Suso Cecchi d'Amico
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.
It is the year 33 of the Vulgar Era. The Emperor Tiberius is troubled by strange phenomena, an earthquake and the sky turning black as an eclipse. His astrologers give him fair warning: their omens indicate that the world is in the throes of a great upheaval and that old gods have been annihilated. A new kingdom is about to rise in the East. The Emperor calls Tito Valerio Tauro, the most prominent
A sanitary battalion of Italian Army is sent to Sorman oasis in Lybia during the Africa campaign in 1940. Soon an Italian missionary, living nearby, succeed to transform the occupation by Italian Army in a kind of humanitarian mission. In fact all the battalion is involved to help the local population. The war anyway goes on with no regards to human feelings. The "glorious" Fascist campaign is going to became a fast retreat.
The Making of The Leopard, an hour-long documentary featuring interviews with Claudia Cardinale, screenwriter Suso Ceccho D’Amico, Rotunno, filmmaker Sydney Pollack, and many others.
1943, an estate north of Firenze. The weight of the world is on the shoulders of Penny, who's about 10. An orphan, she must watch over her little sister when they go to live with her aunt and uncle. Penny's a Catholic, and worries about her uncle's soul. He's Jewish, progressive and a free thinker, a fair boss, and devoted to his family. He can be stern, so Penny also worries that she'll never please him and that he won't love her. Then, after the Allied forces land in Sicily and the Germans begin their retreat, Penny must worry about her uncle's life. She tries logic and appeals to human decency. Can a child keep the sky from falling?
A mysterious lottery win of 5 billions italian liras creates turmoil in the town of Cittadella.
The Razzi family owns a small factory of sweets in Macerata. Their desire to enlarge their business to cope with the new Unified European Market brings to a string of fatal mistakes that will ultimately doom their wealth.
World-renowned director Martin Scorsese narrates this journey through his favorites in Italian cinema.
In 1944 in Tuscany, a group of boxers facing the disasters of the Second World War, during the intrusive presence of the Germans and the Americans, organizes rigged matches to make some money and travel from town to town, hoping to participate in local fairs. A young black American soldier, believed missing, and a girl who refused to marry accompany the ramshackle group.
The artistic evolution of the great composer, whose work left an indelible mark in the history of Italian cinema. In this documentary Nino Rota's extraordinary musical production relives in the words of his friends and colleagues. His collaboration with Visconti and Fellini are truly memorable. His movie score and sequences of his performances in theaters all over the world hand us down a full and evocative outline of this outstanding artist.
As influential Italian artist Caravaggio dies in exile in 1610, he recalls his short life, from his childhood to his initial artistic failures to his later triumphs as he catches the eye of a sympathetic cardinal to his destructive relationship with a dashing gambler.
A Roman agent is sent to Palestine to investigate rumors of the resurrection of an executed criminal.
Let's Hope It's a Girl is a multifaceted exploration of the pointlessness of sexual stereotypes. Liv Ullmann is a countess who, after her divorce, takes over the family farm. Realizing that she can't rely on the patriarchal society structure for assistance, Ullmann runs the farm herself with the help of her female servants and relatives. When the Count (Philipe Noiret) comes back into her life, he and his male buddies find themselves outclassed by the expertise of the ladies.
Fresh out prison, Tiberio reconnects with his old partners in crime, Michele Ferribote and Peppe the Panther, only to realise that a lot has changed--including crime--after twenty years. Can he cope with this new reality?
During the reign of King Alboin, the peasant Bertoldo, sly and smart, manages to always get away with pranks and pleasantires with great mastery, and, even if his clumsy wife Marcolfa and their foolish son Bertoldino always put him in trouble, his shrewdness and acumen save him from any unfortunate situation...
Based on a real-life mystery in the newspapers after World War I, this conventional, straightforward story is about a poorly-dressed man who is brought into the police station in Turin for stealing flower pots from the cemetery. He is rather brutally interrogated, and then because he has no idea who he is or where he belongs, he is put into an asylum for the mentally disturbed. After his photograph is published in the newspapers, a woman shows up at the institution claiming that he is Professor Canella, her missing and wealthy husband. The news obtains the release of the amnesiac, but his claim is quickly and hotly contested by another family, arguing that the man is an imposter. As a result, his case goes back to court and in the meantime, the "professor" is put in jail. As the courtroom drama continues, there are various clues that suggest whether or not the amnesiac has been accurately identified and by whom.
