Italian Cinema: A Personal Overview

By: Trolley Freak

A roughly chronological list of most of the essential Italian films from the 1910’s up until the end of the 1970’s. To be updated later to include more Silents and films from the 1980’s onwards. Suggestions for films I may have missed welcomed..

Related List:

French Cinema: A Personal Overview

1930’s

Vittorio De Sica (1901-74)

Selected Key films of the 1930’s:

What Scoundrels Men Are! (1932, Dir: Mario Camerini)

La Signora Di Tutti (1934, Dir: Max Ophüls)

1940’s

Roberto Rossellini (1906-77)

Ossessione (1943, Dir: Roberto Rossellini)

Indirectly we have Jean Renoir to thank for Visconti’s debut masterpiece as it was the French director who gifted his Italian counterpart a copy of Cain’s crime novel and sparked an interest to turn it into a film. Girotti and Calamai as the lovers share a sheer physical chemistry that is fierce in its intensity in a brilliant film that can arguably be described as the missing link between film noir and neo-realism.

Rome, Open City (1945, Dir: Roberto Rossellini)

The first landmark of Italian neo-realism was meant to be a documentary about a priest in the Resistance but evolved into the fictional story of a Communist leader hiding out in Rome during the dying days of German occupation. Using low-grade film stock and hand-held camera style, Rossellini’s opening salvo in his War Trilogy is remarkable; a powerful melodrama and an authentic record of a particular time and place.

Anna Magnani (1908-73)

Shoeshine (1946, Dir: Vittorio De Sica)

The film that put De Sica at the heart of the Italian neo-realist movement is undoubtedly a humanistic masterpiece of European cinema. Its subject is two young boys struggling to earn money on the streets of post-war Rome in order to fulfil their dream of buying a horse. When a black market deal goes wrong and they are sent to a juvenile prison, the brutal regime puts their friendship to the test. Utter brilliance.

Bicycle Thieves (1948, Dir: Vittorio De Sica)

Offered finance by David O. Selznick if he promised to cast Cary Grant in the lead role, De Sica wisely chose to stick with his instincts and cast a non-professional in the lead role of a man struggling to make ends meet in post-war Italy. A more promising future is snatched away when his new job is compromised by the theft of his bicycle, leading to a frantic and futile search aided by his son. Touching and humane.

Selected Key films of the 1940’s:

The Children Are Watching Us (1944, Dir: Vittorio De Sica)

This early outing for De Sica as a director was the first time he worked with Zavattini in a partnership that would go on to produce so many great films. It’s a melodramatic, heartrending tearjerker in which an adulterous affair is seen through the eyes of a child. The film reflects the growing social awareness that anticipated the post-war neo-realist films in Italy. It’s a simple piece, beautiful and unforgettable.

Paisan (1946, Dir: Roberto Rossellini)

The middle part of Rossellini’s acclaimed neo-realist War Trilogy shows the liberation of Italy by the Allied forces in six powerful vignettes. Each story is varied and telling as the liberators are welcomed by the citizens of a country in a state of chaos. Overall the film is devoid of propaganda and like its predecessor Rome, Open City and its successor Germany Year Zero is an immensely valuable record of its time.

Germany Year Zero (1948, Dir: Roberto Rossellini)

For the third part of his neo-realist triptych on World War II, Rossellini left his native Italy for the rubble of a devastated Berlin to show how the citizens of a defeated nation were coping. Through the eyes of a boy we see the hardships of everyday life and the struggle to survive. The desperate act he commits after misunderstanding a throwaway comment leads to the tragic climax. Harrowing but essential viewing.

La Terra Trema (1948, Dir: Luchino Visconti)

Visconti wasn’t one of the key figures of Italian neo-realism but five years after his debut masterpiece Ossessione he delivered the purest, most definitive example of the genre. The film records the lives of a poor Sicilian fishing family and focuses on their attempts to become self-sufficient. Austerely shot with fabulous use of deep focus photography, Visconti’s most understated work is a magnificent achievement.

Bitter Rice (1949, Dir: Giuseppe De Santis)

Steamy passions in the rice fields as sexy, high camp melodrama is superimposed onto a film intended as a hard-hitting critique of the exploitation of workers. The bold camera style of de Santis is as impressive as his handling of set pieces, especially a memorably erotic bit of boogie woogie between the voluptuous Mangano and the nefarious Gassman and the final showdown set in an abattoir. Magnificent entertainment.

1950’s:

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007)

Story Of A Love Affair (1950, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni)

After beginning his directorial career as a documentarist, Antonioni graduated to fiction features with a film that Scorsese has declared to be one of his all-time favourites. Ten years before his international breakthrough with L’avventura, Antonioni displays an assured style with this story of a doomed love affair set in a wintery Milan. Enhanced by a prominent jazzy score, this moody piece is an intriguing debut.

