Franco Ferrara

Birth : 1911-07-04, Palermo, Sicily, Italy

Death : 1985-09-07

Movies

Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West
Conductor
Colonel William Cody, alias Buffalo Bill, intends to put an end to the dishonest relations between a gang of white swindlers and the Indian, Yellow Hand. So he goes to the chief of Yellow Hand's tribe, Wise Fox, and tries to convince him to sign a peace treaty with the Federal troops. In order to avoid this, Yellow Hand abducts Wise Fox's daughter, pretending that the soldiers have done it.
Three Nights of Love
Conductor
Omnibus film with individual segments directed by Renato Castellani, Luigi Comencini and Franco Rossi; all of them starring the radiant Catherine Spaak as "out of place" women longing for love, in a Sicillian village, a monastery, and a modern Italian urban setting, respectively.
Attack and Retreat
Conductor
Chronicle of the unheralded and unsuccessful invasion of the Soviet Union by the Italian army during World War II.
Before the Revolution
Conductor
The study of a youth on the edge of adulthood and his aunt, ten years older. Fabrizio is passionate, idealistic, influenced by Cesare, a teacher and Marxist, engaged to the lovely but bourgeois Clelia, and stung by the drowning of his mercurial friend Agostino, a possible suicide. Gina is herself a bundle of nervous energy, alternately sweet, seductive, poetic, distracted, and unhinged. They begin a love affair after Agostino's funeral, then Gina confuses Fabrizio by sleeping with a stranger. Their visits to Cesare and then to Puck, one of Gina's older friends, a landowner losing his land, dramatize contrasting images of Italy's future. Their own futures are bleak.
The Betrothed
Conductor
Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella are two poor farmers who are in love, but they are hampered by the wickedness of the powerful Don Rodrigo, who secretly loves Lucia. The two run away from Lake Como where they live, and take refuge inland.
Bebo's Girl
Conductor
At the end of World War II, shallow, self-centered Mara is the prettiest girl in her small Italian village; Bebo is a Communist partisan who is finding it difficult to adjust to the dull banalities of life in peacetime. When Mara’s father, a passionate Communist, declares that his daughter will marry the returning hero, her reactions range from joy to bitter resentment.
Corruption
Conductor
Stefano is a shy and sensitive teenager who has just completed his studies in Switzerland and is considering becoming a monk. But his father, a rich Milanese publisher, who had the ambition to see his son succeed him, refuses and takes him on a cruise with a young woman to take this idea out of his mind...
La Scala di seta
Conductor
"The Silken Ladder" - Dormont is the teacher and guardian of the beautiful Giulia, and he is determined that she will marry Blansac despite her continual rejection of his advances. The fact is that Giulia is already married to Blansac's friend Dorvil, who every night is able to exercise his conjugal rights because Giulia lowers a ladder made of silk down to him from her bedroom window.
The Leopard
Conductor
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
The Condemned of Altona
Conductor
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 Nazi past.
The Golden Arrow
Conductor
Genies help an Arabian bandit (Tab Hunter) locate a magic arrow he needs to claim heirship to the sultan's kingdom.
The Nun of Monza
Conductor
Virginia de Leyva, daughter of a Spanish Lord, becomes a nun in Monza, in 1600s. She becomes very strict with herself and the students until she's unable to resist a romance with the nobleman Gian Paolo Osio which will lead both to danger.
My Son, the Hero
Conductor
An evil king makes a bargain with a devil in order to get away with murdering his wife.
L'Eclisse
Conductor
This romantic drama by Michelangelo Antonioni follows the love life of Vittoria, a beautiful literary translator living in Rome. After splitting from her writer boyfriend, Riccardo, Vittoria meets Piero, a lively stockbroker, on the hectic floor of the Roman stock exchange. Though Vittoria and Piero begin a relationship, it is not one without difficulties, and their commitment to one another is tested during an eclipse.
Bandits of Orgosolo
Conductor
A Sardinian peasant is implicated in the murder of a policeman and, although innocent, he doesn’t give himself up, lacking faith in the judicial system and fearing that he may lose his sheep while awaiting trial. He leaves for the mountains with his brother but life is difficult and his flock dies. Returning to the town he discovers his family in abject poverty. He procures a gun and, forced by his social predicament, resorts to banditry.