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.
Michael is the younger son of a middle-class family, a strong-willed and free-thinking fellow, who is off in some distant country fighting for a revolutionary cause.
Tullio Hermil is a chauvinist aristocrat who flaunts his mistress to his wife, but when he believes she has been unfaithful he becomes enamored of her again.
"Priest - a miracle please" - The young Italian priest Don Alberto is sent to New York where he is alone and suffers the typical indifference of the metropolis. He is involved with a group of young hippies, the "angels of death" who announced their collective suicide to protest against the society that is deprived of love and victim of the system that kills everything.
A retired professor of American origin lives a solitary life in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. He is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa and her lover, her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, and forced to rent to them an apartment on the upper floor of his palazzo. From this point on his quiet routine is turned into chaos by his tenants' machinations, and everybody's life takes an unexpected but inevitable turn.
Historical evocation of Ludwig, king of Bavaria, from his crowning in 1864 until his death in 1886, as a romantic hero. Fan of Richard Wagner, betrayed by him, in love with his cousin Elisabeth of Austria, abandonned by her, tormented by his homosexuality, he will little by little slip towards madness.
This is a dramatization of events in the life of St. Francis of Assisi from before his conversion experience through his audience with the pope, including his friendship with St. Clare.
Oscar is trying to re-establish an affair with Sandra, a disturbed young woman. Having found her husband Fabrizio shot dead and her young son Ricky standing beside him with a gun, Sandra suffered a complete breakdown and now lives in isolation with her protective mother. The latter saved the young boy from recrimination by placing the gun in his father's hand, making it seem like he committed suicide. However, things are not what they seem...
Metello struggles to escape from the poverty that led to the premature death of his parents, and that is the lot of the working class in northern Italy during the second half of the 19th century. Metello fights his way out from his condition through hard work, a determined will to resist oppression inherited from his father, but also by taking advantage of his good looks when dealing with women. Metello progressively assumes an important role in the organization of an emerging workers movement, and attempts to conciliate his risky political activities with his private life.
Through the childhood and the adolescence of Giacomo Casanova (from his memoirs), this is a description of how people live in the Venice of the 18th century: customs, habits, medicine, religion and most of all - the omnipresence of hypocrisy. Written by Yepok
Baptista, a rich Paduan merchant, announces that his fair young daughter, Bianca, will remain unwed until her older sister, Katharina, a hellish shrew, has wed. Lucentio, a student and the son of a wealthy Pisan merchant, has fallen in love with Bianca. He poses as a tutor of music and poetry to gain entrance to the Baptista household and to be near Bianca. Meanwhile, Petruchio, a fortune-hunting scoundrel from Verona, arrives in Padua, hoping to capture a wealthy wife. Hortensio, another suitor of Bianca, directs Petruchio's attention to Katharina. When Hortensio warns him about Katharina's scolding tongue and fiery temper, Petruchio is challenged and resolves to capture her love. Hortensio and another suitor of Bianca, Gremio, agree to cover Petruchio's costs as he pursues Katharina.
A Spanish army officer, Don Jose (Nero), stationed in Seville, meets and begins a relationship with a mysterious gypsy, Carmen (Aumont). After he discovers she has cheated on him with his Lieutenant, he kills the officer and flees the city with Carmen. He recovers from his wounds and is forced to begin the life of a bandit.
The Stranger is a literal (but still very cinematic) adaptation of the novel by Albert Camus. Marcello Mastrioanni stars as Meursault, a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in murder. The subsequent trial of Meursault manages to convey the oppressive heat of its Algerian setting with director Luchino Visconti's usual veneer of elegant decadence. Though set in the 1930s, the sensibilities of the film were very much attuned to the 1960s: the problem was that Camus' sentiments had been adopted by so many other filmmakers of the period that The Stranger seemed rather commonplace. The film was originally released in Italy as Lo Staniero.
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.
