Nico Pepe

A Canton Ticino family goes up for the weekend to the house in the mountains where the father spent his childhood. The journey to the valley, suffered at intervals by his wife and children, is an obsessive ritual for Alfredo, repeated week after week as he searches for his past.

La Sciantosa is part of a project created by writer/director Alfredo Gianetti for the Italian TV. The objective was to portrait a hundred years of Italian history through three movies, all of them with Anna Magnani. The other two are "1943: un incontro" and "L'autmobile". In this first movie, La Magnani is Flora Torres, a "sciantosa" (kind of a small stage diva) who is forgotten during the WWI, living only to remember her past glory. One day she receives a letter to present herself to the high command. There, Flora is called to go to the front and entertain the troops. Along with her maid Cristina, Flora goes to the front. There they are welcomed by the young private Tonino (Massimo Ranieri). Flora starts to act like a prima donna, making absurd demands to everyone. But when she is about to present herself, the vision of the wounded soldiers makes her change her way

A bunch of shady characters pursue a cache of gold bars.

Bella Krastner is sunbathing on a beach on the Côte d'Azur when she attracts the attention of an attractive younger man, Ralph Scaffari. It is the start of a whirlwind romance which looks like it might last beyond the end of the summer. Unfortunately, Bella is already married, to Carl Krastner, a once renowned pianist who has become bitter and reclusive after a car accident that irreparably damaged one of his hands. Krastner no longer has any zest for living. He tyrannises both his wife and his sister Laurence and divides his time between scuba diving and gambling. After ratcheting up a small fortune in gambling debts, Krastner decides to fake his own death so that he can claim on his life insurance.

The Marquis de Villemaur reunite strange visitors in his Castle, to meet a survivor of the Third Reich. There is an Italian fascist, Heinrich; a German, Matthias; a Russian; and Dromard, a blind French war hero with a black monocle. - from IMDB

King Minos sacrifices the 'required' virgins to the Minotaur. As his wife lies dying, she confesses that her daughter has a twin she has secreted to avoid giving one of the girls to the Minotaur. The daughter raised by Minos tries to have her twin killed, but failing in her first attempt, continues to try to have her given to the Minotaur. Theseus, the Greek hero, tries to prevent it.

A reporter is murdered while driving to his job. The Police are contacted by a clairvoyant who saw the death in a vision, but some dark force is preventing him from seeing the man behind the crime...

Antonio married Amalia and went to fight in Russia during World War II. Since he didn't return Amalia thought he was dead, so she married another man. Many year after the war end, Antonio returned. Amalia has to choose between two husbands.

Baron Zazà, always broke due his dissolute lifestyle, decides to con a hefty sum of money out of his wealthy but greedy brother.

Follows the adventures of a group of friends, teddy boys and rock and roll chicks whose crazy, fun-loving habits inspire jiving from some of Rome's citizens, and bitter complants from others which inspire a group of corrupt officials determined to a bring the group down.

In a small Gallic village, tourists are regaled by street entertainers and brash prostitutes. One of the tourists, a black girl named Bessie, falls in love with local villager Bob, and he with her. Soon racial tensions erupt volcanically among tourists and townsfolk alike. All is forgiven when the respective parents of the hero and heroine save the village's water supply.

Lina, a music hall singer, has fallen in love with Sergei, a Russian prince. Maestro Doria, who gives her voice lessons and who hopes to make her his mistress, takes her to Paris where she becomes the star of the "Folies-Plastiques".

A doctor saves a girl from suicide and marries her out of pity. Soon the evil man who had pushed her to the limit taking advantage of her re-enters her life. The ensuing crisis will help the newlyweds overcome their differences and start a fresh, better new life.

In a luxury hotel in Miramare, a competition is organized between pop music singers. Famous celebrities and famous singers are invited.

In the reign of king Louis XV,a handsome student,Des Grieux, meets his charming cousin,Manon,just when she goes to the convent of Amiens,to take the veil.

1760 Spain provides the setting for Giacomo Casanova's romantic escapades, every woman he encounters unable to resist his disarming charm, be they single, engaged, or even married.

Raoul De Bragelonne must uphold his musketeer father's legacy in the face of court intrigues from Cardinal Mazarin.

The relationships between a veteran marshal, his bride-to-be, a rookie and his fiancée are severely tested when the young carabiniere is temporarily sent to a distant town.

Tapioca, a small-time thief, hides out in an elegant apartment, where he is soon joined by Cascarilla, one of his apprentices who has become better than his master. When the owners arrive home, the latter offers the wife a bunch of love letters she has written to various lovers for ten million.

Three jailbirds - a surgeon, a robber and a wrongly convicted man must adjust to their lives once released from prison.

When his girlfriend falls for a rich entrepreneur, an aspiring singer plots with the man's girlfriend so that they can get back their respective partners.

