100 Italian Films To Be Saved

Esposito is a thief who cons tourists in Rome. Officer Bottoni manages to catch him and starts persecuting him. When Esposito manages to flee, Bottoni's superiors inform him that he'll lose his job if he can't catch Esposito.

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.

To get ahead after he answers a newspaper ad for a business proposition, Passaguai borrows the more impressive apartment of a retired actor and arranges an elaborate luncheon there.

1952 Italian film by Vittorio De Sica

1952 film directed by Roberto Rossellini

In Italy, small-town newlyweds Wanda and Ivan Cavalli embark on their honeymoon in the big city of Rome. Ivan dutifully wants to keep appointments with family and church, but Wanda is only interested in meeting her favorite photo-strip star known as "The White Sheik". While Wanda impetuously sneaks away to locate the object of her affections, disconsolate Ivan tries his hardest to keep up appearances with the couple's relatives.

In the first Italian film to be shot in color, Totò portrays a musician named Antonio Scannagatti who strongly hopes to sell his composition, "Epopea italiana", to Tiscordi, who is one of the most important Italian impresarios.

In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart. Written by Jean-Marie Berthiaume

When a veteran marshal is sent to a small town, he quickly falls for two women: a midwife and an earthy young woman nicknamed "Frisky".

1953 film directed by Federico Fellini

Afterfive people die in crumbling Naples housing run by Northerners, the Southern relatives trek to Milan to sue for damages.

Massimo pretends to be rich but he's actually poor.

Gemma, caught between her desires and reality, struggles to navigate her marriage and personal ambitions.

Music, ballet, folk dances and mime eliciting the spirit of Naples across the ages are loosely tied together by the comedic wanderings and exploits of the Esposito family.

A young and shy girl Celestina arrives from her small home village to Rome to become a housemaid. Her inexperience and naivety causes her to change her employers quite frequently. As she is moving from one family to another she makes friends with other Roman maids and falls desperately in love with a handsome plumber Fernando. But Fernando isn't telling Celestina that he is already engaged to another woman.

Tribute to Naples, where director De Sica spent his first years, this is a collection of 6 Napolitean episodes : a clown exploited by a gangster ; an inconstant pizza seller (Sofia) loosing her husband's ring ; the funeral of a dead child ; the gambler Count Prospero B. defeated by a kid ; the unexpected and unusual wedding of Teresa, a prostitute ; the "professor" Ersilio Micci, a "wisdom seller".

Nando Moriconi is a young Italian living in the early '50s Roma. He is completely crazy for everything that comes from the States. He tries to speak American-English (the most funny ever), to wear like he thinks Americans do, to walk like John Wayne (!), trying to eat cornflakes with ketchup... His life is a complete parody of the real American way of life, which he couldn't ever get. Nando's, not so secret, dream is to go to the USA. To get it he goes to the Coliseum and threats to suicide if American Embassy don't give him the visa. But at this point Nando is very well known as a 'crazy-for-USA' boy and the troubles he provoked in the past, couldn't help him.

In this comedy Alberto Sordi plays Rosario Scimoni, known as Sasà, an opportunistic and unscrupulous guy, nephew of the mayor of Catania, and he's always ready to take sides with anyone who can help him. He switches from socialism to fascism; he changes his political faith the same way he changes women. He even tries to found his own party.

A mysterious woman takes her daughter on vacation after they've been separated for several months. There, she meets some of the richest and most eccentric people, who are hiding just as much as she is.

1954 film by Luchino Visconti