Stuck in a dream world of his own, Italian sculptor Albert Saporito, sometimes has difficulty separating truth from fiction. When he dreams that his gangster neighbor has been murdered, he reports the crime to the police, only to involve himself in a complicated situation.
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.
Sandra comes back to Volterra, in Tuscany, the little town where she spent her childhood. She is with her American husband, Andrew. She wishes to pay homage to her father who died in Auschwitz where she was still a little child. In Volterra, Andrew meets for the first time Gianni, Sandra's brother. He soon realizes that Sandra and Gianni have a secret since their childhood. (IMDb)
The amorous adventures of Andrea Rossi-Colombotti, an army officer who finds pleasure with beautiful women in life-threatening situations.
A penniless countess falls in love with a cad, unaware that he is also involved on the side with her beautiful daughter.
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
"Les quatre vérités" aka "The Four Truths" is a movie anthology that consists of four segments, all loosely parodying fables from the 17th-century French poet Jean de la Fontaine. The US cut usually features only 3 segments.
Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano's bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon the scene, hoping to crack open the true story behind the death of this young man, who, at the age of twenty-seven, had already become Italy’s most wanted criminal and celebrated hero. Filming in the exact locations and enlisting a cast of native Sicilians once impacted by the real Giuliano, director Francesco Rosi harnessed the facts and myths surrounding the true story of the bandit's death to create a startling exposé of Sicily and the tangled relations between its citizens, the Mafia, and government officials.
During World War II, a plane full of RAF fighter crashes in the Ethiopian desert and they are met upon by an enemy Italian patrol that allows them to go free. But, when the Brits are given orders to attack the Italians, lots of problems ensue.
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 make matters worse, Lucia happens to be a sexy nightclub dancer.
Loreley looks back to the happy times when she became a silent movie star with the huge success of "La Contessa Azzurra", directed by Don Salvatore and produced by Don Peppino, the owner of a Café Chantant.
On New Year's Eve, an insecure, struggling actress (Anna Magnani) has nothing to do. When a colleague invites her to a New Year's party, she jumps at the opportunity. Accidentally she runs into an old acting acquaintance (Toto), who is helping a professional pickpocket (Ben Gazzara) steal from people during the hustle-bustle of New Year's Eve festivities. During the course of the evening, they have numerous crazy, humorous adventures all over Rome at different parties, restaurants, and even the Trevi fountain. Magnani's character (Tortorella) falls for Gazzara's character (Lello) without knowing what he's up to, while Toto tries to placate them both.
When a widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her sons become romantic rivals, with deadly results.
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?
A young girl comes to prison and experiences the entire prison subculture. The inmates she befriends vary from big tough dangerous dames to smaller submissive ladies who are totally lost in prison life.
Best friends Peppe and Mario are thieves, but they're not very good at it. Still, Peppe thinks that he's finally devised a master heist that will make them rich. With the help of some fellow criminals, he plans to dig a tunnel from a rented apartment to the pawnshop next door, where they can rob the safe. But his plan is far from foolproof, and the fact that no one in the group has any experience digging tunnels proves to be the least of their problems.
In the summer, while their wives and children are away, four men try to enjoy their free time.
England, first half of the 19th century. Edmund Kean is a celebrated theatre actor, notorious for his tumultuous private life. He is in love with the beautiful countess Koefeld, wife of the Danish ambassador, to the consternation of his friend, the Prince of Wales. He is also hounded by Anna Damby, who wants to become an actress to escape a marriage to Lord Mewill.
A lonely city transplant, and a sheltered girl haunted by a lover’s promise, meet by chance on a canal bridge and begin a tentative romance that quickly entangles them in a web of longing and self-delusion.
Young Mario (Giancarlo Damiani) loses his mother, Ada (Giulia Rubini), when she's hit by a truck, and so his father, Aldo (Gastone Renzelli), a mechanic, must leave his job in Kenya and return to Italy. The father and son have nothing in common, and Mario shies away from him. Aldo must return to Africa and so puts his son in an orphanage, but the boy escapes on the eve of his father's departure and takes refuge with his friend Richetto (Pierre Trabaud). Aldo finds Mario, and Richetto explains that he had been only a helping friend to Ada -- and that, as a woman alone in the city with a child, she needed help. He urges Aldo to be there for the son who needs him, and Aldo decides not to go back to Kenya but to stay and raise Mario.