The Last Judgment
Conductor
The Last Judgement (Italian: Il giudizio universale) is a 1961 commedia all'italiana film by Italian director Vittorio De Sica. It was coproduced with France. It has an all-star Italian and international cast, including Americans Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine; Greek Melina Mercouri and French Fernandel, Anouk Aimée and Lino Ventura. The film was a huge flop, massacred by critics and audiences when it was released. It was filmed in black and white, but the last sequence, the dance at theatre, is in color.
The Mongols
Conductor
During the Mongol invasion of Poland, a conflict between Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan and his oldest son Ogotai ensues when the former aims for peace and the latter itches for war and conquest.
Joseph and His Brethren
Conductor
A brother is cast out from his family, sold in to slavery and then returns years later as a man of power - but shows forgiveness and compassion to his family through the strength of character given to him by God.
Francis of Assisi
Conductor
In 13th century Italy, Francis Bernardone, the son of an Assisi merchant, renounces a promising army career in favor of a monastic life and starts his own religious order, sanctioned by the Pope.
The Lovemakers
Conductor
The death of a wealthy patriarch in 1885 sets off an interfamily power struggle. Son Ferdinando buys out his other relatives in order to gain full control over the dead man's property. But Ferdinando's nephew Amerigo holds out. Amerigo's stance is weakened when he heads for Florence and meets prostitute Bianca.
The Seven Revenges
Conductor
The leaders of Circassians and Kyrgyz face off in a tournament divided into seven challenges: only one will gain the supremacy.
Akiko
Conductor
The quaint life of Ottavia, a widow living in Rome, is turned upside down when a young and pretty Japanese girl knocks at her door, claiming to be the daughter of her late husband, an Italian military officer who went to Japan on a secret mission during WWII and reportedly killed in action there.
The Bacchantes
Conductor
The god Dionysus decides to pay a visit to the city of Thebes. Dionysus wants to be the worshiped by the masses, but the kingdom is suffering a horrific drought and the king Pentheus wants instead to sacrifice a virgin to the God Demeter.
The Giants of Thessaly
Music Director
In order to placate the angry gods, who have allowed Thessaly to be overrun with barbarian invaders and beset with natural disasters, King Jason takes his Argonauts on a search for the fabled Golden Fleece. Meanwhile, back at home, his scheming regent is plotting to get his hands on the kingdom--and the queen.
The Hunchback
Conductor
Alvaro Cosenza, also known as the Hunchback from Quarticciolo, during Rome's occupation by Nazis in 1943, decides to revolt.
Everybody Go Home!
Conductor
When Italy surrenders to the Allies, part of the Italian army is dispersed and soldiers begin to return to their homes.
Rocco and His Brothers
Conductor
When a impoverished widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her five sons become romantic rivals with deadly results.
The Barbarians
Original Music Composer
Revak is an Iberian prince from Penda, a small island where the Carthagian fleet ransacked and enslaved the surviving native men, including him. After an eventful passage aboard a galley, Revak becomes an elephant driver in Carthage city, and could become the favorite of mighty women, but has only one thirst: bloody revenge, at all cost, so the barbarian makes common cause with the attacking Romans, Carthage's historical enemy and rival for Mediterranean hegemony, scorning love...
La Dolce Vita
Conductor
Journalist and man-about-town Marcello struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.
Carthage in Flames
Conductor
Historical drama depicting the last of the Punic Wars between the Roman Republic and Carthage.
Scent of Mystery
Music Director
An Englishman and a cabby try to save an heiress from murder in Spain.
Solomon and Sheba
Conductor
Under the rule of King David, Israel is united and prosperous although surrounded by enemies including Egypt and its allies. The aging King David favors his younger son, Solomon, as his successor, but David's elder son Prince Adonijah, a warrior, declares himself King. When David learns of this, he publicly announces Solomon to be his successor. Adonijah and Joab, his general, withdraw in rage. Israel prospers under King Solomon's wise and benevolent rule and is seen as a threat to more tyrannical monarchs in the region. The Pharaoh of Egypt agrees to cede a Red Sea port to the Queen of Sheba in a plot to undermine Solomon's rule. Sheba is to seduce Solomon and introduce Sheban pagan worship into Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Prince Adonijah, now banished, also conspires with Pharaoh and is given an army to defeat Solomon. The film is a highly fictionalized dramatization of events depicted in The Bible -- First Kings chapter 10 and Second Chronicles chapter 9.
Hannibal
Conductor
A Carthaginian general attempts to cross the Alps with an army of elephants in order to conquer Rome.
