Best of Italian Cinema

Ossessione (1943)

Luchino Visconti's interpretation of American film noir is this grim yet masterfully executed psychological thriller, a film which laid the foundations for Italian neo-realism.

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La Terra trema (1948)

A harsh yet compassionate portrayal of ordinary Sicilian fisher folk makes this one of the most naturalistic of neo-realist dramas from the Italian masters.

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Paisa (1946)

Roberto Rossellini's World War II drama paints a harrowingly realistic picture of Italy during its period of liberation, showing a country shattered, divided and suspicious of all outsiders.

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Rome Open City (1945)

No where else is the neo-realist style used to greater effect than in this compelling account of Rome under Nazi control. Anna Magnani, a future icon of Italian cinema, underscores the bleakness of Rossellini's vision.

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Shoeshine (1946)

This early neo-realist masterpiece (winner of the first Oscar for a foreign film) shows how the friendship of two shoeshine boys is gradually destroyed in a world that seems to have lost all sense of compassion.

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Germany Year Zero (1948)

A young boy's struggle to survive in post-war Germany provides an apt and moving metaphor for a nation humilated by defeat and scarcely able to pick up the pieces.

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Bicycle Thieves (1948)

This masterful example of Italian neo-realism is Vittorio Da Sica's intensely poignant, Oscar-winning portrait of a penniless father and his son struggling to survive at a time of post-war depression.

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Miracle in Milan (1951)

An unlikely melange of social realism and surreal fantasy makes this one of strangest of the neo-realist masterpieces, De Sica's strikingly humanist depiction of the homeless poor.

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Umberto D. (1952)

This supreme masterpiece of Italian neo-realism is a shocking indictment of how society treats its older citizens. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.

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I Vitelloni (1953)

Fellini's first great film is this ironic portrait of five young men who appear incapable of taking on the burden of adult responsibility. A foretaste of La Dolce Vita.

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La Strada (1954)

Fellini won an Oscar for this compelling neo-realist portrait of street performers played with great force and humanity by Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina.

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Mamma Roma (1962)

Anna Magnani's gripping performance as an ill-fated mother makes this an emotionally charged neo-realist drama, an early masterpiece from the ever-controversial Pasolini.

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Nights of Cabiria (1957)

Fellini directed his wife in this devastatingly effective neo-realist drama, regarded by some as his finest work.

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Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

Visconti combines the relentless grittiness of neo-realism with the power and poetry of grand opera in this celebrated social drama. Here we see Alain Delon in probably his greatest screen role.

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L'Avventura (1960)

This meditation on dark existential themes established Antonioni's reputation and led to a revival of Italian cinema.

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La Notte (1961)

Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star in this bleak portrayal of a dying romance, set in a world of bourgeois ennui where life has lost its meaning.

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The Leopard (1963)

Pasolini's first film was this compelling neo-realist drama, an evocative work which was informed by the director's own troubled experiences as a young man.

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Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964)

A world apart from the lavish Hollywood Bible epics, Pasolini's film adaptation of St Matthew's Gospel stands as one of the most captivating and humanist films ever made.

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8½ (1963)

Fellini's most unashamedly abstract film is this self-indulgent, exuberant fantasy, inspired by the director's own real-life mental block.

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The Damned (1969)

Visconti's account of a dynastic German family succumbing to Nazi evil and reaping the consequences is a shocking yet totally absorbing work, arguably the director's most overtly political and controversial film.

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Il Postino (The Postman) (1994)

This marvellously rendered romantic drama captures the poetry and pain of human existence, mainly through the extraordinarily sympathic performance from its lead actor, Massimo Troisi.

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Life is Beautiful (1997)

Roberto Benigni both directed and starred in this blisteringly humanist portrayal of the Nazi holocaust, in which burlesque comedy is used to great effect to shed a new perspective on one of the greatest of human tragedies.

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