Stromboli (1950, Dir: Roberto Rossellini)

Bellissima (1951, Dir: Luchino Visconti)

Despite being one of the noisiest films I’ve ever seen with characters screeching at each other in rapid-fire Italian, Visconti’s collaboration with De Sica’s regular screenwriter Zavattini is a satirical and effective behind the scenes look at the harsh realities of film casting. The force of nature that is Magnani dominates scenes as the pushy working class mother desperate for her young daughter to become a star.

Miracle In Milan (1951, Dir: Vittorio De Sica)

A fantastic fable about the inhabitants of a Milanese shanty town and their struggles with the authorities after oil is discovered. Chaplinesque comedy and Clair-like charm are shamelessly fused with Italian neo-realism in a concoction that shouldn’t work but does. Elements of humour, pathos, whimsy, social message and sentiment are precariously balanced in Zavattini’s screenplay. It put a very big smile on my face.

Gina Lollobrigida (b. 1927)

Umberto D. (1952, Dir: Vittorio De Sica)

This jewel of the Italian neo-realist movement is a masterpiece of World Cinema but at the time of release wasn’t a success and proved to be a setback in the career of De Sica, the seeker of truth. A continuation of his collaboration with screenwriter Zavattini which had already produced the likes of Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves, it tells the story of an old man’s struggle to survive in an uncaring world. Splendid.

Bread, Love And Dreams (1953, Dir: Luigi Comencini)

Luchino Visconti (1906-76)

Senso (1954, Dir: Luchino Visconti)

Alida Valli (1921-2006)

Federico Fellini (1920-1993)

La Strada (1954, Dir: Federico Fellini)

Le Amiche (1955, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni)

Selected Key films of the 1950’s:

Rome 11:00 (1952, Dir: Guiseppe de Santis)
I Vitelloni (1953, Dir: Federico Fellini)
Atilla (1954, Dir: Pietro Francisci)
Ulysses (1954, Dir: Mario Camerini)

Il Bidone (1955, Dir: Federico Fellini)

Intriguingly, Fellini wanted to cast Bogart in the lead role in this tale of swindlers but instead he settled on burly character actor Crawford. He does a great job too as Augusto who along with his accomplices fleeces peasant farmers out of their money. An unexpected encounter with an estranged daughter leads him to question his lifestyle and sets up the emotional final scene on a stony hillside. Highly recommended.

Scandal In Sorrento (1955, Dir: Dino Risi)
Nights Of Cabiria (1957, Dir: Federico Fellini)
Il Grido (1957, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni)
Le Notti Bianche (1957, Dir: Luchino Visconti)

Il Generale Della Rovere (1959, Dir: Roberto Rossellini)

Can a coward turn into a hero? That’s the question posed in Rossellini’s exceptional wartime drama, a big success for him after a string of commercial failures and the winner of the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. De Sica proves that his talent behind the camera is equalled by his performances in front of it with a quite brilliant portrayal of a con man forced to impersonate a dead man in order to help his German captors.

1960’s

L’avventura (1960, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni)

Monica Vitti (b. 1931)

La Dolce Vita (1960, Dir: Federico Fellini)

Rocco And His Brothers (1960, Dir: Luchino Visconti)

Visconti’s operatic melodrama is a masterpiece of epic proportions that surely influenced future films like Coppola’s Godfather Trilogy and Scorsese’s Mean Streets. Katina Paxinou is the matriarch moving to Milan with her five sons in search of a better life. Magnificent performances all round, especially from Annie Girardot as the tragic Nadia whose involvement with two of the brothers provides such gripping drama.

Il Posto (1961, Dir: Ermanno Olmi)

For his first fiction film, Olmi drew on personal experience for this wryly humorous work. Indebted to the neo-realist style, the anguish and loneliness of a young man who applies for an office job is examined. The film employs non-professional actors and the lugubrious features of Panseri in the lead role are reminiscent of Keaton as he gradually becomes aware of the boredom of the years stretching out before him.

The Fiances (1962, Dir: Ermanno Olmi)

Distance lends enchantment to a fading love affair when a young welder is sent by his employers to work in Sicily. Olmi enriches his warm story of ordinary people with a wealth of detailed observations which gives its characters their humanity and believability. The film is masterfully constructed with a divine range and choice of music which helps to effortlessly generate a mystical quality. A towering achievement.

Francesco Rosi (b. 1922)

Salvatore Giuliano (1962, Dir: Francesco Rosi)

Black Sabbath (1963, Dir: Mario Bava)

The Leopard (1963, Dir: Luchino Visconti)

Visconti was always partial to the melodramatic and operatic spectacle of lavish sets and costumes and he reached his apotheosis with this magnificent film, one of the most beautiful ever made. Heading an international cast is Lancaster who gives a towering performance as the aristocrat who observes the decline of his decadent world after Garibaldi’s invasion of Sicily. They REALLY don’t make ’em like this anymore…

Claudia Cardinale (b. 1938)

Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (1963, Dir: Vittorio De Sica)

Sophia Loren (b. 1934)

8 1/2 (1963, Dir: Federico Fellini)

Marcello Mastroianni (1924-96)

Before The Revolution (1964, Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci)

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75)

The Gospel According To St. Matthew (1964, Dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Sergio Leone (1929-89)

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966, Dir: Sergio Leone)

Selected Key films of the 1960’s:

Bandits Of Orgosolo (1960, Dir: Vittorio De Seta)

Set in the majestic mountains and countryside of Sardinia, this story of the hunt for an unjustly accused shepherd somehow reminded me of Bresson’s rural fables Au Hasard Balthazar and Mouchette. There is no false sentiment or syrupy music to manipulate the audience, just an austerely photographed and poetically simple tale cast with non-professional actors which harks back to the neo-realist movement of the ’40’s.

