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…
A Place for Lovers
Globe-trotting clothes-horse Julia, who’s harboring a secret, embarks on a 10-day fling with Valerio in Italy.
Woman Times Seven
Seven mini-stories of adultery: a widow misbehaves at her husband’s funeral, a wife turns to streetwalking for revenge, a prudish girl surprises, a neglected wife vies for her husband’s attention,…
The Witches
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….
After the Fox
A criminal mastermind sets up a phony film production as part of a plan to smuggle stolen gold.
Marriage Italian Style
During World War II, a man falls for a woman in Naples, leading to a two-decade affair. When she learns he plans to marry someone else, she schemes to make…
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.
The Condemned of Altona
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…
Boccaccio ’70
An anthology of four comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy: frothy young love and office politics in the big city; milk advertisements that begin to…
Two Women
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….
The Roof
Under provincial Italian law at the time, once a roof is erected, the occupants cannot be evicted from a building. This comedy follows the efforts of a family to erect…
Indiscretion of an American Wife
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…
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…
Miracle in Milan
An old woman finds a baby in her cabbage patch and raises him. After her death, the boy grows up in an orphanage and later joins the homeless in post-war…
Bicycle Thieves
Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless…
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…
Teresa Venerdì
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…
A Garibaldian in the Convent
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.