Umberto Sacripante

Sandro is a well-known journalist and he is conducting a survey on human selfishness. Every man and every woman he meets turns into a theme for his inquiry. Even his own wife, Titta.

On his way to (or from) the Crusades, Robin Hood is shipwrecked but saved by pirates who plan to return him home in order to ransom him to his father.

A young woman, her sister-in-law and her ten year old daughter are violently traumatised by invading Austrian soldiers. Later, in Verona, both woman discover they are pregnant. After a suicide attempt, one has an abortion the other keeps her child - and both faces struggles with friends and family as they return to their homes.

Ruggero Pascoli, the father of poet Giovanni Pascoli, is killed by a corrupt officer. His body is brought back home by a mare that will, several years later, reveal the one responsible for the murder.

Carlo, a young doctor, occasionally meets Anna, the daughter of professor Valli. Carlo falls in love with Anna, who returns his feelings; but her father longs a brilliant marriage for her.

A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.

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.

Immediately after the war, bandits attack a truck that is transporting newlyweds Michele and Giovanna and the accountant of an agricultural cooperative charged with bringing four million lire into office.

The meritorious assistance of a US institution, towards the inhabitants of a refugee camp, in the Italian post-war period, among the protagonists a doctor who tries to do everything possible to treat the population in critical health conditions. The doctor will fall in love with a girl particularly affected by the dramatic war period, but the return of the girl's boyfriend from captivity and the subsequent marriage will make the American doctor return to daily reality.

A family man travelling for work, Paolo Bianchi, meets on a train a lonely girl, Maria. He sees her again on a bus and she reveals him that she's in troubles: she's pregnant, her baby's father has left her and she doesn't know how to tell to her parents that she's not married. She asks Paolo to play the role of her husband and he accepts....

Everything unfolds in Naples seventeenth century, when a mysterious masked swordsman who calls Salvador Rossa becomes champion of the needy and lonely struggle against the cruel tyrant that frightens the country.

In a massive department store the driver romances the shopgirl. The problem is that the manager also has his eye on her, and some employees seem to be pilfering goods from the place.

Venice Film Festival 1939

A comedy about a hobo and a millionaire who swap roles after the millionaire rescues the hobo from a suicide attempt.

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 which King Victor Emanuel III was persuaded to consign power to Benito Mussolini. Gianfranco Giachetti is Dr. Cardini, a doctor at the local psychiatric hospital, where a strike has been called by the local socialists. Cardini turns to the fascists to help avert the strike. His son Roberto (Mino Doro) rounds up fascist friends to fight those aligned with the strikers and the town's socialists.

His 1933 debut, following some years as a journalist and then script boy, was Treno popolare, an early sound lark about several Roman petit bourgeois on a day trip to the country that was influenced by the German proto-neorealist silent picture People on Sunday (1930). 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.

During hard times, a vivacious girl looks for an office job in the hope of landing a rich man.The director of the bank she works at flirts with her while not at first revealing his identity so she rejects him.

A famous composer, distraught after his lover leaves him, contemplates suicide. He meets a young woman who restores his will to live.

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.