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.
Architect Mark Wallace and his wife, Joanna, travel to France to meet with an affluent client. While there, they reflect on their first decade of marriage -- memories of when they first met, of courtship, and of road trips through the French countryside. As flirtation and playful quarreling turn to boredom with the banality of married life, the Wallaces struggle to rekindle their passion, while mutual infidelity threatens to tear them apart.
Firehand and his Apache friend Winnetou are determined to get justice for the murder of four young braves. They set off to track down the gang responsible for the horrendous act.
When a stranger enters a quiet, country town and is seduced by a sensuous married woman he unwittingly finds himself at the centre of a storm of sexual guilt and murder.
Antonio married Amalia and went to fight in Russia during World War II. Since he didn't return Amalia thought he was dead, so she married another man. Many year after the war end, Antonio returned. Amalia has to choose between two husbands.
Lemmy Caution is on the trail of a women who may or may not be mixed up in a blackmail scheme.
A GI on furlough attends a Folies-Bergères show. He falls in love with a dancer, Claudie, the star of the theater.
Papal aspirant "Cardinal Lamberti" has to tread a fine line between the powerful Duke of Montimar and doing the right thing by a young couple in love in late 1730s Bologna.
A musical comedy divided into five segments: Mariantonia, Cuttica, Il Fine Dicitore, Fregoli and Il Censore.
A poor musician hires a courtesan to pose as his wife so he can "give" her to a wealthy count in return for patronage.
Reported missing in 1940, Jacques Ledru comes back to Strasbourg as Martin Schmidt. He tracks down his wife Genevieve, but she's remarried and has taken the head of his shipping company. She and her husband will do anything to get rid of Jacques and keep his company.
Sénéchal, an actor touring the provinces with the "Tournées Carlini" does not meet the success he thinks he deserves. One night in Dreux, he finds himself without his luggage and dressed up as a Foreign Legion officer, he is invited to a party thrown by a colonel. He creates a sensation there and does not leave the colonel's wife ... indifferent! Back in Paris, Sénéchal goes through a similar experience. This time around, wearing tuxedo and top hat, he gets mistaken for a diplomat and charms the guests of a wedding party. Arrested by the police, he chooses to do without an attorney at his trial and his brilliant eloquence has him acquitted. A question remains unanswered though : will all those people who give an ovation in real life ever go to see him on stage ?
Edith, a young orphan, is exploited as a waitress and bullied by her adoptive father. But she has a dream: she wants to become a star. One day the Orient Express, which never stops at the little station across the café she works in, is forced to pull up due to a technical incident. And out of a carriage gets ... a company of dancers, who start rehearsing before Edith's amazed eyes. She meets the director of the company, handsome dancing star Harry Belmont, who takes an interest in her beauty and in her natural talent. When she leaves her obnoxious father for Vienna, Harry is absent. She nearly gets seduced by a libidinous man but, after a narrow escape, she gets a job from Treberg, the owner of the restaurant she had dined in. Treberg finds her there, hires her as a dancer and the pair soon meets tremendous success. A star is born but, realizing that he comes second to her, he prefers to vanish.
A dozen elegant people are gathered in a writer's desirable mansion. In the grand tradition of Agatha Christie, they all have something to hide.They begin a cruel game of truth, a game where you're not supposed to tell lies. As the questions become more and more intimate and precise, the tempers rise, while outside the storm is raging. Enter a hateful person (played by Paul Meurisse, the nasty headmaster in "Les Diaboliques") who seems to know a lot about them. Someone is murdered. Whodunit?
Charming and innocent, Candide is vigorously chased away by the Baron, for his close encounters with the pretty Cunégonde. World War II breaks out, and when he is drafted and taken prisoner, he is forced to take German nationality and ends up guarding the camp where he was imprisoned. He crossed into Switzerland, but as he had no bank account, he was incarcerated for eight days for trespassing. Hunted by the Gestapo, he kills two men to free Cunégonde, who has finally been found. They both flee to Argentina, and their world tour begins. In Paris, Moscow, New York, Borneo and Alexandria. They try to follow Dr. Pangloss' optimistic rule of life. Tossed about, separated, they find themselves grown old and wiser, thinking only of cultivating their garden on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Bilbao in the fifties. To continue the family marine tradition, El Viejo, an old sailor, forces his grandson Luiso to follow the profession of their ancestors as skipper of the ship Maria.
A Norwegian scientist builds a device that can convert sound waves into electrical energy. However, the machine is stolen by the scientist's wife and assistant, who head across the frozen tundra towards Russia. A police inspector and a local girl team up with the scientist to help recover the device.
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.
