An evening at an Italian restaurant. Hosted by tolerant and relaxed Flora, various parties of middle-class people come in -- large and small, young and old, regulars and tourists, married and single -- to dine, converse, argue, celebrate, make confessions; to overhear other people's discussions, to interrupt them, to sing, listen to music, and enjoy life. The camera, just like the people, moves constantly from table to table, into the kitchen and the back room to observe the staff's petty jealousies and frustrations -- until two hours later it's time for everybody to go home.

The endearing efforts of a divorced, simple baker to capture the attentions of a bourgeois society woman.

The real story of a French man who was able to control his own farts.

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.

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.

A wealthy landowner uncovers a bronze statue of Venus on his property. He asks an antique expert to examine the statue and confirm its wealth. Upon arrival, the expert is striken with love by the landowner's daughter-in-law who bears an uncanny resemblance to the statue.

Pauline intends to end her days and meticulously prepares her suicide, but she meets Peppo, an Italian immigrant, who will change her mind.

Amedeo and Ofelia, middle aged brother and sister, own jointly an old decadent, but still attractive, condominium. They want to sell it, but before they have to evict all the tenants. Of course, these don't want to leave at all. The cat (Il Gatto), mascot and beloved by all, dies and this gives the two an excuse to enter the tenants' life. Amedeo starts to court the young Wanda and Ofelia seduces the priest Don Pezzolla. In the meantime police is looking for the cat killer...

Michael is the younger son of a middle-class family, a strong-willed and free-thinking fellow, who is off in some distant country fighting for a revolutionary cause. Everyone in the family writes to him, describing the events of their lives, as they drift into a kind of conventionality which would perhaps have horrified them earlier. Only Michael’s girlfriend Mara, the mother of his child, retains her independence, even though it is through the help of Michael’s increasingly conventional friends and family that she survives.

Ras (Eli Wallach) is a ruler or dictator who covets another man's wife (Mariangela Melato) as his own. He gets what he wants, but Ras wants more: in this case, to humiliate Marcello (Nino Manfredi), a dedicated musician whose life he has already ruined by leaving his cat and taking his wife. He forces Marcello to seek an annulment to his marriage through the Vatican. Ras gets everything, but Marcello's wife, Giulia, and Marcello have other ideas.