When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
The meritorious assistance of a US institution, towards the inhabitants of a refugee camp, in the Italian post-war period, among the protagonists a doctor who tries to do everything possible to treat the population in critical health conditions. The doctor will fall in love with a girl particularly affected by the dramatic war period, but the return of the girl's boyfriend from captivity and the subsequent marriage will make the American doctor return to daily reality.
While her new husband is away looking for work, the wife loses the child she was expecting and uses another woman's baby as a substitute so she won't have to upset her spouse when he returns.
The film concerns a destructive romance between a young harpist studying in Rome, and a louche playboy and heir to Europe's wealthy corporate and governing class, played by J. D. Barrymore.
A famous American director is looking for a special type of girl he needs to play in his next film.
A retiring teacher tells a young teacher the story of two old pupils, who once the war begins they will become enemies ...
Three men consider selling their souls to Satan in order to possess a beautiful woman.
Ernesto is the teacher of the village, he is married and he is dominated by his wife. He has the passion of the theatre and he has written a drama in verse named "Il ratto delle Sabine". Unfortunately he has only an admirer and she is their servant Rosina. When the touring company of Prof. Tromboni arrives in the village, Ernesto decides to let them perform his play, though anonymously. So the day arrives and the theatre is sadly empty. But when the news that the author is the teacher spreads far and wide...
An artist of variety, known in art with the name of Bebè, is a charlatan in Cannes, in a company with Zallos, a shady type.
A family man travelling for work, Paolo Bianchi, meets on a train a lonely girl, Maria. He sees her again on a bus and she reveals him that she's in troubles: she's pregnant, her baby's father has left her and she doesn't know how to tell to her parents that she's not married. She asks Paolo to play the role of her husband and he accepts....
A crime novel writer is experiencing writer's block while writing his latest book. Then a woman is murdered in his home, and this crime gives him inspiration to finish his novel. Without noticing, he even founds the real culprit.
A down-and-out crook on the lam befriends a young street urchin, in an Italian port city. At first amused that the boy is a sneak thief, he tries to deflects the kid from a life of crime. Tipped off by a woman anxious to collect the reward for him (who is wanted for murder), the police pursue the two lost souls.
Aldo Piscitello, a minor government clerk, is forced in 1934 to join the Fascist party. When the war comes, he finds himself able only to talk ineffectually in secret against Mussolini, even as his own son Giovanni is sent into battle. By the end of the war, Aldo has found the courage to stand up for his beliefs, but by then it is too late.
Damon is a thief who begins to question his beliefs after he meets Pythias, a liberal Athenian who believes all men are brothers.
Rather than renouncing his artistic dreams and working in his father's company, a young man, who is vocally equipped, is content to perform at street corners. This allows him to know and fall in love with a beautiful blind girl.
A family drama involving a wife torn between her husband and her criminal ex-lover.
A pianist recounts the love stories of three famous composers.
Hard-boiled archeologist Mark Brandon is searching for ancient tombs in Egypt when he is approached by beautiful Ann Mercedes, who convinces him to help her fulfill her deceased father's life's ambition - to provide solid proof of the biblical Joseph's travels in ancient Egypt. As an ex-pupil of Ann's father, Mark accepts and the two embark on a search for the tomb of the Pharoah Ra Hotep, said to have had some connection with Joseph. The trail to the tomb is fraught with intrigue, betrayal, murder, and the possibility that the tomb itself has been emptied of all its artifacts by ancient looters.
Prosecutor Etzel discovers that his father has sentenced a man, Leonardo Maurizius, on mere presumptions. He then makes it a point of honor to trace the sources of the case to uncover the truth.
The daughter of Signor Carloni is about to take her first communion. A problem arises when the dressmaker spends too much time working on the girl's communion frock.
The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.
Italian made romanic drama.
A glamorous female singer Zazà (Isa Miranda) has an affair with a passerby engineer Dufresne (Antonio Centa). But when Zazà impatiently comes to him in Paris she finds out that he is married and even has a daughter. He wants to escape from his relatives with Zazà, but, disillusioned and exhausted, she rejects his proposition and insists on his coming back to his family.
Historical drama depicting the last of the Punic Wars between the Roman Republic and Carthage.
An Italian war bride has problems dealing with her husband's possessive mother.
An American journalist, Barbara, goes to Italy to interview Roi, the country's most notorious outlaw when she imagines to be some kind of modern-day Robin Hood. Through local contacts and friends, she arranges a meeting and finds that her "robin-hood'" is just a hood, hoodlum and ruthless criminal. The police are about to capture him but he uses her as an hostage to make his escape but they are marooned for a night in a country farm house. It becomes a harrowing night for her and the poor farmers.
The film was originally called "The fires of San Martino". Left unfinished, it was finished in 1950 with the addition of some sequences.