A British Sanitary Engineer, goes on holiday with a set of plans for a new secret weapon which he has mistaken for his new plumbing invention. Everyone is hunting for him, including the Russians. The Russians find him and offer him a job in the Kremlin doing research (on plumbing he believes). He accepts, arrives in Russia and falls in love with Tania, a secret agent. And then discovers the true nature of the plans he is carrying...
An investigative reporter travels to a small European country with the hope of exposing its dictator's family secrets.
"The Spider and the Fly is set in Paris during the cloud-cuckoo days before WW I. The storyline intertwines the destinies of three people. Guy Rolfe plays Phillipe de Ledocq, a resourceful safecracker who always manages to elude arrest. Eric Portman is cast as police-chief Maubert, who will not rest until Ledocq is behind bars. And Nadia Gray is Madeleine, the woman beloved by both Ledocq and Maubert. Just as Maubert has managed to capture his man, Ledocq is released at the behest of the government, who wants him to steal secrets from the German embassy revealing the whereabouts of the Kaiser's secret agents. And just how does Madeleine figure into all of this? Spider and the Fly is a diverting precursor to the 1960s TV series It Takes a Thief." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
The odyssey of 5 Alpine soldiers who died during the First World War because of an avalanche. Their bodies were found several years later.
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.
In the New World, a rugged pirate leader and a corrupt governor vie for the affections of a beautiful Indian heiress.
Music, ballet, folk dances and mime eliciting the spirit of Naples across the ages are loosely tied together by the comedic wanderings and exploits of the Esposito family.
Sam Laker is an American industrialist, working in Britain, who has just been awarded an international award for industrial design. He is planning to travel to East Germany to attend a trade show and show off his invention, taking his 10 year old son with him for a holiday. Meanwhile a British Intelligence officer who served with Laker in the Second World War decides to use the opportunity of Laker's trip and his lack of an intelligence profile to coerce him into carrying out an assassination.
Enrico Rossi is accused of polygamy for having married six different women over the years.
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.
Carlo Savelli, gone missing after the war, returns to Italia after many years. His wife Anna, believing him dead, has established a romance with Andrea, and in order to keep him happy, she follows him to Venice.
Desiderio is a gentleman thief who steals jewelry. Without him knowing, he is hired as a manager in the jewelry store of Gabriele Bertinori, and with this position he plans to rob the place.
1760 Spain provides the setting for Giacomo Casanova's romantic escapades, every woman he encounters unable to resist his disarming charm, be they single, engaged, or even married.
Nobleman Rainiero, Sidonia's duke son, comes back home with his friend Renzo. Soon after arrival, Renzo will get in a big trouble and he will be forced to choose between going to church for marriage or going to prison.
Michel, a writer of detective novels, is married to Pat, a pretty woman he's been neglecting. One day, the results of a private investigation reveal that his wife is cheating on him. But he'd never contacted a private detective before. The facts are all the more disturbing in that they coincide with the detective story he is writing with his beautiful young secretary. Pat is murdered and found next to her dying lover, who is said to have attempted suicide. But the police soon realize that this is a double murder. The investigation develops; Michel is strongly suspected, as many presumptions seem to weigh heavily on him. The outcome of the investigation brings a surprise that clears Michel's name.
Louis Mennechain is a modest locksmith. So imagine his amazement when Professor Piétrefond approaches him and tells him he recognizes in him a descendant of the kings of France, more precisely of Louis XVII (the king who never reigned). According to him he is none other than the monarch's great grandson. Louis's life is soon turned upside down as he becomes the center of attention of a group of ardent royalists. Even a duchess "gives" him her love to make sure that he accepts his role as pretender to the throne...
The Spaniards under Charles V aim to occupy all of Italy with the help of traitorous allies like Don Lorenzo. Lorenzo conspires to marry off his supposed niece Isabella to Charles V’s nephew, Prince Rodriguez, to confirm Spain’s dominance. The Black Devil, a heroic masked avenger, falls in love with the fake Isabella and takes vengeance on Lorenzo with the help of his friend Ruggerio and his men.
A collection of sketches that tells the story of prostitution through the ages.
In London in 1903, during a reception at the German embassy, the legendary swindler Rocambole, thought to have died in the penal colony, helps the British secret service compromise a Prussian diplomat. His mission completed, Rocambole, under the identity of the Comte de Chamery, returns to Paris, where Baron Keller, an arms manufacturer in the service of the Kaiser, entertains the famous prima ballerina Cléo Santelli at Maxim's every evening, with whom he is madly in love. Despite her attentions, the young dancer falls in love with the false Chamery, who seems to have sworn the Baron's doom and ridicules him in the salons.
