was born: Maurizio. Both parents raise him completely differently, highlighting their character differences. Until the day when Maurizio, now a teenager, together with a friend commits an attack for futile reasons against a gas station attendant. Having learned of the incident, Valerio and Lucia also in this case intend to face the situation in a diametrically opposite way. The conflicts within the family thus strongly resurface, in which, amidst rebounds of responsibility, the errors of both parents emerge in the upbringing of their child.
The nephew of a wealthy nobleman, convicted for a forged check, is replaced in prison by a poor engineer. From the exchange of people derives a chain of misunderstandings and messes that ends out well.
Holiday time in Corniolo, a resort 40 kilometres from Rome. In a recently opened hotel various characters sojourn and love stories begin and end.
Anthological movie with some of the most famous movie sequences in Italian cinema produced by glorious Titanus Film from 1947 to 1962.
A beautiful, wealthy widow leaves New York to find herself a husband in the Italian village in which she was born. After many tries she...chooses the village blacksmith.
Once upon a time there was a garden, a refuge, a safe haven - 'The Garden of the Finzi Continis'. It came to life in Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel recounting an unfulfilled love story between two young Jews in Ferrara, while fascism was raging in Italy in the late 1930's. In 1972, Vittorio De Sica's film adaptation of the book won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, the fictional space of the garden became so tangible that people from all over the world come to Ferrara to look for it. Fifty years after winning the Oscar, reality and fiction come together once more, as we walk through an imaginary garden and bring to life the book, its author, its main protagonists, history, love, friendships and betrayals.
Seduced and abandonned by her fiance, Maria Ferrante leaves home to avoid any scandal. She is trying to find work and place to stay but one misfortune after another comes into her life Venice Film Festival 1940
Cinecitta is today known as the center of the Italian film industry. But there is a dark past. The film city was solemnly inaugurated in 1937 by Mussolini. Here, propaganda films would be produced to strengthen the dictator's position.
An Italian documentary about Italian cinema.
Henri IV falls in love with the young Charlotte de Montmorency, 40 years his junior. The king decided to marry her off to his nephew, Henri de Condé, so that he could later make her his mistress.
A judge opens an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of an MP.
Marc, is a reporter in a tabloid. At the "Bongo Club", he photographs a young blond woman kissing a black man. This woman is the daughter of Senator Linden, head of the segregationist movement of USA.
A mysterious man, who had lost his memory, arrives in San Marino among other refugees during the Second World War.
After an argument with her husband, an unsatisfied wife suffers from selective amnesia. She doesn't recognize the man she married and calls her doctor husband instead.
Marietto is a very lively and creative orphaned child, housed in a boarding school of nuns. One day, while browsing a newspaper, he sees a photo of a beautiful opera house dancer, Camilla, and is convinced that she is her mother.
Second World War . Field 119 in California (USA ) . War is long over , but the Italian Prisoners Still waiting to return home , preparing to celebrate , away from families , another sad Christmas. To dare a little rein to Their longing , they tell Episodes of Their Life . A Roman tells the USA difficult married life . A Neapolitan soldier tells of His lieutenant, a Neapolitan duke penniless . Meanwhile , the camp commander gave : Prisoners and a gramophone , So , Ai stories intertwine songs . Another soldier recalls the parties and the songs of the Sicilian spring , WHILE a Venetian gondolier evokes A HIS love affair . Sometimes , From Radio shabby listening news from abroad and Italy . Finally , one day , comes the ' pending release and All They return home .
A bawdy story of how a poor damsel surrenders her virtue again and again to get to the top of society.
Impresario Adler is imprisoned for insulting an official and therefore unable to negotiate an important concert tour with opera singer Lauri Volpi. In his place, he convinces Friedel, a pretty music student, to travel to Venice to meet the famous tenor. In her travels, Friedel sends postcards written by Adler to his wife to prevent her from knowing his real whereabouts. When Friedel meets Volpi’s attorney, she mistakes him for the singer, and they spend days together in a romantic, picturesque Italy without him revealing his true identity. After his release from prison, Adler realizes two things: firstly, Friedel has been negotiating with the wrong man, and secondly, his wife has discovered the trick with the postcards, traveled to Italy, and started a storm of her own. But when the storm has cleared and the confusions are clarified, nothing holds them back from a happy ending.
The story of Lafayette, the 19 year old pacifist who takes the side of the Colonials during the American war of Independence.
Rome, early 1900s. Gigi, a young populace, falls in love with the rich Mara and, to satisfy the woman's desires, begins to steal.
