Acting
Piccolo Hotel (aka Small Hotel) uses the titular establishment to weave together a vast tapestry of subplots, a la Grand Hotel. The guests include a domineering mother (Lola Braccini), her petulant daughter (Bianca Doria) and the daughter's gigolo boyfriend (Guido Notari). Also on hand is a worldly vamp (Laura Nucci) who also falls for the boyfriend, and the chronic-gambler son (Andrea Checchi) of the hotel's self-sacrificing landlady (Emma Grammatica). Though the film is set in Budapest, the characters are more Mediterranean than mittel-European. Piccolo Hotel was one of the entries in the Vienna Biennial Film Festival.
A lecherous governor of Naples in 1680 lusts after the wives of several peasants, particularly after the miller's wife Carmela. The miller himself plans to avenge his honor by seducing the wife of the governor.
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An American starlet inflames two Italian peasants who forget about their respective fiance's. One of them even thinks of marrying her and begins to plan for the engagement banquet. When the girl decides to live the countryside harmony reigns again.
A mysterious horseman, called the Dark Knight, sets himself up as a masked vigilante and decides to free the duchet of Valgrado from the grip of a terrible tyrant.
A sailor's girlfriend is courted by the same man who also seduced his sister.
In the center of Milan, Felicita Colombo successfully manages a delicatessen that has among its customers the best bourgeoisie of the city.
The life story of a nun who started out as a bar singer, then took the veil because she couldn't choose between two men, and now devotes herself to nursing.
Papal aspirant "Cardinal Lamberti" has to tread a fine line between the powerful Duke of Montimar and doing the right thing by a young couple in love in late 1730s Bologna.
A mad scientist captures young women and drains their blood, in order to keep alive an ancient, evil duchess.
Two young people fall in love and run away from home. They soon run out of money and he, who has a decent voice, finds work in a low-class variety show, where he is captivated by the charms of a dancer.
Sold as slaves to a wealthy Roman, Lea and Esther, two Carthaginian sisters, are offered as gifts to the ambitious daughter of a proconsul and end up involved in spite of themselves in a dangerous game of power.
An aging, down-and-out public employee must face the primary school examination.
Six episodes (adapted from as many short stories: Gozzano, D'Annunzio, Guido Rocca, Marino Moretti, Alba de CĂ©spedes and Oreste Biancoli), six love stories set in different moments in italian recent history.
A sea captain forbids his daughter to marry the man whose father he had killed many years before.
Garibaldi, after landing in Marsala, moves on to Naples. The liberals are overjoyed but the Bourbons are terrified. The so-called Baron Tucci, on a recommendation from England, arrives at the home of Count Sereni, a notable liberal. But he turns out not to be a patriot who has returned to Italy to take part in the fight but a degraded Bourbon official who has been promised rehabilitation if he can succeed as a spy. Tucci discovers old Sereni's second wife is one of his former lovers and persuades her to murder her husband so as to gain his inheritance. She does indeed cause the count to die, by withholding his heart medicine, but not before he destroys his will.
The Russian women's basketball team faces to the American team for the championship of the world, in Rome. Upon arriving at the 'Eternal City', the Russian athletes find ways to evade the strict surveillance and meet some Italian guys. After many persecutions, the Russians are confined by their guardians under the promise that, if they win, they can stay and live in Italy. But as they conquer the championship, their guards forget the promises and put them on a plane to Moscow.
Rambaldo Tramontana, a count who went into battle backed by the French, returns to Matera to take revenge once he is victorious, but the city is deserted and he begins to commit abuses and violence.
