Movies: Cesare Zavattini

Four poor fellows win a luxurious car in a lottery but they have not the money to keep it. Therefore they decide to have it a day each and sell it afterwards. Everyone will spend his own day with the car and get some gratification. Some will get it, ...

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After dying in a car accident, wealthy shoe industrialist Carlo Bacchi finds himself in the afterlife, where he is condemned to hell for having committed evil while alive. Defending himself against the accusation in an impassioned plea, however, he s...

Vittorio De Sica is a teacher struggling to take care of his family and always dreaming that Parliament will increase the salaries for teachers and life will become easier for his wife, Maria Mereander, and kids. An Indian prince (Sabu) visits Italy,...

World War II vet Paul Sutton falls for a pregnant and unwed woman who persuades him -- during their first encounter -- to pose as her husband so she can face her family....

The film tells of old Antonio, 81, who refuses to stay in a mental home and walks away. He hits the streets to give a message to people: be yourselves, tell what you think, make love and stop with violence against the weaker members of society. When ...

At a church in the country, eternally optimistic John marries Maria, his Atomic War Bride, as a war starts, planes buzz overhead and bombs start dropping. Though John is "mobilized" by the military seconds after the ceremony, he and Maria seek to be ...

Mastr'Antonio Miciaccio caretaker and shoemaker is devoted to Saint John Beheaded and is trying to find out who has been stealing the oil that keeps the candle to the saint burning. He also does not approve of his daughter's boy friend and he does no...

Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want....

The second of Castellani's trilogy dealing with the less-than-smooth course of young love in postwar Italy (it was filmed just after Sotto il sole di Roma and just before Two Cents Worth of Hope). Leading man Mario Angelotti, loving not wisely but to...

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Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and ...

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them....

Directed by the incredibly prolific Mario Camerini, Suor Letizia was released in English-speaking regions as When Angels Don't Fly and The Awakening. In her first film appearance since The Rose Tattoo, Anna Magnani plays a feisty nun named Sister Let...

The story of 5 girls among 200 who answer a wanted ad for a modest secretarial position, which leads to overcrowding in the building and a tragic accident....

Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio c...

Started in the summer of 1943 by Lattuada and , the because of the war that raged in Italy at the time, the shooting was interrupted several times only to stop for good in September of the same year. It only resumed after the war, in the spring of 19...

While on vacation in Rome, married American Mary Forbes becomes entangled in an affair with an Italian man, Giovanni Doria. As she prepares to leave Italy, Giovanni confesses his love for her; he doesn't want her to go. Together they wander the railr...

Accused of having stolen 3 million liras, a bank employee serves five years in prison. Having served his sentence and believed to be rich, he was showered with care and attention by everyone, even his wife. When the real perpetrator of the theft is f...

Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, a downtrodden working woman contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world — and pot...