Acting
The film shows how Italy's historic national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi (embodied by Renzo Ricci) leads a military campaign known as Expedition of the Thousand in 1860 and conquers Sicily and Naples. When the Bourbon monarchy has left Southern Italy, he supports Victor Emmanuel II of Italy who achieves a lasting unification under the aegis the House of Savoy. Roberto Rossellini has said he was prouder of this film than of any other film he ever made.
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.
Antonio, a former variety actor, keeps his daughter in an excellent boarding school by organizing small scams with his friend and colleague Felice. Commissioner Malvasia good-naturedly persecuted him. When their respective unsuspecting children fall in love, the two fathers make peace.
A reporter and a promiscuous young woman try to solve a series of child killings in a remote southern Italian town rife with superstition and a distrust of outsiders.
The film consists of six short stories created by different directors, but all the stories share one thing: a warm irony to current events.
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Set in Sicily, this violent crime drama tells the tale of an Italian cop who heads to a small island town to look into the death of a construction supplier. Once there he is shocked by the influence the Mafia has over the people and even himself.
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.
When Italy surrenders to the Allies, part of the Italian army is dispersed and soldiers begin to return to their homes.
Some Neapolitans help a firm from Milan to establish two factories in Naples: one produces TV dinner pizzas the other manufactures lace. The owner of a pizza joint and a woman who makes lace at home are against the project.
A barber, murderer because of jealousy, spends twenty years in jail. He cannot, however adjust himself to a changed world and to the hypocrisy of his own relatives and decides to return behind bars.
In Naples, a voice from the skies announces one morning that the final judgment will be at 6 p.m. on that day. What follows is a series of vignettes depicting various people's reactions (or lack thereof) to the announcement.
Stuck in a dream world of his own, Italian sculptor Albert Saporito, sometimes has difficulty separating truth from fiction. When he dreams that his gangster neighbor has been murdered, he reports the crime to the police, only to involve himself in a complicated situation.
Don Michele, boss of a smuggling ring and partner of Maria’s father known as the little Madonna, tries to rape the girl when he discovers that her father has stolen a large sum of money to use as her dowry. The girl saves her father from suicide and proves him innocent of the murder of Don Michele.
The fast career of a young Neapolitan among contraband, gambling dens, bribes and illegality. He will upgrade its rank till the maximum level of the "Family".
A woman with psychic powers has a vision of a murder that took place in a house owned by her husband.
An Italian immigrant tries to make a new life in Switzerland, taking on a series of increasingly menial jobs in order to do it. He attempts to fit into his new home and society but fails at every turn. Unable to go home again, will his tenacity and optimism be enough to live on?
During the bombings of the Second World War, actors and extras engaged in rehearsals at the Teatro di San Carlo rush into the air-raid shelter, and there the extra Carla and the airman Renato fall in love, but will be divided by death. This is Rossellini's segment for the omnibus film "Mid-Century Loves".
Assunta, a commoner of Naples, is scarred by her lover Michele for jealousy.
Sophia Loren plays a dual role, as both the sultry Queen of the Nile with a "man-a-night" appetite and a beautiful slave girl who takes her place and is wooed by a bodyguard who thinks she's the real monarch.