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...
Train operator Andrea Marcocci has to witness the suicide of a desperate man who jumps in front of his train. Under the influence of this shock he starts making mistakes. A check up by a doctor reveals that he's at the brink of becoming an alcoholic. Due to this evaluation he is degraded and must...
The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the...
Greedy Baron Antonio Peletti refuses to give to his town the heredity left by his father, a box full of precious jewels, which he keeps for himself. The major and the rest of the townspeople therefore organize a trick at his expense: they'll make him believe he is dead, and, in a fake "afterlife",...
Angela Chiaromonte is the daughter of a wealthy Italian prince who is killed in a fall from his horse. Though Angela stands to inherit half of a large estate, her older half-sister burns the will and thus inherits everything herself, throwing Angela into poverty. Fortunately, Angela is engaged to...
The construction of great temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite, followed by new and high taxes and the arrival of a plague, create discontent in the population, and threatens the love between a sculptor and a slave.
Anthology of tragic love. A noblewoman falls for a commoner. A doctor keeps quiet about his patients' infidelities. Expectant father is sent to fight in WWI. A 1920s fascist enjoys Rome's nightlife. WWII airman falls for a girl in Naples.
During the first Napoleonic expedition into Italy, Thibaud is seriously injured before being caught up in a mystery involving his wife, her rightful inheritance and his own daughter's happiness.
A Sicilian nobleman is very jealous of his mistress and when she gets married flies off his handle and commits a murder of which an innocent man is accused. He is however tormented by his conscience.
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.
Assunta and Michele are in love, but others come between them and jealousy arises. Assunta Spina stands out as an early landmark of naturalistic acting and a blueprint for the Italian Neorealist films to come.
The great Italian opera composer recalls his eventful life on his deathbed: his childhood in Busseto, his studies in Milan, his first opera "Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio", the death of his wife and his children killed by smallpox.
Nicola Peccoli has always nurtured his niece Giovanna, an orphan since the age of two and now of age, but he does not look favorably on her beloved Mario because he is just a simple employee and a lower class of society.