1930s Italian Movies

Piccolo Hotel (aka Small Hotel) uses the titular establishment to weave together a vast tapestry of subplots, a la Grand Hotel. The guests include a domineering mother (Lola Braccini), her petulant daughter (Bianca Doria) and the daughter's gigolo boyfriend (Guido Notari). Also on hand is a worldly vamp (Laura Nucci) who also falls for the boyfriend, and the chronic-gambler son (Andrea Checchi) of the hotel's self-sacrificing landlady (Emma Grammatica). Though the film is set in Budapest, the characters are more Mediterranean than mittel-European. Piccolo Hotel was one of the entries in the Vienna Biennial Film Festival.

Assunta, a commoner of Naples, is scarred by her lover Michele for jealousy.

An American starlet inflames two Italian peasants who forget about their respective fiance's. One of them even thinks of marrying her and begins to plan for the engagement banquet. When the girl decides to live the countryside harmony reigns again.

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The rich banker Rosen of Livorno fear that the Bonapartist will take all his gold, so he is hiding it inside a cuckoo clock.

After several unsuccessful suicide attempts, Totò finds himself in an animal asylum.

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Gaby is expelled from school after a married teacher commits suicide after telling her he can't live without her. Though she has done nothing, she is punished for his act.

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.

A young engineer with ambitious plans tries and fails to get support from his traditional industrialist father. Only when the industrialist's son is injured in an unsuccessful experiment does the father change his mind.

An Italian blacksmith who emigrated is wounded during the war on the French front, losing his memory. Hospitalized in a German hospital, he recovers it three years later and returns home from Tunisia, happy for the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes and the inauguration of the city of Littoria.

A woman becomes convinced that her husband is an infamous wife-killer intent on adding her to his list of victims.

Based on a play by Luigi Capuana, the black-and-white movie revolves around a comical matchmaker.

Depictions of the Emperor Nero and the Great Fire of Rome (64). Anachronisms are used for comedy, such as Nero telephoning the fire brigade.

In the center of Milan, Felicita Colombo successfully manages a delicatessen that has among its customers the best bourgeoisie of the city.

Adventures of two provincial actors looking for anyway done with something to eat. They are joined by a girl, Lili. They represent a magic number, but all I get are miscues and boos.

Marcello, a shy tenor, is afraid of singing in public. Two friends of his think of having an elegant youth on the stage pretending to be singing while Marcello dubs him behind the scenes. The scam is successful but after a while Marcello summons the courage to go on stage himself.

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Rogelia, the orphan of an Asturian miner who died in a work-related accident, marries Máximo, a man as robust as jealous, drunk and violent. But when her husband is jailed, the woman will take advantage to escape with the doctor of the village so as to see the world and perhaps to form a family.

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Bruno, a chauffeur having some problem in keeping a job, meets one morning Mariuccia, a taxi driver’s daughter working as a perfumery’s shop assistant, and trying to impress her, pretending to be rich, uses his employer’s car to took her on a trip to the lakes, but things don’t work as planned and to conquer Mariuccia’s hearth won’t be so easy…

A heated sporting rivalry divides Giorgio Roberti and Fausto Renzi, both capable marathon runners. After a defeat the latter contemplates abandoning competitive sports, but is convinced by Silvia Delotti, daughter of the sports organizer of the "Aurora", to return to his father's "stable". The rivalry thus also becomes sentimental between Giorgio, already in love with Silvia, and Fausto.

When young Adriana gives birth to her daughter, she understands that her baby's father won't come back to her. He is, in fact, a playboy, Diego. Years pass by and Adriana is now happy with her new job in a beauty salon, where also works the shy accountant Mario Fabbrini, who soon takes to liking her, unaware of her situation. But one day Diego comes to the salon with the woman he's about to marry, sees Adriana and tries to speak with her, but she hides into Fabbrini's office. Diego then comes to the salon again, proposing Adriana to become his lover, but she refuses him. Fabbrini in the meantime overhears everything from outside the office...

Drama set in the nineteenth century in Sorrento in southern Italy. It is an adaptation of the 1852 novel of the same title by Francesco Mastriani. A young woman named Beatrice loses her sight after witnessing the death of her mother. Unable to see Beatrice is unable to identify her mothers’ killer. The police arrest a man who they believe is the murderer. Did they get the right man or is the killer still lurking in the shadows? Years later a family friend introduces Beatrice to a renowned Doctor who specializes in restoring sight. Will Beatrice regain her sight and identify her mothers’ killer or will someone make sure that she never sees again?

An ex-boxer has trained his own son and leads him on to win the middle-weight championship of Italy. But the boy falls easy prey to a woman of light morals and renounces the hard work of sport to follow her to a winter luxury resort and at a certain moment, offers to marry her but she, not wanting to give up an advantageous connection, turns him down, advising the youth to not change the nature of their relationship. Then, the boy feeling the entire baseness of his situation, returns home to his parents who welcome him back with joy and takes up again a commitment to sport.

A story of the Second Punic Wars, beginning with Scipio's futile pleas to the Roman Senate to build an army to battle Hannibal, that climaxes with the battle of Zama.

It is only the prospect of having a child that eventually draws otherwise strictly urban new wife Suzette to the farm of an Italian working class family. She really doesn't like the country or her in laws.

Successful WWI pilot Luciano Serra has problems adjusting to an ordinary life in peace, so he leaves his family and becomes a pilot in America. In the 30s, his son in Italy wants also to become a pilot, and Luciano accepts an offer of a double dealing agent for a flight from Rio to Rome, but his plane crashes in the Atlantic. For the world Luciano Serra is missing, but he has entered the Italian army under a new name to fight in Ethiopia. The train in which his unit travels is attacked by Ethiopian soldiers, his son flying a reconasaince mission is shot down and wounded by the same attacking enemies. Will Luciano be able to fly the plane back, to get close air support for the outnumbered Italian troups?

A romance between two temperamental singing stars. Highlights include a lengthy selection from Faust, with Gigli making a most impressive Mephistopheles. The plot takes a melodramatic turn towards the climax, with the lives of the characters mirrored in their on-stage behavior. Director Carmine Gallone was something of an expert in the field of filmed opera, as witness his Tosca, Rigoletto and Il Trovatore.

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The story is the harried attempt of a Sicilian partisan, as part of the risorgimento, to reach Garibaldi's headquarters in Northern Italy, and to petition the revered revolutionary to rescue part of his besieged land. Along the way, the peasant hero encounters many colorful Italians, differing in class and age, and holding political opinions of every type. There is a key train scene, and the film ends on the battlefield, Italian unification a success, despite brutal losses.

A sympathetic bandit chief supports the cause of freedom in Naples against the Bourbon King Ferdinand.

The young and poor Pietro Haguet accepts a job offer from the rich Marion, who wants to free herself from the suffocating presence of so many suitors, evidently interested only in her assets. Pietro's job therefore consists in posing as her boyfriend. Then things change and the two fake boyfriends discover that they are really in love with each other.