Renzo Rossellini

City of Signs (2009)

Italy, March 1980. César travels to the ruins of Pompeii with the extravagant intention of recording psychophonies, supernatural echoes of the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the city in the 1st century, but he does not succeed. ...

A Ray of Sun (1997)

Renzo and Roberto Rossellini - Two Brothers on their Journey towards the Unknown, sharing a life together. The older one finds a new way to represent reality in film. The younger one expresses this film reality in music. At a mature age both brothers becam ...

Caligula (1979)

After the death of the paranoid emperor Tiberius, Caligula, his heir, seizes power and plunges the empire into a bloody spiral of madness and depravity. ...

The Possessed (1965)

While visiting his favorite resort village during winter, a writer investigates the apparent suicide of a woman he was infatuated with. ...

Vanina Vanini (1961)

Vanina Vanini, a bored, spoiled Roman countess, falls in love with a dedicated young patriot who is in Rome to assassinate a traitor to the brotherhood of the Carboneria. ...

The Tartars (1961)

The Tartars and the Vikings maintain a fragile peace in the harsh landscape of the Russian Steppe. When the leader of the Vikings, Oleg, declines to accompany the Tartars on a campaign against the Slavs, there is an explosion of violence. After Oleg kills ...

Viva l'Italia! (1961)

The film shows how Italy's historic national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi (embodied by Renzo Ricci) leads a military campaign known as Expedition of the Thousand in 1860 and conquers Sicily and Naples. When the Bourbon monarchy has left Southern Italy, he suppo ...

Escape by Night (1960)

In Nazi-occupied Rome, a beautiful bootlegger, to the chagrin of her lover, gives sanctuary to three escaped POWs: an American pilot, a Russian sergeant and a British major. ...

Legions of the Nile (1959)

Octavio secretly sent his consul Curridio to Alexandria in a final attempt to reach peace. In the city, he meets Berenice, a mysterious and beautiful dancer who falls in love. Actually, the dancer is the queen Cleopatra who leads a double life using this n ...

General Della Rovere (1959)

In WWII-Italy, the Gestapo blackmails a con man to impersonate a dead partisan commander in order to extract information from his fellow inmates. ...

The Magistrate (1959)

Emilia Bonelli is an overly ambitious and driven woman. This dominant personality trait has its effects on her henpecked husband Luigi, and her daughter Carla. Circumstances ultimately lead to the courtroom and an aloof judge in the persona of Andrea Moran ...

The Love Specialist (1957)

A Texas girl wins a trip to Italy where she meets a prince who's afraid to admit that he's flat broke (so is she). They strike up an affair, but things come to a crazy conclusion when he tries to bribe a horse to win a race at the Palio racing grounds. ...

Pirate of the Half Moon (1957)

Gianna Maria Canale as the Duchess who is offered a banquet and requests for a hard-boiled egg. The stingy Spanish lord, who used his last gunpowder to fire a salute to the noble lady and thus has no more when a bunch of pirates, led by Nadir, launches an ...

The Monte Carlo Story (1956)

Stylish, sophisticated and absolutely broke, Dino and Maria pursue a romance until they realize neither of them has any money, which forces the gold diggers to turn their attention to a wealthy widower and his daughter. A compulsive gambler who owes severa ...

Defend My Love (1956)

As part of a story, a reporter goes to meet Elisa, a young woman he met a few years ago on a trial on which she was finally exonerated. ...

Tosca (1956)

A nasty Rome police chief circa 1800 forces the lover of a painter, suspected of harboring a political prisoner, to reveal the hiding place and to yield to his power and lust. ...

Porta un bacione a Firenze (1955)

After a difficult eye operation, Simonetta, an Italian-American girl, returns for a vacation in Florence, the home town of her family. Here he meets Alberto, a sculptor. ...

Beautiful But Dangerous (1955)

Lina, a music hall singer, has fallen in love with Sergei, a Russian prince. Maestro Doria, who gives her voice lessons and who hopes to make her his mistress, takes her to Paris where she becomes the star of the "Folies-Plastiques". ...

Adriana Lecouvreur (1955)

Torna piccina mia! (1955)

A family of wanderers adopts a girl who is left alone after getting lost. Meanwhile, his father adopts an orphan. Some time later, as an adult, the girl becomes the main attraction of the Luna Park where the wanderers work, and falls in love with the adopt ...

The Sign of Venus (1955)

Agnese has many men who woo her and live with her cousin Cesira, who has the opposite problem with men and wishes she would also have men woo her. ...

Madame Butterfly (1954)

Japanese-Italian adaptation of Puccini's opera. ...

The Queen of Babylon (1954)

In this Biblical epic, a brave Chaldean rebel takes on his evil nemesis, a cruel Assyrian king. En route to his fateful meeting, the rebel hides in the humble hut of a luscious peasant girl. ...

Casta diva (1954)

As soon as he graduated from the Naples Conservatory, Vincenzo Bellini meets Maddalena Fumaroli and immediately falls in love with her. ...

