Raimondo Van Riel

In 25 AD,Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew in ancient Judea, opposes the occupying Roman empire. Falsely accused by a Roman childhood friend-turned-overlord of trying to kill the Roman governor, he is put into slavery and his mother and sister are taken away as prisoners. Three years later and freed by a grateful Roman galley commander whom he has rescued from drowning, he becomes an expert charioteer for Rome, all the while plotting to return to Judea, find and rescue his family, and avenge himself on his former friend. All the while, the form and work of Jesus move in the background of his life...

Esterina, a young war orphan, joins two truck drivers, Gino and Piero, on their trips along Northern Italy. She wants to find her luck in the big city, but her dreams turn into disappointing experiences. She falls in love with Gino but he is not interested in her, until she disappears...

As soon as he graduated from the Naples Conservatory, Vincenzo Bellini meets Maddalena Fumaroli and immediately falls in love with her.

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.

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.

Produced in Italy in breathtaking Technicolor, this biographical story of Puccini (played by L'avventura's Gabriele Ferzetti) spans his creative life from early student days to the height of success, including his early flop Madama Butterfly and his incomplete Turandot. Along the way he encounters three women who change his life, including a sexy, beautiful singer (Two for the Road's Nadia Gray) whom he drops for a small town girl (Sirocco's Marta Toren), and a servant girl who commits suicide over him. Well-selected excerpts from Manon, La Boheme, Madama Butterfly and Turandot are featured along with other Puccini music, including the voice of Beniamino Gigli. Sets, costumes and production values are first class, all sumptuously filmed by Claude Renoir.

Achille Scorzella, a poor, unemployed and hungry devil, having been mistaken for a piano tuner, happens in the home of some new riches.

A story, set in Rome of 44 A.D., concerning the amorous and political intrigues of the evil Empress Messalina, the wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius, and her eventual hounding to death.

Azucena, daughter of a Gypsy burnt at the stake, to take her revenge kidnaps one of the children of Count de Luna and raises him in secret as her own.

The city of Pola is being evacuated after the peace conference of 1947 decided to assign the sovereignty to Tito's Yugoslavia. However the main character decides to stay, thinking that Communism might bring him a better future. Life turns to be hard for him and his family until he changes his mind, but he is killed before he can leave the country.

1017 AD. The Republic of Pisa is organizing a fleet to drive out the Saracens who are infesting the Mediterranean. While the forces are away "The Gorgon," the young daughter of a Pisan nobleman who has been heroically killed, comes to be solemnly invested as the figurehead virgin who will maintain a lantern to celebrate the men's victorious return. In charge of the home guard is an ambitious young Florentine who feels deprived of the forthcoming honour and glory, and who seeks revenge by violating the sacred person of the virgin. He gains access to her well guarded quarters, but when the Gorgon falls helplessly in love with him, his desire for vengeance falls away. His plot exposed, he commits suicide rather than invoke the wrath of the Pisans. The Gorgon too takes her life by throwing herself from a high tower. Meanwhile, the victorious Pisan vessels return.

An Italian industrialist who has made a fortune in America returns to Italy planning to make a film about a beautiful woman who smiled at him before he left his home country years before.

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.

Lorenzino de 'Medici manipulates Alessandro ruler of Florence to save his beloved Bianca.

Lorenzino de 'Medici manipulates Alessandro ruler of Florence to save his beloved Bianca.

Based on fact, Passaporto Rosso (Red Passport) details the plight of a group of poor Italian immigrants who are hired as railroad workers in turn-of-the-century South America. In addition to facing poverty, deprivation, and prejudice, the immigrants are also bedeviled by a raging fever epidemic. Finally achieving a measure of prosperity, the Italians are forced to confront tragedy once more when their grown children march off to WWI. Though Isa Miranda is top-billed, she has very little to do in comparison with male lead Filippo Scelso. Passaporto Rosso was released in the U.S. as Destiny Unknown.

Count Agostino di Montecorvo's nephew and niece pretend they get married for his hundredth birthday since the old man has had this wish for a long time. But when the count wants them to beget a child as well they are forced to present him with a fake one. But then the child's mother wants it back...

During a reception in a villa, wealthy banker Calandri is killed in the park with a gunshot. The gamekeeper Barra is immediately arrested, but he declares himself innocent. During the trial it turns out that the defendant had threatened the victim, guilty of courting his sister-in-law. But the deposition of a journalist present at the party soon leads to discover the existence of a dense network of equivocal relations between the victim, the guests and the servants. This judicial setting drama is allegedly the second Italian sound film after "The Song of Love", made using the RCA Photophone recording technique, and is also considered to be the first Italian detective film, a precursor to the later genre of Giallo films.

About the booming of smuggling alcohol across the Baltic Sea between Estonia and the neighboring and alcohol prohibited Finland. Fiery love relationships are another theme of the film.

Early German sound film based on the novel "Lord Spleen" by Ludwig von Wohl. Two stowaways attempt to unravel a plot onboard a steam train.

An eccentric millionaire brings together four men who, under different circumstances, wanted to commit suicide. The proposal made to them is the following: they will travel to an islet that, according to legend, emerged from the sea when Atlantis sank and that houses a fabulous treasure buried by the Incas. But that territory is populated by the worst band of pirates and evildoers the world has ever known.

Filmarchiv Austria holds a non-access master print and a nitrate duplicate negative of the film.

"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 Daily Argus of New York. Unione Cinematografica Italiana's lavish production of the oft-told tale stars Emil Jannings as Nero.

Based on the famous historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni, and set between 1628 and 1630 in Lombardy "northern Italy" during the Spanish domination, tells of the contrasted marriage between the two young textile workers Renzo and Lucia. The 1922 version is the most ambitious and spectacular film in all Italian silent cinema, with remarkable mass scenes and some images that triggered the censorship.