From neorealism to post-modernism, the evolution of Italian cinema has created some of the most unique and entertaining movies.
30 Suspiria, 1977
An American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister amid a series of grisly murders.
Director: Dario Argento
Writers: Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Thomas De Quincey
Starring: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci
Box office: $3000
Trailer:
29 Youth (Youth — La giovinezza), 2015
Fred and Mick, two old friends, are on vacation in an elegant hotel at the foot of the Alps. Fred, a composer and conductor, is now retired. Mick, a movie director, is still working. They look with curiosity and tenderness on their children’s confused lives, Mick’s enthusiastic young writers, and the other hotel guests. While Mick scrambles to finish the screenplay for what he imagines will be his last important movie, Fred has no intention of resuming his musical career. But someone wants at all costs to hear him conduct again.
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Writers: Paolo Sorrentino
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Michael Caine, Rachel Weisz
Budget: €12 300 000
Box office: $23 469 000
Trailer:
28 The Hand Of God (È stata la mano di Dio), 2021
From Academy Award-winning writer and director Paolo Sorrentino, comes the story of a boy, Fabietto Schisa, in the tumultuous Naples of the 1980s. The Hand of God is a story full of unexpected joys, such as the arrival of football legend Diego Maradona, and an equally unexpected tragedy. Fate plays its part, joy and tragedy intertwine, and Fabietto’s future is set in motion. Sorrentino returns to his hometown to tell his most personal story, a tale of fate and family, sports and cinema, love and loss.
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Writers: Paolo Sorrentino
Starring: Filippo Scotti, Toni Servillo, Teresa Saponangelo
Box office: $167 000
Trailer:
27 Blow-Up, 1966
A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. Then he meets a mysterious beauty, and also notices something frightfully suspicious on one of his photographs of her taken in a park. The fact that he may have photographed a murder does not occur to him until he studies and then blows up his negatives, uncovering details, blowing up smaller and smaller elements, and finally putting the puzzle together.
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Writers: Tonino Guerra, Edward Bond, Michelangelo Antonioni
Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, David Hemmings
Budget: $1 800 000
Box office: $55 000
Trailer:
26 The Con Artists (Bluff storia di truffe e di imbroglioni), 1976
Belle Duke, in order to get revenge on her former lover Philip Bang, organizes his jail break. But instead of Philip is the Italian Felice Brianza, AKAS Felix, to escape. Now Felix is obliged to help Philip escape. He succeeds and from that moment on the two will join to defraud Belle. The swindle plot becomes more complicated when Felix falls in love with Philip’s daughter.
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Writers: Sergio Corbucci, Mickey Knox, Dino Maiuri
Starring: Adriano Celentano, Anthony Quinn, Corinne Clery
Trailer:
25 The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza), 2013
Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Writers: Umberto Contarello, Paolo Sorrentino
Starring: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli
Budget: €9 200 000
Box office: $24 320 000
Trailer:
24 Perfect Strangers (Perfetti sconosciuti), 2015
During a dinner party, seven long-time friends decide to share the contents of every text, email and phone call they receive. As secrets are brought to the surface, friendships are tested, in this film that has spawned eighteen remakes in four years — holding the Guinness world record for being remade more than any other feature film.
Director: Paolo Genovese
Writers: Filippo Bologna, Paolo Costella, Paola Mammini
Starring: Giuseppe Battiston, Anna Foglietta, Marco Giallini
Box office: $31 254 000
Trailer:
23 I Remember (Amarcord), 1973
In an Italian seaside town, young Titta gets into trouble with his friends and watches various local eccentrics as they engage in often absurd behavior. Frequently clashing with his stern father and defended by his doting mother, Titta witnesses the actions of a wide range of characters, from his extended family to Fascist loyalists to sensual women, with certain moments shifting into fantastical scenarios.
Director: Federico Fellini
Writers: Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra
Starring: Pupella Maggio, Armando Brancia, Magali Noël
Box office: $126 000
Trailer:
22 The Conformist (Il conformista), 1970
This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello’s mind.
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Writers: Bernardo Bertolucci, Lee Kresel, Alberto Moravia
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Enzo Tarascio
Budget: $750 000
Trailer:
21 1900 (Novecento), 1976
Set in Italy, the film follows the lives and interactions of two boys/men, one born a bastard of peasant stock, Olmo, the other born to a land owner, Alfredo. The drama spans from 1900 to about 1945, and focuses mainly on the rise of Fascism and the peasants’ eventual reaction by supporting Communism, and how these events shape the destinies of the two main characters.
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Writers: Franco Arcalli, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda
Budget: $9 000 000
Trailer:
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