1940s Italian Movies

Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.

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During the Nazi occupation of 1944 Rome, Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is pursued by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a means of escape.

A pair of Poles deported to Siberia are taken to the army formed by General Anders and along the battle trail.

An American composer moves to Italy and falls for a local country girl right before the start of World War II.

Two shoeshine boys in postwar Rome, Italy save up to buy a horse, but their involvement as dupes in a burglary lands them in juvenile prison; the experience take a devastating toll on their friendship.

Among others, Ernesto returns to Turin after the war from a German POW camp; his household destroyed and family deceased, he tries making an honest living.

Saverio returns to Spain after treating a serious illness in Africa, only to discover that Paolo, his best friend, has stolen both his business and his fiancée. Bent on killing him, Saverio is dissuaded by a woman Paolo has also abandoned, who insists on taking revenge herself.

One of the most famous movie stars of the moment has a problem with his car. The actor is obliged to stop in a provincial hotel, where he finds himself surrounded by his admirers.

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In the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, a twelve-year-old boy is left to his own devices in order to help provide for his family.

A group of struggling artists, poets, and musicians struggle to survive in squalor without giving up their artistic ideals.

In impoverished post-war Rome, a gang of young thieves is lead by Stefano, the son of an illustrious professor. The police suspects that the criminals are actually university students; inspector Mariani, a young World War II veteran, enrolls and tries to find out more. He falls for a pretty fellow student, Luisa, but she is the sister of the gang leader...

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 work on some of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family’s disintegration.

A biopic of soprano Maria Malibran (1808–1836). A beautiful singer, Maria Malibran, is forced to turn to the stage after her husband takes to gambling, and goes to Paris where she falls in love with a famous violinist. When her money-seeking husband reappears, the couple go to London, where they find happiness. A composer falls in love with Maria but when his affections are unrequited, he becomes broken, takes to drinking and dies.

A glamorous female singer Zazà has an affair with a passerby engineer Dufresne. 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.

Released from jail, Nanni punches prison guard Stefano who has denounced him. In order to take revenge, Stefano suggests the suspicion that, during his absence, his wife has had business with the Count Paolo. A few days later, at night, a deadly ambush will be prepared. Based on the novel The Trap (1928) by Toscan Delfino Cinelli.

Short documentary about superstition in southern Italy.

A shy and oppressed professor inherits a musical theater show, so he has the opportunity to change is life and find the real love.

This tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, La maledizione (The Curse), refers to the curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter had been seduced by the Duke with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda likewise falls in love with the Duke and eventually sacrifices her life to save him from the assassins hired by her father.

Don Michele, boss of a smuggling ring and partner of Maria’s father known as the little Madonna, tries to rape the girl when he discovers that her father has stolen a large sum of money to use as her dowry. The girl saves her father from suicide and proves him innocent of the murder of Don Michele.

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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.

Marco and his son Toto work in a Venetian gondola yard and maintain the old traditions of gondoliers. When a newly-arrived businessman decides he wants to buy the yard and demolish it, Marco and company want to fight to preserve their way of life. The businessman, however, knows Marco is badly in debt and uses this to try to leverage Marco out of business. Can tradition win out in the face of naked commercialism?

In Naples, a local composer falls in love with an American tourist.

Birdaghin is a dancer at La Scala in Milan whose rapid success also quickly goes to her head. Fortunately, everything will be fine.

A film based on the book Il marchese di Roccaverdina by Luigi Capuana about a marquis who is in love with his servant Agrippina but is unable to marry her because of her status. The marquis commands his trusted subject to marry her in his stead as long as he vows not to have sex with her.

This 1948 film by Antonioni documents the lives of street cleaners in Rome. N.U. is short for Nettezza urbana, the Italian municipal cleaning service.

Six stories unfold in various regions, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley as American military personnel interact with a variety of Italian locals over eighteen months in the push north during the Italian Campaign of WWII as German forces retreat.

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Carlo Rutelli falls in love with the beautiful variety singer Yvonne la Nuit, but his father opposes the wedding. World War I breaks out and Carlo is killed while Yvonne has a son, but on orders from Carlo's father, she is told he is dead. Her career descends and only Nino, an art partner, remains close to her and helps her earn her living by singing in taverns.

The tale of two fish in love, threatened by an octopus and saved by an eel.

Gino, a drifter, begins an affair with inn-owner Giovanna as they plan to get rid of her older husband.

A documentary.

Retracing the path taken by the Allied armies in Italy, you pass through landscapes dotted with crosses, where fallen soldiers lie.

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A young man falls in love with a girl from whom he hides the fact that he is already engaged to a mature upper-class lady. To win her over, he hires two actors to portray his parents.

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Based on Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci. The film recounts the tragedy of Canio, the lead clown (or pagliaccio in Italian) in a commedia dell'arte troupe, his wife Nedda, and her lover, Silvio. When Nedda spurns the advances of Tonio, another player in the troupe, he tells Canio about Nedda's betrayal. In a jealous rage Canio murders both Nedda and Silvio. The only actor in the cast who also sang his role was the celebrated Italian baritone, Tito Gobbi, but the film is largely very faithful to its source material, presenting the opera nearly complete.