Vittorio De Sica

A documentary feature film about Vittorio De Sica, one of the greatest masters of world cinema. Through a new access to his family, rare archives and testimonies of contemporary artists and filmmakers from the entire world, the ilm retraces his life, his work and legacy. An intimate portrait of an author able to transform the observation of the real in an universal emotion and reveals the modernity of a gaze which keeps on illuminating cinema and our way of seeing the world.

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Charismatic and resourceful, seducer and daredevil, Jean-Paul Belmondo has always played his roles as he lived, at a thousand miles an hour. He had only one passion: to entertain the public with his smile, his naturalness, his energy, his stunts. But contrary to appearances, his destiny was full of pitfalls. This film lifts the veil on a founding childhood that allowed him to overcome many obstacles throughout his life thanks to the tutelary figures of his father and mother. Told from the inside with the help of his autobiography, interviews and unpublished archives, this epic story traces the career of this turbulent young actor who launched the New Wave in Breathless before becoming the popular Bebel, an indestructible and provocative vigilante. From film to film, this documentary paints an intimate portrait of a man who built himself up to reach the top: his triumphs but also his trials, his doubts, his secrets, his angers, his clowning, his disappointments or his personal dramas.

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Once upon a time there was a garden, a refuge, a safe haven - 'The Garden of the Finzi Continis'. It came to life in Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel recounting an unfulfilled love story between two young Jews in Ferrara, while fascism was raging in Italy in the late 1930's. In 1972, Vittorio De Sica's film adaptation of the book won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, the fictional space of the garden became so tangible that people from all over the world come to Ferrara to look for it. Fifty years after winning the Oscar, reality and fiction come together once more, as we walk through an imaginary garden and bring to life the book, its author, its main protagonists, history, love, friendships and betrayals.

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An Italian documentary about Italian cinema.

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Cinecitta is today known as the center of the Italian film industry. But there is a dark past. The film city was solemnly inaugurated in 1937 by Mussolini. Here, propaganda films would be produced to strengthen the dictator's position.

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With a maddening sensuality, the unforgettable actress of the film "A Special Day" embodies the golden age of Italian cinema. From the suburbs of Naples to Hollywood, this biographical documentary looks back at the flamboyant career and destiny of Sophia Loren.

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By presenting archive footage along with his own life story, filmmaker Gabriele Salvatores mediates an illustration of the economic boom in Italy during the 1960s.

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A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family.

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This short documentary features interviews with film scholar Callisto Cosulich, BICYCLE THIEVES coscreenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico, and actor Enzo Staiola. The interviews were conducted in Italy in 2005.

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How the cinema industry does not respect the author's work as it was conceived, how manipulates the motion pictures in order to make them easier to watch by an undemanding audience or even how mutilates them to adapt the original formats and runtimes to the restrictive frame of the television screen and the abusive requirements of advertising. (Followed by “Filmmakers in Action.”)

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Documentary about Italian film screenwriter Cesare Zavattini

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Documentary about the life and career of Italian film director Vittorio De Sica.

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A documentary about the Italian cinema as art form and industry.

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Traces the life of Anna Magnani, her creations, her successes, her triumphs, her boycotted career, her nonconformism, her anxieties, her generosity ... Punctuated with photos that tell her career in theater and cinema, Extracts of films, this documentary portrait also gives the floor to his friends and relatives, from Roberto Rossellini to Marcello Mastroianni, through Federico Fellini.

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Anthological movie with some of the most famous movie sequences in Italian cinema produced by glorious Titanus Film from 1947 to 1962.

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Three partisans bound by a strong friendship return home after the war, but the clash with everyday reality puts a strain on their bond.

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Deathly ill Count Dracula and his slimy underling, Anton, travel to Italy in search of a virgin's blood. They're welcomed at the crumbling estate of indebted Marchese Di Fiore, who's desperate to marry off his daughters to rich suitors. But there, instead of pure women, the count encounters incestuous lesbians with vile blood and Marxist manservant Mario, who's suspicious of the aristocratic Dracula.

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After 16 years of marriage ends with him running away and vanishing into thin air. The wife goes in search of him, but instead of finding him, he ends up in various perversions, eventually reaching suicide.

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How the Italian Fascist Party managed to turn the physical elimination of a political enemy into a test of strength fundamental for the ascent into the totalitarian regime.

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Rome, early 1900s. Gigi, a young populace, falls in love with the rich Mara and, to satisfy the woman's desires, begins to steal.

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A small boy of rural Italy, befriends a Catholic priest and pleads for help to save his sick donkey. Hearing the stories of St Frances on how he loved cared, even cured animals, comes up with notion "If he could just bring his donkey to the Vatican in Rome, and ask the Pope if he could just place him in the entombed Saint's Chapel, his spiritual presence would cure him. Some how he convinces the compassionate Father to take on this pilgrimage, against all odds.

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Mastro Geppetto is a poor carpenter with no wife and no children. The man is very lonely, and after trading a piece of wood with his colleague Mastro Ciliegia, decides to build himself a puppet to keep him company.

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Mastro Geppetto is a poor carpenter with no wife and no children. The man is very lonely, and when trading a piece of wood with his colleague Mastero Cherry, he decides to build himself a puppet to make him company.

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Marc, is a reporter in a tabloid. At the "Bongo Club", he photographs a young blond woman kissing a black man. This woman is the daughter of Senator Linden, head of the segregationist movement of USA.

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A famous skier, his mistress and a ski instructor rob a bank in the Alps and hide the loot in a crevasse.