Violent Summer
Conductor
Summer, 1943: wealthy youth in the Riccione district of Rimini play while the war gets closer. Carlo Caremoli, a young man who follows the crowd, has found ways to avoid military service. Then, on the beach, he meets Roberta, a war widow with a child. Roberta's mother warns Roberta to avoid Carlo, but to her, he seems attentive and to her daughter he is kind. Romance develops. Within a few weeks, Roberta is risking everything. Can there be a resolution between passion, on the one hand, and war, duty, and social expectation on the other?
The Great War
Conductor
Italy, 1916. Oreste Jacovacci and Giovanni Busacca are called, as all the Italian youths, to serve the army in the WWI. They both try in every way to avoid serving the army.
Goliath and the Barbarians
Conductor
When barbarians invade his village and kill his father, a local man wages a one-man war against them.
The Thieves
Conductor
An Italian-American mobster is sent back to Naples from the States. He moves to Italy with all his illegal proceeds hidden in jam jars--which fall into the wrong hands when they get to the harbour of Naples. These hands belong to people who demand their fair share. Meanwhile, the mobster is questioned by investigators.
Cavalier in Devil's Castle
Conductor
A mysterious horseman, called the Dark Knight, sets himself up as a masked vigilante and decides to free the duchet of Valgrado from the grip of a terrible tyrant.
Nel blu dipinto di blu
Conductor
Turi, a young Sicilian, makes ends meet by doing some occasional work and singing in taverns in a popular district of Rome.
Dubrowsky
Conductor
Dubrowsky (Italian: Il vendicatore) is a 1959 Italian- Yugoslav historical period drama film directed by William Dieterle. It is based on the novel Dubrovsky by Alexander Pushkin.
Hell in the City
Conductor
A young girl comes to prison and experiences the entire prison subculture. The inmates she befriends vary from big tough dangerous dames to smaller submissive ladies who are totally lost in prison life.
The Law Is the Law
Conductor
Assola is an imaginary village on the border between Italy and France and the borderline crosses the village itself. The French customs agent Ferdinand is always trying to catch the Italian smuggler Giuseppe. Giuseppe discovers that Ferdinand was actually born in Italy and therefore he can't be a French customs agent.
Piece of the Sky
Conductor
During a fair, a charlatan is able to sell to a group of retired persons a piece of sky that would give them a quiet place to live well after death. The old men buy the story and decide to commit suicide to get to the corner of heaven that belongs to them.
L'uomo dai calzoni corti
Conductor
Salvatore, known as "bread loaf", escapes from Caltanissetta's brewery to find his mother he never met. Before arriving in Venice, he stays in a small sea village where he meets people of various kinds.
The Vikings
Conductor
Einar, brutal son of Ragnar and future heir to his throne, tangles with Eric, a wily slave, for the hand of a beautiful English maiden.
Fortunella
Conductor
A poor girl is convinced she is the daughter of a prince.
Man of Straw
Conductor
Andrea Zaccardi has returned home from hunting. He and his wife Luisa are very close. Their young son Giulio develops a cough. The doctor recommends the seaside. Luisa leaves with Giulio for several weeks. Andrea stays to work at the metal shop.
March's Child
Conductor
Francesca and Sandro meet, falls for each other and get married. But the differences between them are too many and the separation is around the corner.
A Farewell to Arms
Conductor
An English nurse and an American soldier on the Italian front during World War I fall in love, but the horrors surrounding them test their romance to the limit.
Le Notti Bianche
Conductor
A lonely city transplant and a sheltered girl, haunted by a lover’s promise, meet by chance on a canal bridge and begin a tentative romance that quickly entangles them in a web of longing and self-delusion.
Nights of Cabiria
Conductor
Rome, 1957. A woman, Cabiria, is robbed and left to drown by her boyfriend, Giorgio. Rescued, she resumes her life and tries her best to find happiness in a cynical world. Even when she thinks her struggles are over and she has found happiness and contentment, things may not be what they seem.
Miracles of Thursday
Original Music Composer
In Fontecilla, a Spanish village in decline, the mayor and other illustrious citizens hatch a crazy plan to revitalize tourism.
The Most Wonderful Moment
Conductor
Pietro is in love with a nurse; they keep their affair secret until she falls pregnant. Worried that marriage will affect his career, she prepares for the upcoming childbirth
The Guilty
Conductor
Men and Wolves
Conductor
Two young hunters of wolves are involved in a conflict. Besides the dangerous wild wolves, beautiful Teresa is the center of attention.
