Renato Cialente

Naples, 1880. Two young sisters from a noble family, after losing their parents, get taken in by a friend of their family.

Seduced by count Diego and then abandoned, Adriana finds a job at a large hairdresser shop, so she can lead a dignified life together with her daughter.

Former batsman Carlo Mezzetti, who has been left homeless with his daughter Annuccia, takes advantage of favorable situations and legal loopholes to find temporary accommodation, illegally occupying vacant houses.

Young Rosalia marries the painter Corrado Palmieri, but gets disowned by her family, opposed to the marriage. Then during a fight, Corrado kills his brother in law and is sentenced to a life sentence.

Count Anikoff, a Russian officer, challenges his best friend, Sergei, to a duel when he finds him courting the young woman he, too, is in love with. Sergei can't bring himself to kill his friend. He fires only after taking the bullet out of his pistol. Now, it is the Count's turn to fire...

In the absence of the biological mother, too busy pursuing her theatrical career, we see the glorification of the maternal surrogate, a woman who is a paragon of sacrifice and self-abnegation. La Fuggitiva is also a film in which a child actress takes a prominent role. In this sentimental drama, the little girl suffers for and rebels against the loneliness and neglect stemming from the lack of a mother and a loving family setting.

A good lady, taken by the fear of getting old, gives herself to the frivolities of worldly life.

Franco, un hombre joven de ascendencia noble, decide casarse con Luisa, hija de un humilde oficinista, contra la voluntad de su abuela. Pero una terrible tragedia trastorna la vida de la pareja de recién casados: su pequeña hija Ombretta se ahoga en el lago de Como y Luisa va al borde de la locura.

"Black Crossing" - In an Oriental port a group of people embarks a trader designated for Europe. One of them, a shady individual, entrusts the captain with a box of valuables to be kept until the end of the journey.

Foreign spies steal the formula of a new explosive

Italian filmmaker Carmine Gallone was still in his "operetta" mode when he helmed 1938's Il Sogno di Butterfly (Dream of the Butterfly) Maria Cebotari plays opera diva Rosa Belloni, currently starring in a production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. The plot thickens when Rosa's backstage life begins to mirror the travails of the character she is portraying. The climax comes when Harry Peters (Fosco Giachetti), the American father of Rosa's illegitimate child, returns after four years with his new wife in tow, leading inexorably to a doleful ending both on- and offstage. Critics complained about the substandard photography in Il Sogno di Butterfly, but this might have been due to poor laboratory work.

An 1938 Italian historical war film that portrays the life and death of Pietro Micca who was killed in 1706 at the Siege of Turin while fighting for the Duchy of Savoy against France in the War of the Spanish Succession.

Florence in 1848. There is a strong political tension in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Giovanni, a young Neapolitan composer who has just arrived in the city, accidentally comes into contact with some liberals and is convinced to compose the hymn of the Volunteers.