The story takes place in northern Italy in the 1950's. Lola and Masetto are about to get married. Masetto wants to keep Lola as a virgin until they are married. But Lola is impatient to remain in chastity until the wedding night. She wants to be sure that Masetto is a good lover, before she commits herself into marriage. She does everything to trick Masetto into breaking the moral tradition.
An exiled Italian prostitute (Anna Magnani) shields her sister (Geraldine Brooks) from a deep-sea diver (Rossano Brazzi) on an island volcano.
A comedy in which a young lawyer, with a very jealous wife, ends up hosting a woman from his building for a night, with strange consequences
Biopic of troubled jazz musician/composer Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931), who played with the Paul Whiteman band, among others.
A documentary short detailing the life of Italians living on the Po River in the 1940s.
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.
A young woman teaches commercial writing and makes her students practice by writing letters addressed to an imaginary recipient from Vienna. One day, the love letter the woman writes to this non-existent man is accidentally sent by one of her students –and falls into the hands of a real person.
The film portrays the comic adventures of a group of summertime travellers. 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 the Spanish occupation of Naples, the people led by Tommaso Aniello - known as "Masaniello" - plot against the Viceroy. The Viceroy's son, under another name, has a son from Masaniello's sister, but his father has already planned a marriage for him with a Spanish patrician against his wishes.
A host of college girls take different life paths in the Italy of the 1930s.
1949 movie version of the Rossini opera
Biographical film about Saint Rita da Cascia, who lived in Umbria in the 14th century.
An Italian proprietor of a squalid Djibouti bar collaborated in selling arms to Ethiopians fighting his own country's invasion but after finding his long lost son on the Fascist front he decides to choose patriotism over selfish profit.
Inspired by the activity of the medical squadrons, piloted exclusively by female nurses on the Russian front of the Second World War.
A short documentary on the production of rayon, shot in Torviscosa (Italy). It portrays the production of this new synthetic fabric in the small town of Torviscosa, entirely built following strict fascist canons.