The Last Violence
Conductor
Raped during the war by a stranger, Anna is forced by their parents to pretend that that her daughter Lisa is her sister. When she is about to marry the new doctor in the country, her jealous brother resorts to threats of blackmail in an attempt to keep them apart.
The Railroad Man
Conductor
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 accept a salary cut.
Il prezzo della gloria
Conductor
A destroyer departs from the port of Taranto with orders to take a load of petrol to Tobruk at all costs.
The Roof
Conductor
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 the roof on a house overnight so that a newlywed couple can have their own home.
Child in the House
Conductor
A lonely child must stay with her uncaring aunt and uncle after her mother is hospitalized. Her estranged father is a fugitive. For love and companionship, the eleven-year old girl becomes friends with the housemaid. When at long last, she meets her dad, she must vow to never reveal his location to the police.
Roman Tales
Conductor
Alvaro is been in jail and so he consider himself the most fit to lead his three friends Mario, Otello and Spartaco. The four young men decide to start a business. They need only a van to start a transport company. But they lack the money. How can they get it?
It Happened in the Penitentiary
Conductor
A prison warden keeps a diary in which he writes about the convicts he meets and their lives.
The Swindle
Conductor
Aging small-time conman Augusto works with two younger men: Roberto, who desires to become the Italian Johnny Ray, and Bruno, nicknamed Picasso. Through a series of mishaps and personal entanglements, things go badly for Augusto.
La bella di Roma
Conductor
Nannina is engaged to a sleazy, unruly boxer who ends up in jail after a fight with a traffic policeman.
La vena d'oro
Conductor
Jealous of his widowed mother's new lover, a boy does everything to separate them. Then, after he realizes their profound feelings for each other, he tries to reunite them.
Forbidden
Conductor
Don Paolo, a young parson troubled by his love for Agnese, tries to make peace in a little village in Sardinia where two families are at war.
Non c'è amore più grande
Conductor
While her new husband is away looking for work, the wife loses the child she was expecting and uses another woman's baby as a substitute so she won't have to upset her spouse when he returns.
Figaro, il barbiere di Siviglia
Conductor
Cinematic version of Rossini's opera in which Count Almaviva wins the heart of beautiful Rosina with the help of Figaro, the barber of Seville.
Divisione Folgore
Conductor
In the summer of 1942, during the Second World War, a group of young paratroopers from the Folgore Division, after having been subjected to a long and tiring training in Italy, was transported by air to the Libyan desert to cover the Italian-German front.
The Island Princess
Music
1470. The Canary Islands try to resist the Spanish invaders. Their inhabitants are divided, their chief and his daughter Guayarmina (for whom a Spanish officer has fallen in love) wanting the peace, while the priest and resistance leader are for war. After several battles the islanders are chased to Tirma mountain by the Spanish army.
Elementary School
Conductor
Dante Trilli, who has been teaching in his village school for about twenty years, wins a competition for Milan. Waiting for him is his childhood friend, where he is the janitor in the school where Trilli will teach.
Attila
Conductor
Attila, the leader of the barbarian Huns and called by the Romans "The Scourge of God", sweeps onto the Italian peninsula, defeating all of the armies of Rome, until he and his men reach the gates of the city itself.
The Shadow
Conductor
A painter's wife becomes ill. A friend comes to comfort him,but he falls in love with her.
Il cardinale Lambertini
Conductor
Papal aspirant "Cardinal Lamberti" has to tread a fine line between the powerful Duke of Montimar and doing the right thing by a young couple in love in late 1730s Bologna.
House of Ricordi
Conductor
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 composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.
Camilla
Conductor
Camilla, a middle-aged Venetian widow, arrives in Rome to take up service as a maid for the Rossetti family, who are not prosperous. With her discreet presence, she is an element of cohesion for them thru tensions and misfortunes.
Fear
Conductor
Irene Wagner, the wife of the prominent German scientist Professor Albert Wagner, had been having an affair with Erich Baumann. She does not disclose this to her husband, hoping to preserve his innocence and their "perfect marriage". This fills her with anxiety and guilt. However, Johann Schultze, Erich's jealous ex-girlfriend, learns about the affair and begins to blackmail Irene, turning Irene's psychological torture into a harsh reality.
Woman of Rome
Conductor
During the fascist era, Adriana a beautiful young model, becomes a prostitute after a love affair gone wrong. She meets Mino, a partisan who falls in love with her and wants to redeem her.
Ulysses
Conductor
A movie adaptation of Homer's second epic, that talks about Ulysses' efforts to return to his home after the end of ten years of war.