Blackout In Rome (1960, Dir: Roberto Rossellini)

Fifteen years after his masterpiece Rome, Open City Rossellini returned to the streets of the Italian capital for a thoroughly entertaining and engrossing wartime drama that seems to have become a curiously overlooked entry in his filmography. Its melodramatic story bears some similarites to The Diary of Anne Frank as three escaped Allied prisoners-of-war take refuge in the attic of a young Italian woman. I loved it.

Accattone (1961, Dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini)
La Notte (1961, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni)

Hands Over The City (1963, Dir: Francesco Rosi)

A Fistful Of Dollars (1964, Dir: Sergio Leone)

The first film of Leone’s Dollars trilogy made a star out of Clint Eastwood after years playing Rowdy Yates in TV’s Rawhide and began the craze for Spaghetti westerns. A remake of Kurosawa’s much superior Yojimbo, Leone swaps swords for guns and Japan for Mexico in the tale of a gun for hire who enters a town controlled by rival factions and plays each one against the other until they eventually destroy themselves.

Red Desert (1964, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni)
The 10th Victim (1965, Dir: Elio Petri)

The Battle Of Algiers (1966, Dir: Gillo Pontecorvo)

If Griffith hadn’t already used the title, Pontecorvo would have liked to call this masterpiece The Birth of a Nation because essentially that’s what it is; a semi-documentary reconstruction of the events leading up to Algerian liberation. The film is fair to both sides in the conflict but is nevertheless on the side of the guerillas and the presentation of the facts, as well as the incidents of battle, is masterly.

The Great Silence (1968, Dir: Sergio Corbucci)

Theorem (1968, Dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Stamp plays a handsome and mysterious stranger who comes to stay with a bourgeois Milanese family and seduces every member of the household before suddenly departing, leaving them to implode. This cold and mystical fable, scripted by Pasolini and simultaneously expanded by him into a novel, is a fine example of almost pure cinema. Dialogue is kept to a minimum as beautiful images and sumptuous music carry the story.

Silvana Mangano (1930-89)

1970’s

Bernardo Bertolucci (b. 1941)

The Conformist (1970, Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci)

Dazzling technique and stunning set-pieces are allied with beautiful cinematography and lush music in Bertolucci’s masterpiece. With a look and demeanour reminiscent of Delon in Le Samouraï, Trintignant is the existential antihero ordered to murder a former teacher by his Fascist superiors. After this film, international success for Bertolucci with the help of Brando and a packet of butter was just around the corner…..

Dominique Sanda (b. 1951)

The Garden Of The Finzi-Cortinis (1970, Dir: Vittorio De Sica)

Apart from a few financially successful films with Sophia Loren, the brilliant career of De Sica had been on the slide for quite some time before this ambitious adaptation of a celebrated novel. It tells the story of an aristrocratic Jewish family, islolated on their idyllic estate and sleepwalking into danger when the Second World War begins. It’s beautiful and haunting and a late career high for a supreme artist.

Elio Petri (1929-82)

Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion (1970, Dir: Elio Petri)

The Mattei Affair (1972, Dir: Francesco Rosi)

A powerhouse performance by Spaghetti western veteran Volontè lies at the heart of Rosi’s fascinating film, a complex semi-biographical look at the death of an oil tycoon in a plane crash and an investigation into why various organisations may have wanted him dead. It plays like a cross between a ’70’s conspiracy thriller and Citizen Kane as journalists look back on his life and try to solve the mystery of his death.

Gian Maria Volontè (1933-94)

Amarcord (1973, Dir: Federico Fellini)

Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom (1975, Dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini)

As a fan of Fassbinder I became curious to see this notorious film after reading that the German maestro chose it in his list of the 10 best films ever made. And after having now seen it all I can say is… well, words fail me… There’s no denying it’s fearless work, brillianly directed. It’s riveting but at the same time extremely difficult to watch and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth (black humour intentional)..

Illustrious Corpses (1976, Dir: Francesco Rosi)

Lino Ventura (1919-87)

Suspiria (1977, Dir: Dario Argento)

Dario Argento (b. 1940)

Selected Key films of the 1970’s:

The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970, Dir: Dario Argento)
The Spider’s Stratagem (1970, Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci)
Fellini’s Roma (1972, Dir: Federico Fellini)