Lot leads his people to a fertile valley adjacent to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, hotbeds of vice and corruption ruled by the merciless Queen Bera. When Lot orders a dam to be busted in order to prevent the destruction of the cities by the attacking Helamites, the queen, in gratitude, allows Lot's people to settle in Sodom. Soon, however, the veneer of civilization begins crumbling as Lot and the Hebrews become corrupted by the Sodomites.
The tragic love story, already narrated by Dante in his Inferno, of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Polenta. Francesca is married to Paolo's brother, Gianciotto an old and crippled man and secretly Paolo's mistress. When Gianciotto finds out tragedy ensues.
André is a loving and attentive husband, but when he agrees to plead his enamored brother's case with student Françoise Massard, he in turn becomes infatuated with the beautiful woman, who is perpetually in search of true love through a series of hazardous romantic relationships. When Françoise learns that the legitimate couple are expecting a child.
Elena, after a date with his boyfriend Guido, comes home finding his father tried to kill himself with gas because he lost a lot of money due to some wrong investments.
A peasant leader under the enlightened despotism of Empress Catherine the Great, and a love story.
A landowner loves a good girl, but is ensnared by another richer woman who is actually aiming for her fortune. This she will be able to temporarily make the two young men go away but the man makes his girlfriend understand that her is true love; he realizes that he has been the victim of a scam and will bring the woman he has always loved to the altar.
Raped during the war by a stranger, Anna is forced by their parents to pretend that that her daughter Lisa is her sister. When she is about to marry the new doctor in the country, her jealous brother resorts to threats of blackmail in an attempt to keep them apart.
In the reign of king Louis XV,a handsome student,Des Grieux, meets his charming cousin,Manon,just when she goes to the convent of Amiens,to take the veil.
Sicilian Uprising or Sicilian Vespers is a 1949 Italian historical drama film directed by Giorgio Pastina and starring Marina Berti, Clara Calamai and Roldano Lupi.
I Fratelli Dinamite was advertised as Italy's first animated cartoon feature, though historians would hold out for the now-lost 1930s film Pinocchio. Released in the U.S. as The Dynamite Brothers, the film concerns the misadventures of three brothers, musicians all. The story follows the siblings' progress from the conservatory to a desert island to the Venice Carnival. The message is that happiness must be earned, a sugar-coated pill of wisdom that went down easily with the film's youthful fans. Not quite in the Disney league, I Fratelli Dinamite is nonetheless colorful, expertly rendered entertainment.
A compelling portrayal of postwar Rome
In 26 AD, Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew in ancient Judea, opposes the occupying Roman empire. Falsely accused by a Roman childhood friend-turned-overlord of trying to kill the Roman governor, he is put into slavery and his mother and sister are taken away as prisoners.
In a village, rumours spread that a treasure is hidden nearby. To finance the search, a farmer sells a 14th-century painting of the Madonna, leaving it with a master restorer. The farmer's daughter, who felt a particular veneration for the sacred image, goes to the restorer's workshop to see the painting of the Madonna again and falls asleep in front of it. While the girl is asleep, the restorer begins to paint her portrait, which he will title "Sleeping Girl." In the end, the girl and the painter will marry and be able to keep the painting with them.
In 1893, on an island in the Strait of Sicily, a woman is beginning to go crazy due to an officer that she loved leaving. When she believes a newly arrived official to be the man that left her, he plays along.
A group of con artists stake their claim on a bogus uranium mine.
Rome, 1957. A woman, Cabiria, is robbed and left to drown by her boyfriend, Giorgio. Rescued, she resumes her life and tries her best to find happiness in a cynical world. Even when she thinks her struggles are over and she has found happiness and contentment, things may not be what they seem.
A man and a woman love each other, but they can’t marry because he’s ashamed of his unjustly incarcerated mother. What’s more, he loses his eyesight in an accident.
A decadent noblewoman, whose stranded husband has dilapidated their whole fortune on gambling, tries to keep her daughter in school while hiding their state of poverty from her, by leading a double life as an exotic dancer.
An American prisoner, hidden by some Umbrian farmers, meets, drunk, with a German soldier who is also drunk. The two believe that the war is over and embrace each other emotionally. But it is not so and soon the cannon will thunder. Uncle Tigna, who was hiding the prisoner and two of his companions, will fall victim to the Nazis.
A doctor rescues a young woman who is about to throw herself into the river and takes her to the hospital. The woman learns of three very sad stories revolving around suicide.
Based on a Victor Hugo play, and scored with music from the later opera by Giuseppe Verdi, the film tells about a hunchbacked clown whose beautiful daughter falls in love with the lecherous king.
This melodrama was directed by an émigré Russian from a story by Corrado Alvaro and Emanuele Caracciolo. The latter was murdered by the Nazis in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, before the film’s post-war release. Featuring Miranda and Girotti prior to neo-realist stardom.