House of Ricordi (1954)

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 th ...

Fear (1954)

Irene Wagner, the wife of the prominent German scientist Professor Albert Wagner, had been having an affair with Erich Baumann. She does not disclose this to her husband, hoping to preserve his innocence and their "perfect marriage". This fills her with an ...

Orient Express (1954)

On December 24th the Orient Express gets snowbound near a little mountain village and its passengers are forced to spend some time there, mingling with the local people, upsetting their usually monotonous daily lives. ...

Journey to Italy (1954)

Married for eight years with no children, Brits Katherine and Alex Joyce are driving to Italy, their ultimate destination just outside of Naples to sell the villa they have just inherited from his uncle, the villa where they will be staying during their ti ...

Theodora, Slave Empress (1954)

Teodora, a Roman courtesan and former slave girl, marries the Roman emperor Justinian and assumes the throne as Empress of Rome. But the divide between nobility and slave is too great. Teodora seeks justice for her people, and revolution and armed conflict ...

At the Edge of the City (1954)

The Slave of Sin (1954)

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. ...

Storm (1954)

André is a loving and attentive husband, but when he agrees to plead his enamored brother's case with student Françoise Massard, he in turn becomes infatuated with the beautiful woman, who is perpetually in search of true love through a series of hazardo ...

Where Is Freedom? (1954)

A barber, murderer because of jealousy, spends twenty years in jail. He cannot, however adjust himself to a changed world and to the hypocrisy of his own relatives and decides to return behind bars. ...

Angels of Darkness (1954)

When "Tamara" throws herself from the window of their brothel, her colleagues are made to realise that a new law will close down the source of their livelihood. The girls must now find honest work. ...

Il figlio dell'uomo (1954)

A pared to the bone revisionist essay on the life of Christ. ...

Giuseppe Verdi (1953)

The life and loves of great composer Giuseppe Verdi are played against a background of the great operas of the 19th Century. A tender love story of his successful and turbulent life, with more than 20 excerpts from his acclaimed operas. ...

Per salvarti ho peccato (1953)

Little Luigi, the son of Guido and Elena, has a strange illness. To save him, they must inject his blood into a healthy person with his same blood type in order to create antibodies the fight off the infection. ...

Aida (1953)

This Italian film version of Verdi's opera stars Sophia Loren on the screen, with Renata Tebaldi providing the vocals. ...

Neopolitans in Milan (1953)

Afterfive people die in crumbling Naples housing run by Northerners, the Southern relatives trek to Milan to sue for damages. ...

The Man From Cairo (1953)

"The Man from Cairo", a Michaeldavid production for distribution by Lippert, with Ray Enright the only credited director on the film print, finds Mike Canelli, the man from Cairo, nosing around Algiers with mystery surrounding the people he meets and the t ...

Noi peccatori (1953)

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. ...

Wir tanzen auf dem Regenbogen (1952)

Europa '51 (1952)

A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city's poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minde ...

Milady and the Musketeers (1952)

An official, betrayed by his lady servant, joins musketeers such as Athos, while she turns into a countess and a spy that will eventually be executed. ...

The Machine That Kills Bad People (1952)

In Amalfi, a village on the Italian coast, an old man who seems to have strange powers gives Celestino Esposito, the local photographer, a dangerous ability. ...

Pentimento (1952)

A cabaret singer, now a widow, is dethroned and expelled downstairs by a fiery rival. ...

L'eroe sono io (1952)

A Woman Has Killed (1952)

In 1951, two years after the "scandal" of the Fiamma che non si spegne, Cottafavi got the opportunity to work on a film with a small production company, Novissima Film. With little means, a number of technical and financial problems and working Sundays wit ...

The Affairs of Messalina (1951)

A story, set in Rome of 44 A.D., concerning the amorous and political intrigues of the evil Empress Messalina, the wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius, and her eventual hounding to death. ...

Revenge of the Black Eagle (1951)

When a soldier returns home from the wars, he finds that a local landowner has been terrorizing his family. He disguises himself as a bandit known as "The Black Eagle" and begins taking revenge on the landowner by ravaging his "empire". ...

Rome-Paris-Rome (1951)

Vincenzo, a railwayman who works on the Rome-to-Paris line, has a wife in Italy and a mistress in France: Ginette, a widow with a four-year-old daughter. When he's offered a job in Paris he decides to move, but unfortunately his wife and petulant brother-i ...

City of Violence (1951)

Amore e sangue (released in the U.S. as "City of Violence"), the 1951 Marino Girolami (billed as "John Wolff") West German/Italian romantic action adventure war thriller. ...

The Flowers of St. Francis (1950)

In a series of simple and joyous vignettes, director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly convey the universal teachings of the People's Saint: humility, compassion, faith, and sacrifice. Gorgeously photographed to evoke the medieval ...

Stromboli (1950)

After the end of WWII, a young Lithuanian woman and a young Italian man from Stromboli impulsively marry, but married life on the island is more demanding than she can accept. ...

