Alessandro Blasetti

Film director Blasetti is looking for a little girl for his new movie. Along with other mothers, Maddelena takes her daughter to Cinecittà, hoping she’ll be selected and become a star. She is ready to sacrifice anything for little Maria.

A tour of the nightlife in Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, Brussels and more. Episodes presenting famous artists and people performing.

Sandro is a well-known journalist and he is conducting a survey on human selfishness. Every man and every woman he meets turns into a theme for his inquiry. Even his own wife, Titta.

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.

In ancient Rome a love story blossoms between Fabiola, daughter of a senator, and Rhual, a Gallic gladiator. After Fabiola's father is killed, the Romans blame the Christians and the persecution begins. Rhual confesses to being a Christian, is accused of the murder and sentenced to fight to the death in the arena.

Silvio refuses to fight for the fascists and joins the resistance with Elena. After the war, his vitriolic newspaper articles cause him to be sentenced to imprisonment.

Maria and Paul love them, but they are very young and, moreover, Maria is the daughter of the municipal sweeper while Paul is the lawyer Bonelli, vice mayor and head of the opposition. To complicate the story there is the reconstruction of a hermitage destroyed during the war. Reconstruction would take the view of the Paseroni villa, big industrial and political traffic. Bonelli's lawyer, a great speaker, becomes a mayor for the death of his predecessor and is bought by Paseroni, while rejecting the love of Paul and Mary for social differences and why Paul should stay behind Doddy Paseroni. At this point, Paul and Mary flee to kill, just as Bonelli has to hold a talk on the radio for the inauguration of Paseroni's villa ...

A photographer named Corrado snaps a picture of Antonietta. When it shows up on the front page of a magazine, she wants to take him to court over it.

Travelling family man Paolo agrees to pose as husband to an unwed pregnant girl he meets on a train. However, once faced with her father, things do not go as planned.

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.

In late 19th century Sicily, handsome free-spirit Liolà wanders into town, where he encounters an old flame now married to a wealthy landowner.

Nine episodes about life in Italy in the period just before its economic boom.

When young and attractive Lina Stroppiani, a thief like the rest of her family, tries to steal the taxi of Paolo, together with two accomplices, she can't possibly know that this will have far reaching consequences.

A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.

Anita, a free Emilian girl falls in love with Salvatore, a Neapolitan bersagliere. The two would like to get married, but he drowns while bathing in the river. From that moment the woman is unable to love anyone else because, at the most beautiful, the ghost of her fiancé appears to her who, in the end, will be able to be followed in the other world.

Simon Bolivar is the true-life story of the leader of the 1817 Venezuelan revolution.

A famous composer, distraught after his lover leaves him, contemplates suicide. He meets a young woman who restores his will to live.

The daughter of Signor Carloni is about to take her first communion. A problem arises when the dressmaker spends too much time working on the girl's communion frock.

Documentary compiled from archives and accompanied by a poet's commentary, shows the sweep of modern Italian history from 1911 to 1961, centering on the conditions leading to Fascism and the post-WWII reaction to the Fascist experience.

Just before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, a party is held in the castle of the Stettin's Counts.