A prostitute goes on vacation to a beach resort with her young daughter (who's being schooled by nuns). Everything is cheerful and pleasant at the seashore; the customers at the hotel think she's a poor widow - she always wears black - and treat her like a lady. But when one of her former clients arrives, her carefree days on the beach are numbered.

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.

A series of comical sketches featuring a doctor, a travelling salesman and some posh gents.

When young Lucia attempts suicide by jumping from a train, she meets a man to whom she explains what has driven her to this. He, a former doctor, has his own demons and their conversation might just help both to face their future.

A disgraced member of the Spanish Navy must redeem his family's honor after his father betrays his country to the French.

Garibaldi, after landing in Marsala, moves on to Naples. The liberals are overjoyed but the Bourbons are terrified. The so-called Baron Tucci, on a recommendation from England, arrives at the home of Count Sereni, a notable liberal. But he turns out not to be a patriot who has returned to Italy to take part in the fight but a degraded Bourbon official who has been promised rehabilitation if he can succeed as a spy. Tucci discovers old Sereni's second wife is one of his former lovers and persuades her to murder her husband so as to gain his inheritance. She does indeed cause the count to die, by withholding his heart medicine, but not before he destroys his will.

20 years after the assassination of his father, the son of Lagardère seeks revenge.

Very stylish Italian swashbuckler - The Three Musketeers from the viewpoint of Milady de Winter

A singer and operetta dancer works in a small french town where the authorities want to expel her because of her scandalous conduct and performance. When a puritan judge closes the show, the woman will take revenge involving the judge in an affair before the selfsame Justice minister. From that moment on, a series of diversions and misunderstandings will play out leading the main characters to the city of Paris.

Through a series of scenes inspired by famous songs, various episodes of Italian life in the last fifty years are recalled.

Three friends, a mechanic, a clockmaker, and a night warden are engaged to three sisters but are broke and cannot get married and pay the rent. They convince their future father-in-law to buy three little flats for them but the man buys them from a swindler and the friends run the risk of going to prison.

Count Borraccilo lives in luxury but does not pay taxes and for this he is targeted by the tax agent Gaetano Pellecchia, who asks his friend Mario for help.

Two chorus girls leave Milan to get to the famous Totò's theatre company. Unfortunately the bus they are on breaks down and they ask for a lift, but the driver gets too fresh with them and they decide to continue the journey with any means of transport, including bicycles.

A taxi driver, with singing ambitions, finds an abandoned baby in his cab and begins to look for his mother. He doesn't find her but succeeds in finding two people who want to adopt the child.

Two twin brothers grew up and never met (due to the fact that the father with the couple would have had 13 children and therefore for superstition he closed one in an orphanage), the one goalkeeper of Juventus and the other employee at the state lottery.

The title of this Italian melodrama translates to Pact with the Devil. However, His Satanic Majesty does not appear in the film. Rather, this expensively produced period piece is more along the lines of Romeo and Juliet, with young love threatened by warring families. In his first Italian film, Hollywood veteran Eduardo Cianelli goes through his usual villainous paces as the scheming father of the male lead (Jacques Francois). The most fascinating performance is rendered by Umberto Spadaro, as the village idiot, or is he? Patto col Diavolo makes the most of the visual dynamics of Italy's mountainous Calabrian region.

Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.

Two little angels, a boy and a girl, come down on earth to choose their parents prior to birth. They choose the daughter of a retired general as their future mother and an opera singer as their dad. But making the two chosen ones meet, fall in love and marry will prove to be anything but easy.

In 19th-century France, middle-aged orphans Gasparre and Battista, watchmen at an orphanage, find out from a soothsayer that one of them is the offspring of the Hangman of Paris and the other is the son of a count. But it is only a dream of theirs.

A glamorous female singer Zazà (Isa Miranda) has an affair with a passerby engineer Dufresne (Antonio Centa). But when Zazà impatiently comes to him in Paris she finds out that he is married and even has a daughter. He wants to escape from his relatives with Zazà, but, disillusioned and exhausted, she rejects his proposition and insists on his coming back to his family.

The Italian troops at Giarabub defend themselves against the British.

A comedy of errors in which the sweetly incompetent Dr. Pietro Vignali (de Sica) has been run deep into debt by his girlfriend, Loletta Prima (Magnani). After his creditors threaten to sell his belongings, he takes a job as an orphanage health inspector to pay his debts and ends up engaged to wealthy Lilli, daughter of a mattress tycoon, and chased after by the orphan Teresa Venerdí, while trying to keep his life in order.

In the eighteenth-century Rome, Don Pasquale Corneto, wants his young nephew Ernesto, dedicated to a wasteful social life, to marry a rich spinster, both to save on the expenses of his maintenance and to increase the family heritage.

Venice Film Festival 1940

Cipriano Duval is an Italian who has emigrated to Paris, where he works in a pediatric clinic as a nurse.

Bebe, a handsome and rich young man, is getting engaged with Letizia, a young heir to a noble family.

An Italian child becomes blind due to an accident with German cavalrymen during an American bombing, but regains his sight thanks to American physicians.