Vittorio De Sica
A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family.
How the cinema industry does not respect the author's work as it was conceived, how manipulates the motion pictures in order to make them easier to watch by an undemanding audience or even how mutilates them to adapt the original formats and runtimes to the restrictive frame of the television screen and the abusive requirements of advertising. (Followed by “Filmmakers in Action.”)
A documentary about the Italian cinema as art form and industry.
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.
Gianni, Nicola and Antonio become close friends in 1944 while fighting the Nazis. After the end of the war, full of illusions, they settle down. The movie is a the story of the life of these three idealists and how they deal with the inevitable disillusionments of life.
Adriana De Mauro loves Cesar Braggi, but Cesar, honoring his father's dying wish, allows his brother, Antonio, to marry Adriana. As fate wills, Antonio dies in an automobile accident. Adriana's mourning for Antonio ends when Cesar steps in to rekindle her lust of life. Soon, Adriana begins having dizzy spells. Cesar helps her to a specialist, and the diagnosis is not good. She has an incurable disease. For the rest of their time together, Cesar woos Adriana and eventually proposes to her on a gondola. Yet, for some reason or other, Signora De Mauro, Adriana's mother, is not pleased with the relationship and argues bitterly with Cesar.
Deathly ill Count Dracula and his slimy underling, Anton, travel to Italy in search of a virgin's blood. They're welcomed at the crumbling estate of indebted Marchese Di Fiore, who's desperate to marry off his daughters to rich suitors. But there, instead of pure women, the count encounters incestuous lesbians with vile blood and Marxist manservant Mario, who's suspicious of the aristocratic Dracula.
How the Italian Fascist Party managed to turn the physical elimination of a political enemy into a test of strength fundamental for the ascent into the totalitarian regime.
Vittorio De Sica's A Brief Vacation (Una Breva Vacanza) stars Florinda Bolkan as a downtrodden working woman. Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, Bolkan contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world--and potential new life--is opened up to her.
Paolo and Maria are two elementary teachers, who love each other, but can not have a child.
Flim also known as: Ettore lo fusto. A creative take of the Greek myth of Helen of Troy. An Edmondo Amati film directed by Enzo G. Castellari.
Two spouses discover a corpse that mysteriously disappears and then reappear in their suitcase. This is stolen by a couple of teens who are suspected, like the first two, of murder.
A young man unwantedly gets caught up in an international gang war in this humorous crime farce!
Trastevere is a 1971 Italian comedy film. This is the first and only film directed by actor and screenwriter Fausto Tozzi. The film was heavily cut by producer Alberto Grimaldi, who cut off the roles of Umberto Orsini, Martine Brochard and Riccardo Garrone.
Three episodes. The refrigerator. A married couple of two poor emigrant workers spend almost all their money to buy a refrigerator (a must in the '70s). The purchase is too expensive for their familiar balance sheet. To earn some money they decide to go for prostitution. The wife is not so unhappy to the perspective. The room. To celebrate ten years of marriage a couple decides to spend a quick holiday in top luxury hotels in Sardegna. But the fashion luxury VIP world is too hard to enter; they soon will end in prison. The Lion. Two adulterous, Antonio and Giulia, are blocked by a lion, staying on the exit in the place they met. They both have to come back home, but couldn't move because of the lion presence. The critic situation soon drive them to their limit peak, showing their real essence.
In late 1930s Ferrara, Italy, the Finzi-Continis are a leading family: wealthy, aristocratic, and urbane; they are also Jewish. Their adult children, Micol and Alberto, gather a diverse circle of friends for tennis and parties at their villa with its lovely grounds, and try to keep the rest of the world at bay. But tensions between them all grow as anti-Semitism rises in Fascist Italy, and even the Finzi-Continis will have to confront the Holocaust.
At the end of World War II, Giovanna, a war bride living near Milan refuses to accept that her husband, Antonio, missing on the Russian front, is dead. There's a flashback to their brief courtship near her hometown of Naples, his 12-day leave to marry her, ruses to keep from deployment, and the ultimate farewell. Some years after the war, still with no word from Antonio, Giovanna goes to Russia to find him, starting in the town near the winter battle when he disappeared. Armed with his photograph, what will she find?
Mario, a young philanderer, receives 13 antique chairs in a bad state by inheritance and decides to sell off them to get some money. Afterwards he gets to know that one of them contains documents worth a lot of money. So he begins an adventurous trip to regain possession of the chair. On the way he meets many strange people who would like to help or to swindle him.
