Best Italian movies ever
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1.
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso
(1988)
A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist. (155 mins.)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
2.
C'eravamo tanto amati
(1974)
Gianni, Nicola and Antonio become close friends in 1944 while fighting the Nazis. After the end of the war... (124 mins.)
Director: Ettore Scola
3.
Profumo di donna
(1974)
An army cadet accompanies an irascible, blind captain on a week-long trip from Turin to Naples. The captain... (103 mins.)
Director: Dino Risi
4.
La vita è bella
(1997)
When an open-minded Jewish librarian and his son become victims of the Holocaust, he uses a perfect mixture of will, humor and imagination to protect his son from the dangers around their camp. (116 mins.)
Director: Roberto Benigni
5.
La dolce vita
(1960)
A series of stories following a week in the life of a philandering paparazzo journalist living in Rome. (174 mins.)
Director: Federico Fellini
6.
Amarcord
(1973)
A series of comedic and nostalgic vignettes set in a 1930s Italian coastal town. (123 mins.)
Director: Federico Fellini
7.
8½
(1963)
A harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies. (138 mins.)
Director: Federico Fellini
8.
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo
(1966)
A bounty hunting scam joins two men in an uneasy alliance against a third in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery. (161 mins.)
Director: Sergio Leone
9.
Once Upon a Time in America
(1984)
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life. (229 mins.)
Director: Sergio Leone
10.
Per un pugno di dollari
(1964)
A wandering gunfighter plays two rival families against each other in a town torn apart by greed, pride, and revenge. (99 mins.)
Director: Sergio Leone
11.
Per qualche dollaro in più
(1965)
Two bounty hunters with the same intentions team up to track down a Western outlaw. (132 mins.)
Director: Sergio Leone
12.
De slag om Algiers
(1966)
In the 1950s, fear and violence escalate as the people of Algiers fight for independence from the French government. (121 mins.)
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
13.
Umberto D.
(1952)
An elderly man and his dog struggle to survive on his government pension in Rome. (89 mins.)
Director: Vittorio De Sica
14.
Suspiria
(1977)
A newcomer to a fancy ballet academy gradually comes to realize that the school is a front for something far more sinister and supernatural amidst a series of grisly murders. (98 mins.)
Director: Dario Argento
15.
La maschera del demonio
(1960)
A vengeful witch and her fiendish servant return from the grave and begin a bloody campaign to possess the body of the witch's beautiful look-alike descendant. Only the girl's brother and a handsome doctor stand in her way. (87 mins.)
Director: Mario Bava
16.
Matrimonio all'italiana
(1964)
The rich man Domenico and Filumena, a penniless prostitute, share great part of their lives in the immediate post WWII Italy. (102 mins.)
Director: Vittorio De Sica
17.
Il conformista
(1970)
A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident. (113 mins.)
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
18.
Cesare deve morire
(2012)
Inmates at a high-security prison in Rome prepare for a public performance of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." (77 mins.)
Director: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
19.
Morte a Venezia
(1971)
In this adaptation of the Thomas Mann novel, avant-garde composer Gustave Aschenbach (loosely based... (130 mins.)
Director: Luchino Visconti
20.
Il gattopardo
(1963)
The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 1860's Sicily. (186 mins.)
Director: Luchino Visconti
21.
Rocco e i suoi fratelli
(1960)
Having recently been uprooted to Milan, Rocco and his four brothers each look for a new way in life when a prostitute comes between Rocco and his brother Simone. (177 mins.)
Director: Luchino Visconti
22.
The Last Emperor
(1987)
The story of the final Emperor of China. (163 mins.)
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
23.
L'avventura
(1960)
A woman disappears during a Mediterranean boating trip. During the search, her lover and her best friend become attracted to each other. (143 mins.)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
24.
Eclypse
(1962)
A young woman meets a vital young man, but their love affair is doomed because of the man's materialistic nature. (126 mins.)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
25.
Blowup
(1966)
A mod London photographer finds something very suspicious in the shots he has taken of a mysterious beauty in a desolate park. (111 mins.)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
26.
La ciociara
(1960)
In the Italy of WWII, a widow and her lonely daughter seek for distance between them and the horrors of war. (100 mins.)
Director: Vittorio De Sica
27.
Il generale Della Rovere
(1959)
Bardone, a petty con man, is arrested by the Gestapo and coerced into impersonating a partisan leader in order to expose another resistance organizer. (132 mins.)
Director: Roberto Rossellini
28.
Romeo and Juliet
(1968)
When two young members of feuding families meet, forbidden love ensues. (138 mins.)
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
29.
La traviata
(1982)
Violetta meets Alfredo and quickly falls for him. After the lovers run away together, they live in bliss for a short time... (109 mins.)
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
30.
Una pura formalità
(1994)
Onoff is a famous writer who hasn't published any new books for quite some time and has become a recluse... (108 mins.)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
31.
Francesco, giullare di Dio
(1950)
The film dramatizes about a dozen vignettes from the life of St. Francis and his early followers - starting... (85 mins.)
Director: Roberto Rossellini
32.
Levend of dood
(1968)
A mute gunfighter defends a young widow and a group of outlaws against a gang of bounty killers in the winter of 1898, and a grim, tense struggle unfolds. (105 mins.)
Director: Sergio Corbucci
33.
I soliti ignoti
(1958)
A motley quintet of inept small-time thieves bungle the burglary of a local pawnshop in this Italian farce. (106 mins.)
Director: Mario Monicelli
34.
Le bal
(1983)
The 50 year story of a ballroom in France, from the 1920s. The people who go there is always the same... (112 mins.)
Director: Ettore Scola
35.
Il vangelo secondo Matteo
(1964)
The life of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Matthew. Pasolini shows Christ as a marxist avant-la-lettre and therefore uses half of the text of Matthew. (137 mins.)
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
36.
Cadaveri eccellenti
(1976)
A detective (inspector Rogas) is assigned to investigate the mysterious murders of some Supreme Court judges... (120 mins.)
Director: Francesco Rosi
37.
Salvatore Giuliano
(1962)
The unclear and complicated twists between governal powers, independentist party and Mafia in the Sicily of the '40s culminate with the death of Salvatore Giuliano. (123 mins.)
Director: Francesco Rosi
38.
Lo chiamavano Trinità...
(1970)
A lazy, unorthodox gunfighter and his portly, horse-thieving brother defend a Mormon settlement from a land-grabbing Major and his henchmen. (113 mins.)
Director: E.B. Clucher
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