In his desirable mansion, a widower wants to marry again with a twenty-year old brunette. His children disagree and they tell him so .
As soon as he graduated from the Naples Conservatory, Vincenzo Bellini meets Maddalena Fumaroli and immediately falls in love with her.
Mr. Topaze is an unassuming school teacher in an unassuming small French town, who is honest to a fault. He is fired when he refuses to give a passing grade to a bad student, the grandson of a wealthy baroness. Castel Benac, a government official who runs a crooked financial business on the side, is persuaded by his mistress, Suzy, a musical comedy actress, to hire Mr. Topaze as the front man for his business. Gradually, Topaze becomes a rapacious financier who sacrifices his honesty for success and, in a final stroke of business bravado, fires Benac and acquires Suzy in the deal. An old friend and colleague, Tamise questions him and tells Topaze that what he now says and practices indicates there are no more honest men.
Elio is a member of a group of youngsters, all from good families, who have fun spending their days taking on silly challenges and perpetrating illicit activities. Their actions escalate and lead them to commit a robbery. Unfortunately, the robbery ends badly and a death ensues, leaving the group implicated in a murder. The police are groping in the dark due to the complexity of the investigation. Meanwhile, Elio meets and falls in love with a nightclub stripper, Suzette. The rest of the group, after a while, think they've got away with it, but make a reckless mistake that allows the police to track them down and arrest them.
A partially blind Englishman retires to the French Riviera. He meets and falls for the Widow of a French Resistance fighter but is horrified when he discovers she is involved with smugglers and murderers.
Arlette has too provincial parents to whom she announces her plan about own independence. After her departure, Marc, her absent fiance seek for her in vain in Paris until he discovers her picture on the magazine cover.
The prestigious composer Virgilio Delise, suspected of being involved in the death of his stepfather, unexpectedly runs away. Doria, an ambitious insurance detective, will stop at nothing to prove his guilt.
A comedy with lots of Neapolitan songs and shots of the Bay of Naples finds Maria Morelli unable to marry her singing sailor/lover, Giacomo because her father, Don Salvatdore Morelli objects. She can't elope because her father has an heart ailment and uses it to hold Maria. Giacomo misunderstands and takes off on a global singing tour.
Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.
Summer, 1943: wealthy youth in the Riccione district of Rimini play while the war gets closer. Carlo Caremoli, a young man who follows the crowd, has found ways to avoid military service. Then, on the beach, he meets Roberta, a war widow with a child. Roberta's mother warns Roberta to avoid Carlo, but to her, he seems attentive and to her daughter he is kind. Romance develops. Within a few weeks, Roberta is risking everything. Can there be a resolution between passion, on the one hand, and war, duty, and social expectation on the other?
Antonio De Papis is a lawyer and his specialization is separation by mutual consent. He is contrary to marriage because he sees so many of them going wrong. So when his nephew calls on him asking for his approval to his marriage, Antonio suggests to him to spend a day in his office to see what marriage really is.
The spoiled daughter of the French Ambassador tricks one of his aides into marrying her.
The prestigious composer Virgilio Delise, suspected of being involved in the death of his stepfather, unexpectedly runs away. Doria, an ambitious insurance detective, will stop at nothing to prove his guilt.
Produced in Italy in breathtaking Technicolor, this biographical story of Puccini (played by L'avventura's Gabriele Ferzetti) spans his creative life from early student days to the height of success, including his early flop Madama Butterfly and his incomplete Turandot. Along the way he encounters three women who change his life, including a sexy, beautiful singer (Two for the Road's Nadia Gray) whom he drops for a small town girl (Sirocco's Marta Toren), and a servant girl who commits suicide over him. Well-selected excerpts from Manon, La Boheme, Madama Butterfly and Turandot are featured along with other Puccini music, including the voice of Beniamino Gigli. Sets, costumes and production values are first class, all sumptuously filmed by Claude Renoir.
Lord Windermere appears to all – including to his young wife Margaret – as the perfect husband. But their happy marriage is placed at risk when Lord Windermere starts spending his afternoons with an adventuress who is working her way through London’s high society, Mrs. Erlynne.
Mathilde is a fresh young girl who wants nothing more than to become like her adored mother Maria, Mathilde insists that she is supposed to be a great, important singer, but unfortunately, due to her numerous artistic commitments, she does not have the time to take care of her daughter’s upbringing.
A captain is promoted by his company from tramp steamers to their flagship passenger liner. Although he is a thoroughly competent sailor ready to take charge of such a ship, he is less prepared for the social duties his new position involves, not least the way he in which becomes the target for all the unattached women on board.