A group of travelers from the United States race through seven countries in 18 days.
Against the backdrop of the French revolution, young Caroline tries to reunite with her first love, despite her arranged marriage to an older politician.
Globe-trotting clothes-horse Julia, who's harboring a secret, embarks on a 10-day fling with Valerio in Italy.
All eyes focus on the Vatican, watching for the traditional puffs of white smoke that signal the election of the next Pope. This time much more is at stake. The new pontiff may be the only person who can bring peace to a world on the brink of nuclear nightmare.
A kidnapped mobster (Vittorio De Sica) persuades his captors to help him rob platinum ingots from a train.
Seven mini-stories of adultery: "Funeral Possession," a wayward widow at her husband's funeral; "Amateur Night," angry wife becomes streetwalker out of revenge; "Two Against One," seemingly prudish girl turns out otherwise; "Super Simone," wife vainly attempts to divert her over-engrossed writer husband; "At the Opera," a battle over a supposedly exclusive dress; "Suicides," a death pact; "Snow," would-be suitor is actually a private detective hired by jealous husband.
Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.
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.
Anne, a beautiful free-lance photographer, meets with the French medical student Carlo and falls in love. After a passionate love affair Anne becomes pregnant. Now the formerly free-wheeling Carlo finds himself facing a difficult situation. Carlo decides that Anne should abort the child. To raise enough cash Carlo sleeps with a wealthy older woman. Then Ann decides to annul the abortion.
Criminal mastermind 'The Fox' sets up a phony film production and masquerades as it's director as part of a plan to smuggle a stolen gold shipment into Italy.
BBC television program exploring Visconti’s mastery of cinema, theater, and opera direction.
A 1965 episode of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps, featuring interviews with many of film director Max Ophuls’s collaborators
A bawdy story of how a poor damsel surrenders her virtue again and again to get to the top of society.
In Naples, in the Second World War, the wolf businessman Domenico Soriano meets the seventeen years old whore Filumena Marturano in a brothel during an allied bombing. Two years later, in the post-war, they meet each other by chance and begin a long affair. For twenty-two years, Filumena is his mistress and administrates his shops in Naples while Domenico is traveling. When Domenico decides to marry the young cashier of his bakery, Filumena lures him as if she were near to death and he marries her. Later he annuls their matrimony, and she tells him that she has three sons that she raised secretly, one of them is his legitimate son but she does not disclose his identity. The middle-age Domenico uses the most different subterfuges trying to find which teenager might be his son.
Sophia Loren, who was born in Rome and lived there as a child, returns to the city that will forever be in her blood and gives her impressions of and reactions to the mosaic of Rome and the people she encounters there during her visit. She meets Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio de Sica as she visits the sights, affectionately commenting on the grandeur of the Eternal City and the irrepressible nature of its people.
Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.
Sweet-sour comedy on Italy's 1950's rage to get rich as fast as possible! The businessman wants to satisfy his wife's craving for luxury and a "respectable life" so he becomes heavily indebted. In desperation he agrees to sell a precious part of his body for a large sum of money. But just before the crucial operation he panics...
A dying German magnate invites his youngest son and daughter-in-law home to discuss the future of the family's shipbuilding empire. There, the daughter-in-law stumbles upon a secret of the family's Nazi past.
Best-selling author Tyvian Jones has a life of leisure in Venice, Italy, until he has a chance encounter with sultry Frenchwoman Eva Olivier. He falls for her instantly, despite already having wedding plans with Francesca Ferrara. Winning Eva's affection proves elusive; she's more interested in money than in love. But Tyvian remain steadfast in his obsession, going after Eva with a fervor that threatens to destroy his life.
An anthology of four adult tales: a young couple tries to hide their marriage and the wife’s supposed pregnancy from their place of employment; a billboard photo of a scantily clad woman comes to life to torment the local censor; a lottery is held in which the prize is to spend the night with a beautiful woman; an aristocratic couple comes to terms with life and marriage after the domineering husband is caught visiting sex workers by the press.
Young Aladdin (Donald O'Connor) has a series of wild adventures after he discovers a magic lamp containing a genie (Vittorio De Sica).