A musical drama based on Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto.
Son of the Red Corsair (and nephew of the Black Corsair), departs for the Americas to search for his long-lost half-sister.
The boss has come up with something: Ed, outwardly a brave London citizen, attacks with a well-trained accomplice a van of the British Central Bank. The gangsters capture a million pounds sterling and can escape unrecognized. Scotland Yard is the target of the mockery, it comes to a government crisis. Only the hint of a child, who happened to witness the coup, brings the genre law enforcers on the right track.
A war veteran visits the families of soldiers who died during the war.
Patricia (Phyllis Calvert) throws away a painting members of her Italian village consider to be extremely lucky. She goes to great lengths in her attempts to locate it again and bring it back.
Three stories, very different in space and time. Lysistrata, a dancer from ancient times, Jeanne d'Arc, medieval warrior and Elisabeth, American war widow who comes on pilgrimage in Italy.
Five Yugoslav women who consorted with the German occupiers are publicly humiliated and banished by the Yugoslav partisans but they take up arms to fend for themselves.
The two drivers Giovanni and Gaetano are friends. Gaetano, bold and ruthless, thrives in the black market, while Giovanni, who is a naive and fundamentally honest worker from the North of Italy, cannot get any profit and his wife, an energetic and talkative Roman woman, can't help blaming him for his poor business skills. Returning from a trip to Naples, he brings home a little hungry orphan, Nello. At first Giovanni's wife doesn't want the boy, but then she begins to like him. The little boy does whatever he can to help the family. Nello's father, who everybody thought to have died during the war, finds his little son and, being a rich business man, he employs the good and generous Giovanni. Meanwhile the former friend Gaetano is caught by the police and convicted for his illegal trades.
An American fugitive flees to Rome and tries to elude capture by masquerading as a priest.
Two half brothers, one a pilot, the other a repairman at the plane factory of their father, are in a disagreement due to the envy of the younger brother, son of the first wife of their father. Then both brothers fall in love with the same woman; this causes more conflict between the two, making worse an already tense situation.
This story took place during World War II. A group of Italians living in London are raising funds to rebuild a Catholic cathedral that was bombed by the Nazis. To this end, they organized a concert, the proceeds of which would go toward the construction. The project was led by journalist Carlo Scala. He faced and overcame many difficulties in organizing the event, but he handled them with honor, and the performance by leading Italian singers took place. He was assisted in this by the incomparable Dora Scala.
This adaptation of Stendhal's timeless masterpiece of French literature tells the tale of Fabrice Del Dongo (Grard Philipe) a young archibishop who gives his heart and soul to romance rather than to the Church creating upheaval in the lives of evergone around him the Countess of Sanseverine (Maria Casares) is but one of the may women who love him. In turn she incurs jealous retributions from those in high places who desire her. For his crimes Fabrice is thrown in Prison where from Crimes Fabrice is thrown in prison where form his lonely window he falls in love with his jailer s daughter and plans a daring escape she however calls his plan insane and takes a vow to the Virgin Mary to never see him again ever if his escape succeeds the Charterhouse of Parma explodes with conflicting desires man s desire form God vs. his desire for romance.
In a small provincial Italian town, a fifteen-year-old boy meets and falls in love with a girl.
A poor girl is convinced she is the daughter of a prince.
Alberto, son of a rich engineer, falls in love with Luisa, a ruthless manicurist who is only after his money. His parents offer him a holiday in Venice because they hope he will forget her. Alberto however leaves for Venice with Luisa, who has asked a friend of hers to take her place at the beauty parlour. Alberto's parents go there and mistake Teresa for Luisa. A series of misunderstandings ensues...
An actor fails to find success in the film world but falls in love with a theatre manager's daughter.
Little Luigi, the son of Guido and Elena, has a strange illness. To save him, they must inject his blood into a healthy person with his same blood type in order to create antibodies the fight off the infection.
A beautiful tavern-keeper finds herself getting caught up in a war between Italy and Turkey.
A man escapes from prison but he is seriously wounded and eventually becomes paralyzed. He receives help from a fisherman and his family.
Andalusia, Spain, 19th century. The roads are infested with bandits who sow panic among travelers. Although most of them are ruthless killers, Lucero is a true champion of the disinherited.
A businessman comes up with a scheme to make money by financing a film version of "Romeo and Juliet" that's destined to fail, thus giving him some major tax breaks.
A film about twin bothers Jacob & Esau
In ancient Rome a love story blossoms between Fabiola, daughter of a senator, and Rhual, a Gallic gladiator. After Fabiola's father is killed, the Romans blame the Christians and the persecution begins. Rhual confesses to being a Christian, is accused of the murder and sentenced to fight to the death in the arena.