L'Amore (1948)

L'Amore ('Love') is a 1948 Italian drama anthology film that consists of two parts, The Human Voice (Una voce umana), based on Jean Cocteau's 1929 play of the same title, and The Miracle (Il miracolo), based on Ramón del Valle-Inclán's 1904 novel Flor de ...

Una lettera all'alba (1948)

Germany, Year Zero (1948)

In the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, a twelve-year-old boy is left to his own devices in order to help provide for his family. ...

Rocambole (1948)

In the 19th century, a thug from the slums of Paris pretends to be a young aristocrat, but is unmasked by a demi-mondaine, from the same background as him. ...

Assunta Spina (1948)

Assunta, a commoner of Naples, is scarred by her lover Michele for jealousy. ...

The Charterhouse of Parma (1948)

This adaptation of Stendhal's timeless masterpiece of French literature tells the tale of Fabrice Del Dongo (Grard Philipe) a young archibishop who gives his heart and soul to romance rather than to the Church creating upheaval in the lives of evergone aro ...

The Brothers Karamazov (1947)

When a tragedy strikes father Fyodor Karamazov, the wretched relation with his three sons reveals itself surrounded by intrigue, envy and deceit. ...

L'altra (1947)

Sinfonia fatale (1947)

An American composer moves to Italy and falls for a local country girl right before the start of World War II. ...

Paisan (1946)

Six stories unfold in various regions, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley as American military personnel interact with a variety of Italian locals over eighteen months in the push north during the Italian Campaign of WWII as German forces retreat. ...

Before Him All Rome Trembled (1946)

An opera singer hides an American soldier in his house in Nazi-occupied Rome. ...

Eugenia Grandet (1946)

Eugenia is a daughter of a wealthy but miserly man living a simple life in the provincial town of Saumur. Eugenia's inexperience leads her to fall in love with an unworthy man. ...

Desire (1946)

Paola, a Milan call girl, returns home to her village in the Abruzzi mountains in an attempt to go straight. Rejected by her father, blackmailed by a former lover, and lusted after by her brother-in-law, she turns to her beloved sister for support. Denied ...

Rome, Open City (1945)

During the Nazi occupation of 1944 Rome, Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is pursued by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a means of escape. ...

The Children Are Watching Us (1943)

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 Ita ...

Il viaggio del signor Perrichon (1943)

The Man with the Cross (1943)

Ukraine, 1942. Italian troops are fighting against the Soviet Union. A military chaplain volunteers to stay behind with a badly wounded Italian soldier, even though this means certain capture. ...

We the Living, Part Two (1942)

After having been captured in a Crimea during a failed attempt to flee overseas, Leo returns in Petersburg for Kira. ...

Le due orfanelle (1942)

Giarabub (1942)

The Italian troops at Giarabub defend themselves against the British. ...

A Pilot Returns (1942)

A young Italian pilot is interned in a British prison camp after his plane is shot down during the war against Greece. He falls in love with a doctor's daughter and manages to escape during a bombardment. He reaches home, wounded, just as news arrives of t ...

A Garibaldian in the Convent (1942)

An old woman's poignant reminiscence of her youth in a convent school, the happy moments and the sad, and her tragic love for a Garibaldian. ...

Teresa Venerdì (1941)

A comedy of errors where floundering pediatrician Pietro takes a job as an orphanage health inspector to pay for the debts of his high-spending girlfriend Loletta, only to end up mistakenly engaged with Lilli, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, and pur ...

The White Ship (1941)

Although released anonymously, as was the custom with all films produced by the Italian Navy, La Nave Bianca is the first feature-length effort directed by Roberto Rossellini; it is also very much the work of its co-writer and supervisor Francesco De Rober ...

Red Roses (1940)

A comedy of errors about marriage and infidelity. ...

The Little Adventurers (1939)

During the Ethiopian war, thirteen boys embark clandestinely on a merchant ship bound for Africa. Following the shipwreck, they are castaway on a desert island... ...

Princess Tarakanova (1938)

Italian version of 'Princess Tarakanova'. A film about the story of princess Élisabeth Tarakanova. ...

Under the Southern Cross (1938)

Two partners return from the war to find their coffee plantation in the hands of an unscrupulous overseer. One is attracted to an exotic native girl that the overseer has at the plantation. ...

Mister Max (1937)

Vittorio De Sica, heir to a large sum of money and owner of a newspaper vending stall, makes enough money out of his business to take a vacation at a fashionable resort. He is given a cruise ticket by an aristocrat who is an old school friend, and is mista ...

L'antenato (1936)

The Chicken (1953)

Ingrid Bergman notices that her roses have been destroyed. At first she suspects it is her dogs or her children, but later on notices a chicken walking around the area of her roses. (Originally appeared as a segment of the omnibus film "Siamo donne" ("We, ...

The Flowers of St. Francis (1950)

In a series of simple and joyous vignettes, director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly convey the universal teachings of the People's Saint: humility, compassion, faith, and sacrifice. Gorgeously photographed to evoke the medieval ...