La Strada
Conductor
When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
Senso
Conductor
A troubled and neurotic Italian Countess betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affair with an Austrian Lieutenant.
Passionately
Conductor
"Elena" cannot marry the man she loves, so enters into a loveless marriage with the wealthy "Andrea". Gradually she falls in love with him, but he never reciprocates. Things become further complicated when a letter from her first love "Carlo" is discovered.
Theodora, Slave Empress
Conductor
Teodora, a Roman courtesan and former slave girl, marries the Roman emperor Justinian and assumes the throne as Empress of Rome. But the divide between nobility and slave is too great. Teodora seeks justice for her people, and revolution and armed conflict erupt in both Byzantium and Rome.
Crazy things
Conductor
When young Dalia is mistakenly admitted to a mental institution, she is declared sane - but by a truly mad person pretending to be a doctor. The real doctor thinks she is insane - how can she escape this madness?
Pietà per chi cade
Conductor
A Slice of Life
Conductor
Nine episodes about life in Italy in the period just before its economic boom.
100 Years of Love
Conductor
Six episodes (adapted from as many short stories: Gozzano, D'Annunzio, Guido Rocca, Marino Moretti, Alba de Céspedes and Oreste Biancoli), six love stories set in different moments in italian recent history.
It Happened in the Park
Conductor
Villa Borghese, Rome's biggest urban park, is the place where everyday laughs and dramas are consumed. The movie is made of six vignettes set there.
L'incantevole nemica
Conductor
The owner of a cheese factory fears communists and mistakes a meek youth who works for him for one of them. He invites him to his house to win his confidence and the youth falls in love with his daughter.
I Always Loved You
Conductor
A landowner loves a good girl, but is ensnared by another richer woman who is actually aiming for her fortune. This she will be able to temporarily make the two young men go away but the man makes his girlfriend understand that her is true love; he realizes that he has been the victim of a scam and will bring the woman he has always loved to the altar.
Love in the City
Conductor
Six separate episodes exploring themes of love, sex and romance in the Italian capital. "Paid Love" offers a glimpse into prostitution; "Attempted Suicide" features would-be suicides discussing their despair; "Paradise for Three Hours" depicts an evening at a provincial dance hall; "Marriage Agency" follows an investigative reporter posing as a husband-to-be; "Story of Caterina" tells the story of a young unwed mother forced to abandon her child; and "Italians Stare" catalogues the girl-watching techniques of Italian men.
Passionate song
Conductor
Lucia Spinelli, orphaned by both parents, is taken as a housekeeper in the house of Mrs. Carla Parodi, when she reaches the age of majority, the young woman is almost forced to marry Mrs. Carla's brother. After the marriage and the birth of the first child, Parodi's intrusions on the life of the two spouses continue.
Lo scocciatore
Conductor
A bored civil servant accepts an invitation to visit a glamorous young lady. When she doesn't answer the door, then is later found murdered he panics!
I Vitelloni
Conductor
Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.
The Age of Indiscretion
Conductor
In a small provincial Italian town, a fifteen-year-old boy meets and falls in love with a girl.
Stazione Termini
Conductor
An American woman tries to break off her relationship with her Italian lover at Rome's Stazione Termini train station. This is Vittorio De Sica's original 89-minute "Terminal Station" which was released first in April 1953 as "Stazione Termini," the Italian title of Cesare Zavattini's story. A year later in May 1954, Columbia Pictures released a different version with the alternative title "Indiscretion of an American Wife" which producer David O. Selznick had re-edited and cut to a shortened 64 minutes, dramatically altering characterization by removing its establishing shots and neorealist touches.
Indiscretion of an American Wife
Conductor
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 for her; he doesn't want her to go. Together they wander the railroad station where Mary is to take the train to Paris, then ultimately reunite with her husband and daughter in Philadelphia. Will she throw away her old life for this passionate new romance?
Ragazze da marito
Conductor
Oreste is known for his deliberation and caution in handling license forms at his office.But when he needs money to send his 3 girls off to Capri to find rich suitors, he is tempted to take bribes to put a license through more quickly.
The Bandit of Tacca del Lupo
Conductor
In 19th century southern Italy (near Melfi, Basilicata), a small force of soldiers fight in the hills against the bandits who are holding their country to ransom.
The Dream of Zorro
Conductor
An old gentleman, a direct descendant of Zorro, has a single son named Raimundo in whom there is no trace of proud pride.