Marcello is engaged to Gina, the daughter of the boarding house where he lives, but he is undecided whether to marry her or not.
Armando Conforti, his family and his friends have a business: they sell souvenirs near St. Peter's, in Rome, they change dollars, in short they get along.
Mastro Geppetto is a poor carpenter with no wife and no children. The man is very lonely, and after trading a piece of wood with his colleague Mastro Ciliegia, decides to build himself a puppet to keep him company.
A 1965 episode of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps, featuring interviews with many of film director Max Ophuls’s collaborators
An actor fails to find success in the film world but falls in love with a theatre manager's daughter.
Progressive schoolteachers Landi and Anna have a profound influence on two of their young students, Mirella and Franco. The two kids are enamored with one another and decide to experiment with some of the knowledge they've gleaned in the classroom.
A young student of an upper-class background who is surrounded by classmates that are of working-class backgrounds, after a novel in diary format by Enrico Bottini.
An Italian historical comedy film consisting of three segments, based on three stage plays by Anton Chekhov.
BBC television program exploring Visconti’s mastery of cinema, theater, and opera direction.
Traces the life of Anna Magnani, her creations, her successes, her triumphs, her boycotted career, her nonconformism, her anxieties, her generosity ... Punctuated with photos that tell her career in theater and cinema, Extracts of films, this documentary portrait also gives the floor to his friends and relatives, from Roberto Rossellini to Marcello Mastroianni, through Federico Fellini.
Salvatore and Rosalino are sentenced to death by the Mafia because they are accused of having seduced the daughters of a boss. As they are about to be shot they manage to escape with the two girls.
The Cheerful Squadron is a 1954 Italian war-comedy film directed by Paolo Moffa and Interpreted by movie stars like Paolo Stoppa, Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Sordi and Silvana Pampanini. Based on the military environment novel The Allegro Squadron by Georges Courteline (1886), this film presents a series of sketches on military life in the late nineteenth century.
A documentary about the Italian cinema as art form and industry.
The rich banker Rosen of Livorno fear that the Bonapartist will take all his gold, so he is hiding it inside a cuckoo clock.
Turi, a young Sicilian, makes ends meet by doing some occasional work and singing in taverns in a popular district of Rome.
How the cinema industry does not respect the author's work as it was conceived, how manipulates the motion pictures in order to make them easier to watch by an undemanding audience or even how mutilates them to adapt the original formats and runtimes to the restrictive frame of the television screen and the abusive requirements of advertising. (Followed by “Filmmakers in Action.”)
A doctor unwittingly drinks an aphrodisiac fluid and thus has relationships with an acquaintance's wife.
In a post-war Rome (1946) a cat burglar inadvertently saves the life of a would-be suicide man who returns from the war to find that he has been betrayed by his fiancée while fighting in the war. From that moment the thief takes the ex-soldier under his wing. They leave house together for a night full of misadventures. In a streets of Rome they meet the struggling typist who can’t pay her rent and opts to street life; a wandering amnesiac who lost his memory and keeps asking everyone “Do you recognize me?”. Thieves, gamblers, hookers, policemen, soldiers and endless chain of cigarette-smoking and alcohol/espresso-drinking.
Manon escapes with the young nobleman Des Grieux, then becomes a high-class courtesan and finally forced to exile to America.
The Gestapo forces con man Victorio Bardone to impersonate a dead partisan general in order to extract information from his fellow inmates.
A retired actor's search for his stray pet strings together this episodic portrait of the ancient Roman quarter.
In Spain, during the Napoleonic rule, the French Governor of Andalusia is besieged by the locals who have countless demands and wishes.
Two spouses discover a corpse that mysteriously disappears and then reappear in their suitcase. This is stolen by a couple of teens who are suspected, like the first two, of murder.
Policarpo De Tappetti is a calligrapher who works under the orders of Don César Pancarano de Rondò. For many years, Policarpo has been seeking a promotion and a raise that never comes, and, it seems, will never come. One day, Jerónimo, the son of Don César, meets Celeste, the daughter of Policarpo, and falls in love with her. Policarpo sees in that relationship the solution to his aspirations at work, and does everything in his power to make this relationship fruitful. Don César, who presumes to be a count, sees with very bad eyes that his son meets a girl from such a different social position, and does just the opposite. But the efforts made by both parties will be of no use, since Celeste has fallen in love with Mario Marquetti, a "specialized mechanic" (typist) who is giving private lessons in the offices of the businessman Franquinet .