The Last Judgement (Italian: Il giudizio universale) is a 1961 commedia all'italiana film by Italian director Vittorio De Sica. It was coproduced with France. It has an all-star Italian and international cast, including Americans Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine; Greek Melina Mercouri and French Fernandel, Anouk Aimée and Lino Ventura. The film was a huge flop, massacred by critics and audiences when it was released. It was filmed in black and white, but the last sequence, the dance at theatre, is in color.
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.
The tormented love story between an egoist academic and a superficial starlet.
The first half of this film covers Napoleon's coronation as Emperor and political manoeuvrings while the second half covers the actual battle.
When her father dies, Epifania Parerga, an Italian in London, becomes the world's richest woman. She feels incomplete without a husband and falls in love with a humble, Indian physician, Ahmed el Kabir, much loved by his indigent English patients.
Widowed shopkeeper Cesira and her 13-year-old daughter Rosetta flee from the allied bombs in Rome during the second World War; they travel to the remote village where Cesira was born. During their journey and in the village and onward, the mother does everything she can to protect Rosetta. Meanwhile, a sensitive young intellectual, Michele, falls in love with Cesira.
An unemployed man gets a job as traffic policeman but the traffic in the big city creates innumerous problems for the poor guy.
A clergyman travels to Spain to join the Loyalist side during the Spanish Civil War and finds himself attracted to a beautiful entertainer.
In Spain, during the Napoleonic rule, the French Governor of Andalusia is besieged by the locals who have countless demands and wishes.
A doctor unwittingly drinks an aphrodisiac fluid and thus has relationships with an acquaintance's wife.
There is a lot of excitement in the high society of Venice: An Arab prince, who always travels incognito, is said to be in the city. By chance, the elegant Isabella gets to know the handsome heir to the throne - and it does not take long for her to fall madly in love with him. Isabella has no idea that her dream man is really the impostor Gérard, who looks remarkably like the prince and was hounded by the sleazy crook Alfredo on Isabella to steal their precious jewelry.
Agostino is de facto head of a censorship board whose double life as a nightclub owner might raise some questions as to his censorial judgment. The titular head of the organization is not that interested in running it himself, being more interested in women.
An actor fails to find success in the film world but falls in love with a theatre manager's daughter.
The Gestapo forces con man Victorio Bardone (Vittorio De Sica) to impersonate a dead partisan general in order to extract information from his fellow inmates.
Marco and Luciana are married and in love, but the passion of Marco for football distract him, and make him impossible to keep a job for a long time: that's why the young couple keeps arguing.
Alberto Moretti arrives in Cortina D'Ampezzo, with daughter Marcella,who has just won a TV contest, the prize of which is a free stay in a luxury hotel.
The story of "King Lazzarone" Ferdinand I of Bourbon whose pastime was to neglect the government and disguise himself as a poor man and turn to the infamous city premises in search of love adventures. With the De Filippo brothers to complete.
Despite an ominous warning from his confirmed bachelor mentor (Vittorio De Sica, young Marcello (Walter Chiari) weds the girl of his dreams (María Luz Galicia), only to discover that matrimony can drive a man to murder. Directed by Giorgio Bianchi, this comic import became a lightning rod for controversy in 1958 when Italian censors banned the film due to its negative depiction of marriage.
In this occasionally amusing frolic, Gina Lollobrigida plays a sexy widow who returns to Italy from New York following the death of her husband. Her wealth and good looks entice all the men in her small village except for the one she really wants, the town blacksmith (Dale Robertson). Giuseppe Rotunno's warm cinematography and the irresistible Lollobrigida make this one worth seeing, while the screenplay (by Ettore Margadonna, Luciana Corda, and Joseph Stefano) manages to be clever without being smirky. Look for a funny bit by Vittorio DeSica, who supervised some scenes, as a loquacious priest. This film is also known as both Anna of Brooklyn and Fast and Sexy.
Maria and Paul love them, but they are very young and, moreover, Maria is the daughter of the municipal sweeper while Paul is the lawyer Bonelli, vice mayor and head of the opposition. To complicate the story there is the reconstruction of a hermitage destroyed during the war. Reconstruction would take the view of the Paseroni villa, big industrial and political traffic. Bonelli's lawyer, a great speaker, becomes a mayor for the death of his predecessor and is bought by Paseroni, while rejecting the love of Paul and Mary for social differences and why Paul should stay behind Doddy Paseroni. At this point, Paul and Mary flee to kill, just as Bonelli has to hold a talk on the radio for the inauguration of Paseroni's villa ...