Bellissima
Conductor
Bellissima is a satire of the film industry, and centers on a mother and daughter after the latter attends an audition.
Bellissima
Il direttore d'orchestra della R.A.I. (uncredited)
Bellissima is a satire of the film industry, and centers on a mother and daughter after the latter attends an audition.
Anna
Conductor
Anna is a 1951 Italian drama film directed by Alberto Lattuada and starring the same trio as Bitter Rice: Silvana Mangano as Anna, the sinner who becomes a nun; Raf Vallone as Andrea, the rich man who loves her; and Vittorio Gassman as Vittorio, the wicked waiter who sets Anna on a dangerous path. Silvana Mangano's real sister, Patrizia Mangano, acts as Anna's sister on the film. Sophia Loren has got a small uncredited role as a nightclub assistant. Future film directors Franco Brusati and Dino Risi cowrote the script. [Wikipedia]
O.K. Nero
Conductor
Two American sailors, Fiorello and Jimmy are slugged while sight-seeing in Rome and, together, they dream they are back in Rome in the days of Nero.
Filumena Marturano
Conductor
Filumena, an ex-prostitute and for decades Domenico Soriano's lover, discovers that he intends to get married and so pretends to be on the verge of death in order to get him to marry her instead.
Last Meeting
Conductor
The wife of a mechanic and tester of Alfa Romeo cars becomes the lover of a pilot. The two decide to flee together in Argentina.
The City Defends Itself
Conductor
Four criminals commit a robbery at a soccer stadium, and then split up to try to hide separately from the police.
Outlaw Girl
Conductor
Beppe Musolino is falsely accused of murder. He is tried and once found guilty is imprisoned. Unexpectedly he escape from prison and to survive he start living like an outlaw brigand. He falls in love for Mara, a village girl, and with her help he hunts down all of the witnesses who lied about him at the trial.
Variety Lights
Conductor
In Italy, Checco Dal Monte manages a troupe of traveling performers with plenty of heart but minimal talent. At a small town engagement, he encounters the starry-eyed, gorgeous Lily Antonelli, and hires her as a dancer on the show. Vivacious Lily quickly sells out crowds and earns the resentment of Checco's mistress, Melina Amour, but the fledgling performer has far bigger ambitions and soon sets her sights on a higher-profile role.
The King's Guerrillas
Conductor
Diavolo's bandits fight Napoleon's troops and so King Ferdinand IV, the Neapolitan king, makes Fra Diavolo a Colonel. In the meantime the bandit also falls in love with Marietta, the king's illegitimate child.
Her Favourite Husband
Conductor
While casing a bank he intends to rob, gangster Leo discovers one of the clerks, Antonio, is his exact double. He kidnaps Antonio and robs the bank, posing as Antonio. But Leo hadn't accounted for the involvement of Antonio's wife, Dorothy.
The Pirates of Capri
Conductor
A group of men calling themselves 'The Pirates of Capri", headed by Captain Sirroco, who is really Count Amalfi, are trying to restore freedom to the people of Naples. The Queen is advised of the pirate's assault of a member of her court and she seeks to escape to Palermo. But, she is advised it would be good politics for her to attend a ball Amalfi is giving for his fiancée, Mercedes, who is unaware of the dual role Amalfi is playing.
The Mill on the Po
Conductor
In the Po Valley during the 19th century, a rich girl engaged to a well-to-do farmer ends up penniless and is forced to work for her fiancé’s relatives. Peasant unrest, carried to extremes by both workers and landowners, leads to violence and tragedy.
Campane a martello
Conductor
Agostina is a maid turned prostitute during World War II. She sends all the money she makes to the local priest in her home village for safekeeping. After the war is over Agostina and her friend Australia plan to open a clothing store so they return to her home island to collect the money from the priest. But after arriving there Agostina learns in shock that the priest has been dead for more than a year and that his eccentric successor mistook the received money for donations and spent all of it on building a new orphanage for war orphans. To make matters even worse, other islanders think that Agostina is now a millionaire and beg her to help them financially.
Under the Sun of Rome
Conductor
A lovely, incisive portrait of adolescents in the crowded San Giovanni quarter of Rome during the last years of WWII.
Escape to France
Conductor
A former Fascist takes his son and escapes across the border into France, where he tries to avoid being recognized and having to pay for his wartime crimes.
The Testimony
Conductor
A man, standing trial for robbery with murder, faces the death penalty. The testimony of an old civil servant may give him a reprieve but not peace of mind.