Renato Castellani

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

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In this documentary, giants of italian cinema such as Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini and Zavattini talk about the importance of cinema after WW2, and about huge moments of social rebellion. This movie gives the floor to the creators of italian neorealism.

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Treasure Island in Outer Space is a 1987 science fiction Italian and German television miniseries directed by Antonio Margheriti. It is based on the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, setting the story in space on the year 2300. The series was produced by RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana in co-production with West Germany and France, and directed by Anthony M. Dawson. It is the biggest sci-fi production of Italian television. The miniseries of 5 episodes of 100 min was originally aired in Italy from November 19, 1987 on RAI Due channel. It was also adapted as a 120 min film. The miniseries is also known as Space Island (UK and Norway, USA on VHS) and Der Schatz im All (Germany).

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Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 and lived until 1901, his life spanning nearly a century of political turmoil and considerable personal turmoil. This 1982 biographical television miniseries, as seen on PBS's Great Performances, dramatizes the life of this classic Italian composer known for operas including La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida and his Requiem.

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A miniseries in three parts about the theft of Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" in 1911.

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Miniseries dramatizing the life of the Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci.

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A young American agent living in Rome meets with a beautiful Swedish translator.

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Furio Bertuccia, a corruptible lawyer who defends lost causes, is hired by the glamorous model Gloria Bianchi to defend her from the alleged murder of her lover.

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Pasquale and Maria, husband and wife, live in a palace supposedly haunted by ghosts and pay no rent. When Pasquale finds some food in the cupboard he thinks the ghosts are at work.

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During the bombing of Naples in World War II, a cynical businessman helps a naive prostitute, who spends the next two decades desperate to have him reciprocate her feelings.

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Omnibus film with individual segments directed by Renato Castellani, Luigi Comencini and Franco Rossi; all of them starring the radiant Catherine Spaak as "out of place" women longing for love, in a Sicillian village, a monastery, and a modern Italian urban setting, respectively.

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A pretty woman approaching middle age rents out rooms in a small Italian town. An aging sailor and a handsome younger man are amongst the lodgers.

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Inspired by a real-life event that took place in Calabria at the end of World War 2, the film is the story of a young farmer who led peasants to revolt, after being falsely accused of murder.

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Young Prince Nechljudov is summoned as a judge in a murder trial. A rich merchant was found dead in the room of the inn where he was staying and the prostitute Maslova was accused of the crime. Nechljudov recognizes in the woman the maid of the aunts he had seduced and abandoned years before and tries to convince the authorities of her of his innocence but to no avail. Convinced that he is responsible for her moral fall, he follows her to Siberia where she must serve her sentence.

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The difficulties of a young married couple, since the husband has to prepare for his examinations during his wife's pregnancy.

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Once a young woman gets a man to fall in love with her, he must prove himself financially stable and meet her dowry requirements.

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The second of Castellani's trilogy dealing with the less-than-smooth course of young love in postwar Italy (it was filmed just after Sotto il sole di Roma and just before Two Cents Worth of Hope). Leading man Mario Angelotti, loving not wisely but too well, quickly discovers that the penalty for bigamy is two wives. Between his tempestuous Sicilian bride, played by Elena Varzi and his sedate Milanese missus (Irene Gemma), the poor man barely has time to take a breath.

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A lovely, incisive portrait of adolescents in the crowded San Giovanni quarter of Rome during the last years of WWII.

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During Fascism and after WWII, a school porter sacrifices himself so his son, who is slightly ashamed of a lowly background, can become a respected professor.The film also takes a few jabs at Italy's rapid governmental reshuffles.

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In regional Sicily, Jana tries to repair her sister's marriage by going to a sorceress who makes up a love potion that will bring about the couple's happiness. But the spell only works on Jana herself...

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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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An engineer, devastated by the death of his fiance during a mountain expedition in north Italy, hopes he might forget about her by marrying a young nurse who adores him. But one day he returns to the mountain retreat where he’d had such happy days with his fiance, leaving his young bride distraught.

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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.

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A nineteenth-century Italian noblewoman, imprisoned in a foreboding lakeside palazzo by her uncle, comes to believe she's possessed by a long ago mistress of the manor.

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Count Anikoff, a Russian officer, challenges his best friend, Sergei, to a duel when he finds him courting the young woman he, too, is in love with. Sergei can't bring himself to kill his friend. He fires only after taking the bullet out of his pistol. Now, it is the Count's turn to fire...

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In Florence, at the time of Lorenzo de Medici, known also as Lorenzo the Magnificent, the aristocrat brothers Chiaramantesi rule with an iron fist the streets of the city. Ruthless and fierce, the two brothers have chosen as their special victim the innocent and harmless Giannetto. Even though determined to not react to the cruel pranks of the brothers, Giannetto is forced to take a stand when Ginevra, a beautiful girl that works in the Chiaramantesi household, is dragged into the game. To defend his honor and protect the girl, Giannetto works out a fiendish plot that will end in blood and madness.

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In the kingdom of Kindaor, traitor Sedesmondo kills his brother, the King of Kindaor, and becomes the tyrant of kingdom. He abandons the prince Arminio to beasts in the woods, but lions don't kill him and breed him as one of them.

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At the end of the 19th century, a middle-class woman explains why she cannot get along with her husband, a good man but a little rough around the edges: she cannot forget that during the Risorgimento she fell in love with a noble conspirator. Now, however, she realizes that her true love is her husband.

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Everything unfolds in Naples seventeenth century, when a mysterious masked swordsman who calls Salvador Rossa becomes champion of the needy and lonely struggle against the cruel tyrant that frightens the country.

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An Italian industrialist who has made a fortune in America returns to Italy planning to make a film about a beautiful woman who smiled at him before he left his home country years before.

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In a massive department store the driver romances the shopgirl. The problem is that the manager also has his eye on her, and some employees seem to be pilfering goods from the place.

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The rich banker Rosen of Livorno fear that the Bonapartist will take all his gold, so he is hiding it inside a cuckoo clock.

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An adventuress serves as bait for a swindler, who robs the naive people she brings to him with poker. A childhood friend helps him.

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