A Farewell to Arms is a 1957 American drama film directed by Charles Vidor. The screenplay by Ben Hecht, based in part on a 1930 play by Laurence Stallings, was the second feature film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1929 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. It was the last film produced by David O. Selznick.
The fake private detective Mike Spillone is hired by two old ladies to find out if Brigitte, the wife of their nephew Otello Bellomo, has a lover. Brigitte is a physician but the two aunts are unaware of the fact. While investigating, Mike and his assistant Johnny discover Brigitte with a prospective patient, the marquis De Vitti who was shot by the husband of the woman he tried to seduce. Afterwards Spillone finds her with her husband who he believes to be her lover.
A Pianetta lacks the medical officer, and this until the arrival of Dr. Marchetti. In the country, however, the doctor is already installed Don Antonio, the local healer that with a little 'of psychology, magic potions and tricks is held in high regard, especially by Mafalda that awaits her fiancé Corrado who does not write more since 1942. Even Easter, the doctor's assistant, uses a magic potion when he falls for him. Among Don Antonio and Dr. Marchetti broke a kind of war at a distance in which all are involved, including Clamide, nephew of Don Antonio, flirting with Galeazzo.
Nero is on holiday at the seaside. Poppea, Seneca and many other guests are with him. Nero is preparing a great show where he will be the star. When Agrippina, his mother, arrives with her German praetorians and decides Nero has to conquer Britain, she is asking for trouble. Many attempts of murder and poisoning will happen on the eve of his great show.
A traveling salesman is sent to prison after being accused of bigamy, while his wife and son are forced to consider leaving him permanently.
Stylish, sophisticated and absolutely broke, Dino (Vittorio De Sica) and Maria (Marlene Dietrich) pursue a romance until they realize neither of them has any money, which forces the gold diggers to turn their attention to a wealthy widower (Arthur O'Connell) and his daughter (Natalie Trundy). A compulsive gambler who owes several anxious investors a small fortune, Dino has trouble cutting his losses, no matter how bad the losing streak. [Netflix]
A lecherous governor of Naples in 1680 lusts after the wives of several peasants, particularly after the miller's wife Carmela. The miller himself plans to avenge his honor by seducing the wife of the governor.
Marshall Antonio Carotenuto comes back to native Sorrento to take care of the local fire brigade. But since Sofia, a very nice fishmonger, occupies his native house Antonio share another home with Donna Violante, secretly fall in love with him. Sofia accepts to marry Antonio almost as a joke to make Nicolino, a traffic policeman, getting jealous. The chances for the two deloused sweethearts aren't over as it could appear.
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.
Agnese has many men who woo her and live with her cousin Cesira Franca Valeri, who has the opposite problem with men and wishes she would also have men woo her.
When young and attractive Lina Stroppiani, a thief like the rest of her family, tries to steal the taxi of Paolo, together with two accomplices, she can't possibly know that this will have far reaching consequences.
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?
Five part vignette film; episodes include "The Baby" "The Hand of Providence" and "On Location"
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.
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.
Tribute to Naples, where director De Sica spent his first years, this is a collection of 6 Napolitean episodes : a clown exploited by a gangster ; an inconstant pizza seller (Sofia) loosing her husband's ring ; the funeral of a dead child ; the gambler Count Prospero B. defeated by a kid ; the unexpected and unusual wedding of Teresa, a prostitute ; the "professor" Ersilio Micci, a "wisdom seller".
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...
Vittorio De Sica's original 89-minute "Terminal Station" was released in Europe in April 1953 as "Stazione Termini," the Italian title of Cesare Zavattini's story. Producer David O. Selznick later recut the film down to 64 minutes, dramatically altering characterization by removing establishing shots and neorealist touches. Columbia Pictures released his shortened and re-edited version in May 1954 as "Indiscretion of an American Wife." In 1983, the picture was restored to its original length and shown for the first time in the U.S. at that length.
In France of the late 19th century, the wife of a wealthy general, the Countess Louise, sells the earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day to pay off debts; she claims to have lost them. Her husband quickly learns of the deceit, which is the beginning of many tragic misunderstandings, all involving the earrings, the general, the countess, & her new lover, the Italian Baron Donati.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maria is a housmaid and she is being engaged to Berto for fifteen years. Berto has not a lasting job so he is waiting for the death of his uncle Matteo to come into an inheritance. In the meantime Maria goes on with her work, first in the house of an unfaithful wife; then for an actor and his wife on the verge of leaving each other and last for Raffaele who wants to marry her. At last uncle Matteo dies...
