This small but mighty collection forms a tribute to neorealism and its inheritors in Italian cinema. Works by Rossellini, Fellini, Visconti, De Sica, Olmi, and others.
Read full descriptionA sell-out in our summer widescreen series, this Fellini masterpiece eddies around Marcello Mastroianni's definitive performance as a jaded reporter drawn to the decadence he sensationalizes.
Antonioni filmed the '60s war between radical and straight cultures in L.A. and Death Valley. “A sorrowing, stranger's-eye view of modern America.”-Time
Rarely shown, Elio Petri's suspense-thriller staring Gian Maria Volonté is a “potent study of power as pathology.”-Village Voice
Ermanno Olmi's humane and heartbreaking portrait of a young man embarking on his first job in Milan captures the alienation of the working world.
This love story prompted critic Stanley Kauffman to remark, “Olmi moves through film like a bird through the air.”
Visconti's mood piece is an Elektra story in a family haunted by secrets and the shadow of the Holocaust.
Francesco Rosi's definitive cinematic treatment of bullfighting, “rendered with vivid brilliance by this uncommonly unsentimental director.”-Time Out
A southern Italian family seeking a better life in Milan mirrors the transformation of postwar Italian society in Visconti's masterwork starring Alain Delon. “The emotional sweep of a Verdi opera and the narrative density of a 19th-century novel.”-N.Y. Times
“Because of its perfect fusion of form and content, one of the most strikingly successful subversive films ever made.”-Amos Vogel
De Sica's “simple, almost Chaplinesque story of a man fighting to preserve his dignity is even more moving for its firm grasp of everyday activities. . . . A truly great film.”-Chicago Reader
A Rossellini/Magnani classic-as moving and agonizing today as it was in 1945.