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...
A story of the Second Punic Wars, beginning with Scipio's futile pleas to the Roman Senate to build an army to battle Hannibal, that climaxes with the battle of Zama.
It seems that Zarre (Guido Celano), the man chosen to be the jockey for the Lupa contrada, and fiance' to Fiora (Leda Gloria), becomes enamored of a cafe' chanteuse. Bachicche, the jockey of a rival neighborhood, wants to get even with Zarre for a past offense and enlists the help of the chanteuse,...
Italian filmmaker Carmine Gallone was still in his "operetta" mode when he helmed 1938's Il Sogno di Butterfly (Dream of the Butterfly) Maria Cebotari plays opera diva Rosa Belloni, currently starring in a production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. The plot thickens when Rosa's backstage life begins...
A favorite student of an old dance teacher gets casted in an important pantomime. When the teacher dies on the stage, she finds support from a journalist's affection to overcome the difficult moment.
There were very few commercial feature films made during the Italian fascist era that were as openly propagandistic as this famous (notorious?) dramatic paean to the Blackshirts. The story takes place in a small village in Italy in October of 1922, on the eve of the fascist "March on Rome", in...
When his wife storms out of a dinner planned in honor of his American boss (because their dog is not allowed to be at the table) an engineer pretends that his secretary is the missus.
The film portrays the comic adventures of a group of summertime travellers. Produced at the height of the fascist era, Treno popolare was nonetheless free of propaganda, and featured the first film score by the legendary composer Nino Rota.
"The Roman Banquet, the golden glories, the unrivaled luxuries, the wine, the dance, the song, the beautiful women, the sumptuous splendors that taxed a barbaric world for a night of feasting and revel-- Re-created for your entertainment in the most colossal drama produced", reads an ad in the...
