Maria Pia Casilio
A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family.
Three friends - Aldo, Giovanni, and Giacomo - have to travel from Milan to Gallipoli, in Apulia, for Giacomo's wedding. The bride's father, who is Aldo and Giovanni's employer and father-in-law as well, is a rich and vulgar businessman who mistreats his sons-in-law and has given them the task of bringing him a wooden leg, the work of a famous artist.
Paolo and Maria are two elementary teachers, who love each other, but can not have a child.
An Italian singer who found fame in America comes back to his native country and finds out that his former girlfriend is in prison.
A country boy moves to the city to attempt a singing career and gets seduced by a soubrette.
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?
Nando Moriconi is a young Italian living in the early '50s Roma. He is completely crazy for everything that comes from the States. He tries to speak American-English (the most funny ever), to wear like he thinks Americans do, to walk like John Wayne (!), trying to eat cornflakes with ketchup... His life is a complete parody of the real American way of life, which he couldn't ever get. Nando's, not so secret, dream is to go to the USA. To get it he goes to the Coliseum and threats to suicide if American Embassy don't give him the visa. But at this point Nando is very well known as a 'crazy-for-USA' boy and the troubles he provoked in the past, couldn't help him.
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.
In a small Italian village, Maria De Ritas is engaged to army Lieutenant Pietro Stelluti. Stelluti's superior officer, Marshal Antonio Carotenuto, is contemplating marriage to Annarella Mirziano, but he will be forced to resign if he marries Annarella, since she has an illegitimate child and that is against regulations for army officers. When Stelluti leaves town for a few weeks, the town-gossips create an affair out of the innocent relationship between Maria and Antonio. Stelluti returns and accuses Maria of infidelity, and, she, in reprisal, runs off and joins a traveling theatrical troupe as a dancer. Antonio, after convincing Annarella that he has not betrayed her love, encounters more trouble when the father of Annarella's child shows up,and asks that she and the child go away with him. Antonio tells Annarella that it her decision to make, and she chooses the child's father and goes away with him...
While on vacation in Rome, married American Mary Forbes becomes entangled in an affair with an Italian man, Giovanni Doria. As she prepares to leave Italy, Giovanni confesses his love for her; he doesn't want her to go. Together they wander the railroad station where Mary is to take the train to Paris, then ultimately reunite with her husband and daughter in Philadelphia. Will she throw away her old life for this passionate new romance?
Marshal Antonio Carotenuto is sent to a remote Italian mountain village named Sagliena. He's anxious to marry, and selects young Gina Lollobrigida as his bride; but she is already in love with his shy subordinate Roberto Risso. Mistaking her headstrong behavior as promiscuity, Carotenuto makes advances towards her, but she spurns him. Forsaking the girl to the arms of Risso, the Marshal decides to settle for village midwife Marisa Merlini. Things become more complicated when Annarella, the midwife, starts demonstrating her love to Antonio. She is hiding a secret and the Marshal soon will be in a difficult situation.
Star-crossed lovers Thérèse (Simone Signoret) and Laurent (Raf Vallone) think they've gotten away with murder after Thérèse's weakling husband "falls" from a speeding train. But when forced to contend with a blackmailer's demands and the mute accusations of Thérèse's mother-in-law (French stage and screen diva Sylvie, in a scene stealing performance), it's only a matter of time before the law, their passion or blind chance trips them up.
In the movie La valigia dei sogni (The Suitcase of Dreams, Italy, 1953) directed by Luigi Comencini, some sequences from Cenere are inserted. The protagonist is a former silent film actor who has saved old movies of his time from destruction, and uses them to set up recreational performances at schools. After an accidental fire and the risk of prison, he meets a rich producer who helps him to build a film museum.
Joys and disappointments of three young girls who dreaming of making a career in film: Luisa has talent and triumphs; Franca tries to seduce a producer, however no artistic skills, Giuditta, the most inexperienced and naive, will have to choose between the dream of cinema and the reality of a marriage.
When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.
