When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end…
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…
At the end of World War II, Giovanna, a war bride living near Milan refuses to accept that her husband, Antonio, missing on the Russian front, is dead. There’s a…
In late 1930s Ferrara, Italy, the Finzi-Continis are a leading family: wealthy, aristocratic, and urbane; they are also Jewish. Their adult children, Micol and Alberto, gather a diverse circle of…
Once upon a time an old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Toto, enters an orphanage. Toto…
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…
In his first collaboration with renowned screenwriter and longtime partner Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica examines the cataclysmic consequences of adult folly on an innocent child. Heralding the pair’s subsequent…
Seven mini-stories of adultery: “Funeral Possession,” a wayward widow at her husband’s funeral; “Amateur Night,” angry wife becomes streetwalker out of revenge; “Two Against One,” seemingly prudish girl turns out…
Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men….
When Domenico first meets Filomena in Naples during World War II, he is instantly smitten. Flash forward to the postwar years, and the two meet again, sparking a passionate affair…
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…
An anthology of four adult tales: a young couple tries to hide their marriage and the wife’s supposed pregnancy from their place of employment; a billboard photo of a scantily…
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…
Widowed shopkeeper Cesira and her 13-year-old daughter Rosetta flee from the allied bombs in Rome during the second World War; they travel to the remote village where Cesira was born….