Progressive schoolteachers Landi and Anna have a profound influence on two of their young students, Mirella and Franco. The two kids are enamored with one another and decide to experiment with some of the knowledge they've gleaned in the classroom.
Sperduti nel Buio was released in the U.S. as Lost in the Dark. The film traces the ups and downs of three Neapolitan street musicians. Vittorio de Sica plays Nunzio, a blind violinist, while Enrico Glori portrays Paolo, a deaf clarinetist. Both are enamored of singer Paolina (Fiorella Berti), the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy nobleman (Sandro Ruffini). Neither Nunzio nor Paolo are aware of the girl's lineage; when Nunzio finds out, he tries all too late to arrange a reunion between father and daughter. Meanwhile, Paolina finds happiness in the arms of a humble sailor. Though it probably wasn't intentional, Sperduti nel Buio has much in common with the 1938 English comedy-drama Sidewalks of London.
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.
Second World War . Field 119 in California (USA ) . War is long over , but the Italian Prisoners Still waiting to return home , preparing to celebrate , away from families , another sad Christmas. To dare a little rein to Their longing , they tell Episodes of Their Life . A Roman tells the USA difficult married life . A Neapolitan soldier tells of His lieutenant, a Neapolitan duke penniless . Meanwhile , the camp commander gave : Prisoners and a gramophone , So , Ai stories intertwine songs . Another soldier recalls the parties and the songs of the Sicilian spring , WHILE a Venetian gondolier evokes A HIS love affair . Sometimes , From Radio shabby listening news from abroad and Italy . Finally , one day , comes the ' pending release and All They return home .
In a post-war Rome (1946) a cat burglar inadvertently saves the life of a would-be suicide man who returns from the war to find that he has been betrayed by his fiancée while fighting in the war. From that moment the thief takes the ex-soldier under his wing. They leave house together for a night full of misadventures. In a streets of Rome they meet the struggling typist who can’t pay her rent and opts to street life; a wandering amnesiac who lost his memory and keeps asking everyone “Do you recognize me?”. Thieves, gamblers, hookers, policemen, soldiers and endless chain of cigarette-smoking and alcohol/espresso-drinking.
Thanks to wartime smuggling Gioconda Perfetti, a roman fruit vendor, becomes very rich. She leaves her shop and moves to a magnificent villa which once belonged to a count. She also becomes involved with some very dubious characters who profit from her ignorance and cheat her out of her money.
Episodic film with flashbacks about the lives of some sick and infirm people travelling on the same train, making a pilgrimage to the shine of Our Lady of Loreto.
A host of college girls take different life paths in the Italy of the 1930s.
In his first collaboration with renowned screenwriter and longtime partner Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica examines the cataclysmic consequences of adult folly on an innocent child. Heralding the pair’s subsequent work on some of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family’s disintegration.
Leo (Vittorio De Sica) is young man trying to make a living without any success. Through fortuitous circumstances, he is assigned by the director of a big firm to accompany for one night the daughter of the firm's accountant, Titi (María Mercader). Leo pretends then to be the son of a tycoon, and takes her in a luxurious restaurant.
The nephew of a wealthy nobleman, convicted for a forged check, is replaced in prison by a poor engineer. From the exchange of people derives a chain of misunderstandings and messes that ends out well.
An old woman's poignant reminiscence of her youth in a convent school, the happy moments and the sad, and her tragic love for a Garibaldian.
A comedy of errors in which the sweetly incompetent Dr. Pietro Vignali (de Sica) has been run deep into debt by his girlfriend, Loletta Prima (Magnani). After his creditors threaten to sell his belongings, he takes a job as an orphanage health inspector to pay his debts and ends up engaged to wealthy Lilli, daughter of a mattress tycoon, and chased after by the orphan Teresa Venerdí, while trying to keep his life in order.
A comedy in which a young lawyer, with a very jealous wife, ends up hosting a woman from his building for a night, with strange consequences
Seduced and abandonned by her fiance, Maria Ferrante leaves home to avoid any scandal. She is trying to find work and place to stay but one misfortune after another comes into her life Venice Film Festival 1940
A young woman teaches commercial writing and makes her students practice by writing letters addressed to an imaginary recipient from Vienna. One day, the love letter the woman writes to this non-existent man is accidentally sent by one of her students –and falls into the hands of a real person.