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A pimp named Horny Hector operates a brothel on property coveted by Cardinal Giove. The Cardinal comes up with a plan to force Hector into selling him the land by kidnapping Helen, triggering a small gang war.

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A judge opens an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of an MP.

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A retired actor's search for his stray pet strings together this episodic portrait of the ancient Roman quarter.

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Two spouses discover a corpse that mysteriously disappears and then reappear in their suitcase. This is stolen by a couple of teens who are suspected, like the first two, of murder.

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A young man unwantedly gets caught up in an international gang war in this humorous crime farce!

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Mario, a young philanderer, receives 13 antique chairs in a bad state by inheritance and decides to sell off them to get some money. Afterwards he gets to know that one of them contains documents worth a lot of money. So he begins an adventurous trip to regain possession of the chair. On the way he meets many strange people who would like to help or to swindle him.

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A group of travelers from the United States race through seven European countries in 18 days.

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Ukrainian bishop Kiril Lakota, a political prisoner in a Soviet gulag for twenty years, is unexpectedly released and sent to the Vatican, where, upon the sudden death of the Pope, leader of the Catholic Church, he must face a challenging destiny that will put the future of the entire world in his hands.

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A 1971 three-part miniseries about the birth of the Italian Republic, directed by Sandro Bolchi, Vittorio De Sica, and Ermanno Olmi

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Three episodes. Episode 1 - The Refrigerator (Monicelli). A married couple of two poor emigrant workers spend almost all their money to buy a refrigerator (a must in the '70s). The purchase is too expensive for their family balance sheet. To earn some money they decide to go for prostitution. The wife is not so unhappy to the perspective. Episode 2 - The Room (Sordi). To celebrate ten years of marriage a couple decides to spend a quick holiday in top luxury hotels in Sardinia. But the fashion luxury VIP world is too hard to enter; they soon will end in prison. Episode 3 - The Lion (De Sica). Two adulterous, Antonio and Giulia, are blocked by a lion, staying on the exit in the place they met. They both have to come back home, but couldn't move because of the lion’s presence. The critical situation soon drives them to their limit, revealing their real essence.

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Determined to postpone his own wedding, a former marshal leaves his bride-to-be and participates in an international music festival in Spain, where he falls for a young dancer.

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A beautiful, wealthy widow leaves New York to find herself a husband in the Italian village in which she was born. After many tries she...chooses the village blacksmith.

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Under provincial Italian law at the time, once a roof is erected, the occupants cannot be evicted from a building. This comedy follows the efforts of a family to erect the roof on a house overnight so that a newlywed couple can have their own home.

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A tribute to Naples, this film presents six episodes: a clown exploited by a gangster, a pizza seller losing her husband’s ring, a child's funeral, a gambler beaten by a kid, a prostitute's unusual wedding, and a "wisdom seller" offering advice.

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While on vacation in Rome, married American Mary Forbes becomes entangled in an affair with an Italian man, Giovanni Doria. As she prepares to leave Italy, Giovanni confesses his love for her; he doesn't want her to go. Together they wander the railroad station where Mary is to take the train to Paris, then ultimately reunite with her husband and daughter in Philadelphia. Will she throw away her old life for this passionate new romance?

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Vittorio De Sica is a teacher struggling to take care of his family and always dreaming that Parliament will increase the salaries for teachers and life will become easier for his wife, Maria Mereander, and kids. An Indian prince (Sabu) visits Italy, is assisted by the teacher and gives De Sica a baby elephant as a reward. This upsets the landlord, Nando Bruno, the other tenants, and the neighborhood. He takes the elephant away but, like Lassie, it comes home.

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When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.

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Shy, clumsy and petulant, Alberto tries in every way to impress Margherita. With the hope of winning the first prize, he participates in a race.

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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.

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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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Second World War . Field 119 in California (USA ) . War is long over , but the Italian Prisoners Still waiting to return home , preparing to celebrate , away from families , another sad Christmas. To dare a little rein to Their longing , they tell Episodes of Their Life . A Roman tells the USA difficult married life . A Neapolitan soldier tells of His lieutenant, a Neapolitan duke penniless . Meanwhile , the camp commander gave : Prisoners and a gramophone , So , Ai stories intertwine songs . Another soldier recalls the parties and the songs of the Sicilian spring , WHILE a Venetian gondolier evokes A HIS love affair . Sometimes , From Radio shabby listening news from abroad and Italy . Finally , one day , comes the ' pending release and All They return home .

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Naples of the early twentieth century. A thug keeps a girl completely submissive and, having discovered that she is the daughter of a nobleman, tries to blackmail the father.

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Episodic film with flashbacks about the lives of some sick and infirm people travelling on the same train, making a pilgrimage to the shine of Our Lady of Loreto.

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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.

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Leo is a young man trying to make a living without any success. Through fortuitous circumstances, he is assigned by the director of a big firm to accompany for one night the daughter of the firm's accountant, Titi. Leo pretends then to be the son of a tycoon and takes her to a luxurious restaurant.

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An old woman's poignant reminiscence of her youth in a convent school, the happy moments and the sad, and her tragic love for a Garibaldian.

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The nephew of a wealthy nobleman, convicted for a forged check, is replaced in prison by a poor engineer. From the exchange of people derives a chain of misunderstandings and messes that ends out well.

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A comedy of errors where floundering pediatrician Pietro takes a job as an orphanage health inspector to pay for the debts of his high-spending girlfriend Loletta, only to end up mistakenly engaged with Lilli, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, and pursued by lovestruck 18-year-old orphan Teresa Venerdì.

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