A door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman finds himself caught up in a surreal misdeed, which takes place inside a cottage where the man has gone to introduce the product to a potential customer.

Raped during the war by a stranger, Anna is forced by their parents to pretend that that her daughter Lisa is her sister. When she is about to marry the new doctor in the country, her jealous brother resorts to threats of blackmail in an attempt to keep them apart.

The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.

A former prostitute and a little Polish girl are survivors of a train crash. The woman wishes to adopt the child, but her past makes that difficult.

Cousins James and Robert are in love with Susanna. When Robert and Susanna announce their engagement, James vows to ruin their happiness.

A man and a woman love each other, but they can’t marry because he’s ashamed of his unjustly incarcerated mother. What’s more, he loses his eyesight in an accident.

Oreste is known for his deliberation and caution in handling license forms at his office.But when he needs money to send his 3 girls off to Capri to find rich suitors, he is tempted to take bribes to put a license through more quickly.

Based on the Nikolai Gogol story but set in 1950s Italy, "The Overcoat" is the story of a poor city hall clerk whose only desire is to buy a new overcoat.

As the Legion Etrangère puts in at Napoli, legionnaire Walter escapes from the ship to meet a woman he still loves ,in spite of his five years away from home.

A love story along the lines of Romeo and Juliet, set in Calabria: two young lovers belong to two families who have always been enemies of each other.

Louise of Habsburg-Lorraine, young and beautiful wife of the Crown Prince of Saxony, manifests democratic sentiments that make her pleasing to the people, but not to the court. In 1902 old King George would like to have her committed to an asylum, but she escapes to Florence where she meets and loves the musician Enrico Toselli. Theirs will be a dramatic affair, with the man's death and her madness.

A snake charmer's genie helps rescue his master's sweetheart (Princess Zeila) from a wicked Sheikh.

Aldo Piscitello, a minor government clerk, is forced in 1934 to join the Fascist party. When the war comes, he finds himself able only to talk ineffectually in secret against Mussolini, even as his own son Giovanni is sent into battle. By the end of the war, Aldo has found the courage to stand up for his beliefs, but by then it is too late.

A man comes home from the war and finds both his plant and his family destroyed.

A woman, a theatrical impresario, simulates the theft of a precious necklace for marketing purposes. A young singer living in the province is believed to be responsible for the theft and is arrested.

The baron of Santafusca, descended from a noble family, leads a dissipated life. To pay debts he is forced to sell his house. He tries to steal from the house of a very rich priest and, surprised during the theft, he kills the priest, and then throws the body in an abandoned well. He continues his life of revelries and luxury, until the remorse for the crime trigger a process of self-destruction. The nightmares of the baron, tormented by the only evidence left of the murder, the hat of the priest ,drags him into a daring and hallucinated series of ups and downs to the brink of insanity and jail.

In his first collaboration with renowned screenwriter and longtime partner Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica examines the cataclysmic consequences of adult folly on an innocent child. Heralding the pair’s subsequent work on some of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family’s disintegration.

Venice Film Festival 1942

A wealthy widow becomes infatuated with an adventurer posing as a poet and, forgetting her responsibilities as a mother and her no longer young age, falls prey to a love frenzy in her family that puts her at odds with her daughter, who has just left boarding school, and her own brother, who is all about scientific research. The girl, who has learned of the alleged poet's less-than-honest intentions, tries every means to drive him away and restore her mother's sentimental balance. For this she pretends to be in love with him who, attracted by her youth and rich dowry, proposes that she elope.

Caravaggio, il pittore maledetto is a 1941 Italian historical drama film directed by Goffredo Alessandrini and starring Amedeo Nazzari, Clara Calamai and Lamberto Picasso. Nazzari portrays the painter Caravaggio as a wayward genius. It was one of his favourite screen roles.

When she is in jail to defend her colleague, the secretary Anna Alessandri finds out that her man got engaged to another woman.

Annna, a rich lady, decides to finance in great secrecy a singular enterprise: the founding of a real center for the creation of ideas, directed by Mario Morelli, a poet and songwriter perpetually waiting for great success, and a painter, Enrico Bovio, who cannot find the inspiration or the model for a portrait of a woman he wants to finish. Both are short of money and, convinced of the brilliance of their ideas, wish to open that bizarre business, called precisely the "Bazaar of Ideas".

A story of the Second Punic Wars, beginning with Scipio's futile pleas to the Roman Senate to build an army to battle Hannibal, that climaxes with the battle of Zama.

In the center of Milan, Felicita Colombo successfully manages a delicatessen that has among its customers the best bourgeoisie of the city.

Based on the comedy Il successo by Alfredo Testoni.

Lieutenant Mario Ludovici, an army officer, gets himself transferred to a Libyan post when his romance with society girl Cristiana goes on the rocks. Ludovici is looked upon as a weakling by Captain Santelia, the hard-boiled commander of the troops, but after a bitter campaign against a rebel tribe Ludovici proves his true worth and returns as commander when Santelia is mortally wounded. Cristiana arrives and tries to entice him to return to Rome, but he decides to stay in Africa with the army.

Ginevra degli Almieri's family has arranged a marriage of interest but the young Ginevra strenuously refuses until she falls into catalepsy and is buried alive. Once she wakes up she goes home but her family believes they are dealing with a ghost and they try to chase her away. She will only be welcomed by the penniless young painter who has always been in love with her.

Based on fact, Passaporto Rosso (Red Passport) details the plight of a group of poor Italian immigrants who are hired as railroad workers in turn-of-the-century South America. In addition to facing poverty, deprivation, and prejudice, the immigrants are also bedeviled by a raging fever epidemic. Finally achieving a measure of prosperity, the Italians are forced to confront tragedy once more when their grown children march off to WWI. Though Isa Miranda is top-billed, she has very little to do in comparison with male lead Filippo Scelso. Passaporto Rosso was released in the U.S. as Destiny Unknown.

A comedy about a hobo and a millionaire who swap roles after the millionaire rescues the hobo from a suicide attempt.