Nicola Peccoli has always nurtured his niece Giovanna, an orphan since the age of two and now of age, but he does not look favorably on her beloved Mario because he is just a simple employee and a lower class of society.
Best-selling author Tyvian Jones has a life of leisure in Venice, Italy, until he has a chance encounter with sultry Frenchwoman Eva Olivier. He falls for her instantly, despite already having wedding plans with Francesca Ferrara. Winning Eva's affection proves elusive; she's more interested in money than in love. But Tyvian remain steadfast in his obsession, going after Eva with a fervor that threatens to destroy his life.
The young Claudia wants to escape from the gray life of the province and aims rich men but each time with unhappy results. Only the brother will eventually succeed in shaking her from this purpose.
Villa Borghese, Rome's biggest urban park, is the place where everyday laughs and dramas are consumed. The movie is made of six vignettes set there.
Alvaro is been in jail and so he consider himself the most fit to lead his three friends Mario, Otello and Spartaco. The four young men decide to start a business. They need only a van to start a transport company. But they lack the money. How can they get it?
A traveling salesman is sent to prison after being accused of bigamy, while his wife and son are forced to consider leaving him permanently.
Momi Tamberlan, Bortolo Cioci and Piero Scavezza are the last three old survivors of a club founded at the time of their student life by their partner Giuseppe Bardonazzi. The rules of the Club establish that who cannot be a member of the Club he has no reputation as a pleasure-loving, gluttonous.
An unbroadcast 1958 essay-film by Orson Welles, blending documentary, personal reflection, and cultural portraiture in a subjective study of Italy and actress Gina Lollobrigida.
A modest accountant wins a utility vehicle in a contest and publishes an ad looking for a companion to share expenses on a vacation trip. An attractive young lady answers the ad, but at the meeting place, the girl mistakes the accountant for a millionaire, who of course, leaves with her...
Documentary about Italian film screenwriter Cesare Zavattini
A small boy of rural Italy, befriends a Catholic priest and pleads for help to save his sick donkey. Hearing the stories of St Frances on how he loved cared, even cured animals, comes up with notion "If he could just bring his donkey to the Vatican in Rome, and ask the Pope if he could just place him in the entombed Saint's Chapel, his spiritual presence would cure him. Some how he convinces the compassionate Father to take on this pilgrimage, against all odds.
Three partisans bound by a strong friendship return home after the war, but the clash with everyday reality puts a strain on their bond.
After 16 years of marriage ends with him running away and vanishing into thin air. The wife goes in search of him, but instead of finding him, he ends up in various perversions, eventually reaching suicide.
"Lionpower from MGM" (1967) is an exciting 60's promotional short subject, which showcases MGM's releases for the 1967-68 film season under a "five seasons" theme--fall, winter, spring, summer--plus a "fabulous fifth season". The main music is set to the rousing theme from "The Magnificent Yankee" composed by David Raksin in 1950. The promo is narrated by some of the best voice-over actors of the time, and is an excellent time capsule of a by-gone era.
A criminal mastermind sets up a phony film production as part of a plan to smuggle stolen gold.
Depicts the royal houses of Europe (Norwegian, British, Belgian and Dutch) as well as Iran and the Principality of Monaco.
Charismatic and resourceful, seducer and daredevil, Jean-Paul Belmondo has always played his roles as he lived, at a thousand miles an hour. He had only one passion: to entertain the public with his smile, his naturalness, his energy, his stunts. But contrary to appearances, his destiny was full of pitfalls. This film lifts the veil on a founding childhood that allowed him to overcome many obstacles throughout his life thanks to the tutelary figures of his father and mother. Told from the inside with the help of his autobiography, interviews and unpublished archives, this epic story traces the career of this turbulent young actor who launched the New Wave in Breathless before becoming the popular Bebel, an indestructible and provocative vigilante. From film to film, this documentary paints an intimate portrait of a man who built himself up to reach the top: his triumphs but also his trials, his doubts, his secrets, his angers, his clowning, his disappointments or his personal dramas.
A documentary feature film about Vittorio De Sica, one of the greatest masters of world cinema. Through a new access to his family, rare archives and testimonies of contemporary artists and filmmakers from the entire world, the ilm retraces his life, his work and legacy. An intimate portrait of an author able to transform the observation of the real in an universal emotion and reveals the modernity of a gaze which keeps on illuminating cinema and our way of seeing the world.