All Recommendations
Miracle in Milan
Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò 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. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.
The Children Are Watching Us
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.
Totò cerca casa
Beniamino and his family have lived inside a school since the end of the war. After five years they have to move, but in Rome it's not easy to find an apartment.
Why
Giuseppe Di Noi, an Italian surveyor living in Switzerland, gets arrested at the border while going back to Italy with his family for a vacation. But can someone tell the man why?
The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed.
The Devil, Probably
A group of disillusioned young Parisians look for satisfaction in political activism, religion, romance, music, and drugs.
Late Autumn
A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.
Danger: Diabolik
International man of mystery Diabolik and his sensuous lover Eva Kant pull off heist after heist, all while European cops led by Inspector Ginko and envious mobsters led by Ralph Valmont are closing in on them.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Taken from The Arabian Nights, the film tells the story of a wicked sorcerer who tricks Prince Achmed into mounting a magical flying horse and sends the rider off on a flight to his death. But the prince foils the magician’s plan, and soars headlong into a series of wondrous adventures.
Bitter Rice
Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.
Umberto D.
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.
Paisan
Six vignettes follow the Allied invasion from July 1943 to winter 1944, from Sicily north to Venice.
The Goddess of Fortune
Alessandro and Arturo have been together for over 15 years and, despite the feeling they still have for each other, their relationship is now at crisis. When Alessandro’s best friend, out of the blue, asks them to take care of her two kids for a few days, something changes in their daily routine and love will drive them to a crazy and unexpected turn in their life.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
In 1930s Italy, a wealthy Jewish family tries to maintain their privileged lifestyle, hosting friends for tennis and parties at their villa. As anti-Semitism intensifies under Fascism, they must ultimately face the horrors of the Holocaust.
Sorry for the Delay
Vincenzo, a 30 years old apathetic and lazy man who still lives with his mother, has no job and no desire to improve. He meets Anna and fell in love with her but to keep the relationship alive he has to learn to accept more responsibility.
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.
Autumn Sonata
After a seven-year absence, Charlotte Andergast travels to Sweden to reunite with her daughter Eva. The pair have a troubled relationship: Charlotte sacrificed the responsibilities of motherhood for a career as a classical pianist. Over an emotional night, the pair reopen the wounds of the past. Charlotte gets another shock when she finds out that her mentally impaired daughter, Helena, is out of the asylum and living with Eva.
The Young and the Damned
A group of juvenile delinquents live a violent life in the infamous slums of Mexico City; among them Pedro, whose morality is gradually corrupted and destroyed by the others.
Two Women
A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.
Rocco and His Brothers
When a impoverished widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her five sons become romantic rivals with deadly results.