Antonio Pietrangeli
Four unrelated short comedies by four different directors. "Queen Sabina"chronicles the sexual misadventures of a teenage girl on the road home. "Queen Armenia" centers on a self-serving opportunistic gypsy babysitter who uses her employer's kids for her own gain. The third episode, "Queen Elena" centers on a husband who learns a lesson about the perils of infidelity after he succumbs to the wiles of the seductive wife next door. The last vignette, "Queen Marta" centers on a wealthy woman who, when drunk, uses her butler as an outlet for her lust.
A young woman from the Italian countryside experiences the dark side of the business after she moves to Rome to become a star.
The Magnificent Cuckold is about a hat tycoon who is ecstatically, if not hungrily, in love with his youthful wife. It is all blissful, that is, until our man, middle-aged and somewhat of a square among his blasé, upper-class friends to whom cuckoldry is a common practice, is seduced by one of them. At this point doubts and suspicions, like conscience, begin to plague him. If he could succumb to extramarital confections, why not his gorgeous mate? Quickly his love for his spouse degenerates beyond obsessive, into the realm of maniacal. He becomes madly concerned that his wife is cheating on him --even though she is not being unfaithful. When he looks at her it becomes obvious to him that she is a very attractive woman. And, all the men around her must be dying to be with her. Gnawed by jealously, he will imagine variations on nabbing her and her lover in flagrante delicto.
Certain that "the right man" is crucial to her escaping the confines of the Italian village where she lives, Pina (Sandra Milo) places an ad in the newspaper. She gets a response from Adolfo (Francois Perier), who agrees to travel from his residence in Rome to visit her. As flashbacks shed light on both their pasts, suspense builds about how they will relate to one another. Sharp, dark Italian comedy co-stars Mario Adorf, Gastone Moschin.
Dora, driven away from her town by malicious gossip following her first love affair, has a series of short-lived adventures until she falls in love with Nino, a small time crook. In Parma, a police officer courts her but she keeps thinking of Nino.
An old prince (Eduardo De Filippo) lives in his ancient palace in Rome together with the ghosts of his ancestors; he proudly rejects a huge offer for the palace by a real estate group seeking a place to build a department store; but the prince suddenly dies (and joins the ghosts!) and his nephew (Marcello Mastroianni), just back from the States, sells the palace for a much lesser price. The old palace seems lost but here come the ghosts which manage to create a Caravaggio-like painting in the palace, which is so declared national monument and saved from destruction. A little satirical masterpiece about real estate speculation in 1950s Italy. And a great cast with the best Italian actors of the time: Eduardo, Buazzelli, Gassman and Mastroianni playing three characters.
After their brothel closes, four sex workers open a restaurant in the countryside.
Francesca and Sandro meet, falls for each other and get married. But the differences between them are too many and the separation is around the corner.
Paolo Anselmi is a happily single man. He lives in a flat with a friend but is forced to leave when the friend gets married. He then goes to a boarding house where he flirts with a girl but ditches her when she proposes marriage. When he goes and visits his mother he finds out that she is also trying to find the right girl for him. Is he going to surrender this time?
A young and shy girl Celestina arrives from her small home village to Rome to become a housemaid. Her inexperience and naivety causes her to change her employers quite frequently. As she is moving from one family to another she makes friends with other Roman maids and falls desperately in love with a handsome plumber Fernando. But Fernando isn't telling Celestina that he is already engaged to another woman.
In Pompeii in the year 79, Lycias and Helen fall in love. Helen's guardian, the high priest of Isis, wants to separate them. To do so, he tries to make Lycias drink a love potion, but a young slave threatens to reveal everything. The high priest, unable to silence her, kills her and arranges to have Lycias accused...
In impoverished post-war Rome, a gang of young thieves is lead by Stefano, the son of an illustrious professor. The police suspects that the criminals are actually university students; inspector Mariani, a young World War II veteran, enrolls and tries to find out more. He falls for a pretty fellow student, Luisa, but she is the sister of the gang leader...
In rural Sicily, the fishermen live at the mercy of the greedy wholesalers. One family risks everything to buy their own boat and operate independently.