In a massive department store the driver romances the shopgirl. The problem is that the manager also has his eye on her, and some employees seem to be pilfering goods from the place.
Here's an interesting precursor to the giallo film, a nicely done murder mystery from director Camillo Mastrocinque. In 1815 Italy, a rich banker is killed under strange circumstances. The motive seems to be to get hold of some gold hidden inside a cuckoo clock. Vittorio De Sica heads the cast of this complex mystery, in which a huge, American-manufactured cuckoo clock is purchased by a European banker for the express purpose of smuggling gold into England. Set during the early 19th century, "The Cuckoo Clock" is lovely to look at but a bit thin dramatically. This Italian historical melodrama was acquired for US distribution by MGM-who promptly shelved the film for several months in reflection of mounting anti-Mussolini sentiments in the US.
Vittorio De Sica, heir to a large sum of money and owner of a newspaper vending stall, makes enough money out of his business to take a vacation at a fashionable resort. He is given a cruise ticket by an aristocrat who is an old school friend, and is mistaken for the aristocrat when he uses a camera that has his friends name on it. Assia Noris plays a maid who falls in love with him because of who he is and not who others think he is. Happy ending comes when De Sica marries Noris, who is more real than the pampered society belles he has been partying with.
Based on a Pirandello play, Vittori De Sica plays a wealthy young social lion who has to constantly fight off a horde of women who are eager to marry him because of his position and money. He weds Elisa Cegani, a servant girl, who turns out to be a more appealing wife than any of the others could have been. Assis Noris decorates the screen well as one of the chasers and pursuers. In 1937, De Sica and Noris made a film, "II Signor Max," which, other than the setting and character role names, basically has the same plot as this film.
After an argument with her husband, an unsatisfied wife suffers from selective amnesia. She doesn't recognize the man she married and calls her doctor husband instead.
The monotonous life of a bourgeois family is disturbed by the announcement of the imminent return from America of Mr. Lohengrin, who had left Italy years earlier, leaving behind the reputation of being an irresistible womanizer. Lohengrin's cousin, worried about the stability of his marriage, convinces some relatives who live in the countryside to welcome the dreaded guest into their home and then, to avoid meeting him, leaves. Meanwhile, in the country house everyone eagerly awaits Lohengrin, and envy and spite are unleashed during the wait. In particular, while the young landlady prepares the house, the woman's husband begins to be tormented by jealousy. But the arrival of the long-awaited guest will be a huge disappointment for everyone: the once seductive man is now just an aged, with glasses and a prominent belly.
A comedy about a hobo and a millionaire who swap roles after the millionaire rescues the hobo from a suicide attempt.
Impresario Adler is imprisoned for insulting an official and therefore unable to negotiate an important concert tour with opera singer Lauri Volpi. In his place, he convinces Friedel, a pretty music student, to travel to Venice to meet the famous tenor. In her travels, Friedel sends postcards written by Adler to his wife to prevent her from knowing his real whereabouts. When Friedel meets Volpi’s attorney, she mistakes him for the singer, and they spend days together in a romantic, picturesque Italy without him revealing his true identity. After his release from prison, Adler realizes two things: firstly, Friedel has been negotiating with the wrong man, and secondly, his wife has discovered the trick with the postcards, traveled to Italy, and started a storm of her own. But when the storm has cleared and the confusions are clarified, nothing holds them back from a happy ending.
Bruno, a chauffeur having some problem in keeping a job, meets one morning Mariuccia, a taxi driver’s daughter working as a perfumery’s shop assistant, and trying to impress her, pretending to be rich, uses his employer’s car to took her on a trip to the lakes, but things don’t work as planned and to conquer Mariuccia’s hearth won’t be so easy…
Momi Tamberlan, Bortolo Cioci and Piero Scavezza are the last three old survivors of a club founded at the time of their student life by their partner Giuseppe Bardonazzi. The rules of the Club establish that who cannot be a member of the Club he has no reputation as a pleasure-loving, gluttonous.
The Clemenceau Affair (Italian: Il processo Clémenceau) is a 1917 silent Italian adventure film directed by Alfredo De Antoni. The film features the first onscreen performance from Vittorio De Sica.