A photographer named Corrado snaps a picture of Antonietta. When it shows up on the front page of a magazine, she wants to take him to court over it.
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.
By a twist of fate, the photogenic Milanese shop assistant, Clara Manni, gets the leading role in Italian movie producer Gianni Franchi's romantic drama, "Addio Signora", and becomes an overnight sensation in Rome. However--as this small role catapults her professional career as a silver-screen diva--more and more, Clara finds herself trapped in a glamorously cruel world of false promises, failed relationships, and disastrous choices. Now, a betrayed, weak, and, above all, insecure Clara has her back to the wall, forced to make a difficult but pivotal decision in her life. Is there a future in the commercial film industry for the beautiful Lady without Camelias?
Forced by her lover to sell her body, Renata is saved from a suicide attempt by Paolo Martelli, an engineer. She asks him to help her find a job. When Paolo's wife humiliates her, Renata gains revenge by seducing the woman's husband.
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.
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 film by Michelangelo Antonioni composed of three episodes: a French episode set in Paris, an Italian episode set in Rome and an English episode set in London. Three stories of well-off youths who commit murders.
Bellissima is a satire of the film industry, and centers on a mother and daughter after the latter attends an audition.
Once upon a time an old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Toto, enters an orphanage. Toto leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. The squatters discover oil in the land and Toto sees a vision of the old woman who gives him a magic dove that will grant him anything he wishes.
The title of this Italian melodrama translates to Pact with the Devil. However, His Satanic Majesty does not appear in the film. Rather, this expensively produced period piece is more along the lines of Romeo and Juliet, with young love threatened by warring families. In his first Italian film, Hollywood veteran Eduardo Cianelli goes through his usual villainous paces as the scheming father of the male lead (Jacques Francois). The most fascinating performance is rendered by Umberto Spadaro, as the village idiot, or is he? Patto col Diavolo makes the most of the visual dynamics of Italy's mountainous Calabrian region.
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.
A French fugitive arrives in Genoa, where he becomes entangled with an Italian woman and her daughter.
Unlike most Italian films of the 1940s, Augusto Genina's Cielo Sulla Palude opened in Venice rather than Rome. The film's American title was Heaven Over the Marshes, and indeed most of the story is set in the disease-ridden Pontine Marshes on the outskirts of Rome. This was the home of Maria Goretti, a pious young girl who was murdered by her would-be seducer. For reasons elucidated in the course of the film, Maria's short time on earth made her worthy of Sainthood, which was actually bestowed upon her shortly after the release of this film. Maria Goretti is well-played by Ines Orsini. Cielo Sulla Palude served as the comeback feature for director Augusto Genina, whose previous pro-fascist films had caused him to be blacklisted after WW II.
Antonio, an unemployed man in the depressed post-WWII economy of Italy, at last finds a good job hanging up posters, the only requirement for which is that he must have his own bicycle. When Antonio’s bicycle is stolen, he and his son are forced to walk the streets of Rome in search of it, or else face ruin.
On his way to Africa, Don Pietro, a young missionary priest has his suitcase stolen in the station of Naples. While trying to retrieve his baggage he realizes how miserable the city of Naples is. Then he decides that his mission is there in Naples, He creates his 'The Boys' Town' a shelter for poor kids, aka the 'scugnizzi' (street urchins), with a view to putting them back on the right track. Some of the kids, though, do not play by the rules just using that 'home' as a convenient place for hiding the product of their thefts...
Giovanni used to be a humble, mild-mannered government clerk whose life was turned upside down when he met Giulio, a notorious forger who at once set about manipulating the over-confident man. Giovanni did what he should never have done: he associated himself with the crook. Giulio soon laid hands on Giovanni's money, ruined his career and manhandled him into marrying his own mistress, the beautiful Ginevra. It was of course an unhappy marriage but Giovanni found a little solace when his son Ciro was born. Seven years later though, Wanzer resurfaced...
Vivere in pace is a 1947 Italian comedy-drama war film directed by Luigi Zampa.
