Anna Magnani

In WWII-era Rome, underground resistance leader Manfredi attempts to evade the Gestapo by enlisting the help of Pina, the fiancée of a fellow member of the resistance, and Don Pietro, the priest due to oversee her marriage. But it’s not long before the Nazis and the local police find him.

A documentary about Roberto Rossellini and the making of his 1950 film "Stromboli."

Made up almost entirely of archival interviews with Italian film director Roberto Rossellini (with audio interviews playing over various behind-the-scene bits and archival footage) the director recalls his early life, how he got into film, his political beliefs and how they were formed.

During World War II, Italian villagers hide their wine from the German army.

In this documentary, giants of italian cinema such as Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini and Zavattini talk about the importance of cinema after WW2, and about huge moments of social rebellion. This movie gives the floor to the creators of italian neorealism.

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 pursued by lovestruck 18-year-old orphan Teresa Venerdì.

Film director Blasetti is looking for a little girl for his new movie. Along with other mothers, Maddelena takes her daughter to Cinecittà, hoping she’ll be selected and become a star. She is ready to sacrifice anything for little Maria.

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 santidad.

Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins, arrives at a small town and gets a job in a store run by Lady Torrence. Her husband, Jabe M. Torrance, is dying of cancer. Val is pursued by Carol Cutere, the enigmatic local tramp-of-good-family.

A group of Italians take a flight to Sweden: among them there are the tourists, and the immigrants.

A grieving widow embarks on a new romance when she discovers her late husband had been cheating on her.

After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.

Five portraits of actresses in their "common" life, seen as women rather than movie stars.

On New Year's Eve, a young woman and an out-of-work actor complicate a pickpocket's plans to ply his trade.

Thanks to wartime smuggling Gioconda Perfetti, a roman fruit vendor, becomes very rich. She leaves her shop and moves to a magnificent villa which once belonged to a count. She also becomes involved with some very dubious characters who profit from her ignorance and cheat her out of her money.

A viceroy, a nobleman and a bullfighter court a comedy-troupe actress in 18th-century Peru.

A widowed Nevada rancher goes to Italy and marries the sister of his deceased wife and brings her back to the ranch, but his haunting memories of his lost love and her tendency to drift away to other men cause the two to have a tough time at keeping a marriage together.

A rowdy woman is so forceful that she outdoes her husband in a loud cry against speculators who refuse poor people entrance to a block of new apartments, built after WW2. Without noticing it, she starts a people's movement, and leads a march to the capital. She returns to her village a winner, an honourable MP. Yet, she is still the same simple, fiery woman, able to get in a hair-pulling brawl with the local barmaid for the affection of her man.

An exiled Italian prostitute shields her sister from a deep-sea diver on an island volcano.

Peppino, a fishmonger on Campo de' Fiori, a famous Roman marketplace, works alongside Elide, a greengrocer, who has a soft spot for him, despite the fact they argue all day long... But neither Peppino, nor his friend Aurelio, the barber, are interested in getting married. Until he meets the beautiful Elsa...

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

Girlfriend in a Coma is a documentary that exposes the dire situation of Italian politics and the process of economic and social decline the country has suffered during the last two decades, treating the decline as a warning of what might happen elsewhere in the West. The decline has occurred amid a collapse of moral values and the victory of “Mala Italia” over “Buona Italia”. It has been lauded as being ground-breaking in its creative combination of animation, interviews and hard facts, and has caused fierce controversy in Italy.

A meek professor is swept over his feet by a very vivacious girl.

Justin, a lyricist by trade, and his friend Pierre, a composer, lead a bohemian life in Paris. Justin thinks his mother Josefa is richer than she appears, and decides to swindle her out of three million centimes by using Pierre as an intermediary in a case involving an insolvent check. Josefa uncovers the ruse and refuses to help her son. However, Pierre has discovered the identity of his friend's father, who had been unknown to him for twenty years. With the help of Justin's mother, the two friends do everything they can to extort the son's missing three million centimes from his ashamed and repentant father.

Drama set in the nineteenth century in Sorrento in southern Italy. It is an adaptation of the 1852 novel of the same title by Francesco Mastriani. A young woman named Beatrice loses her sight after witnessing the death of her mother. Unable to see Beatrice is unable to identify her mothers’ killer. The police arrest a man who they believe is the murderer. Did they get the right man or is the killer still lurking in the shadows? Years later a family friend introduces Beatrice to a renowned Doctor who specializes in restoring sight. Will Beatrice regain her sight and identify her mothers’ killer or will someone make sure that she never sees again?

La Sciantosa is part of a project created by writer/director Alfredo Gianetti for the Italian TV. The objective was to portrait a hundred years of Italian history through three movies, all of them with Anna Magnani. The other two are "1943: un incontro" and "L'autmobile". In this first movie, La Magnani is Flora Torres, a "sciantosa" (kind of a small stage diva) who is forgotten during the WWI, living only to remember her past glory. One day she receives a letter to present herself to the high command. There, Flora is called to go to the front and entertain the troops. Along with her maid Cristina, Flora goes to the front. There they are welcomed by the young private Tonino (Massimo Ranieri). Flora starts to act like a prima donna, making absurd demands to everyone. But when she is about to present herself, the vision of the wounded soldiers makes her change her way

Toto (Aldo Fabrizi), a Roman coachman with an old fashioned horse-drawn carriage who objects to the competition from motorised taxis, doesn't want his daughter Nannarella to go out with Roberto, a young taxi driver. But it is Roberto who helps him when he gets into trouble with a former client, Mary Dunchetti (Anna Magnani), an arrogant singer.

Driven by the constant quarrels with his wife and humiliated by a rich Milanese industrialist after asking him for a job, an unemployed person decides to steal a car from a garage guarded by a friend.

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 Letizia. Believing herself above such earthly trivialities as a maternal instinct, Sr. Letizia changes her way of thinking when an abandoned child is placed in her care. Unofficially adopting the boy, the good sister eventually comes to realize that even she cannot provide the care and guidance of a biological mother. Carefully constructed to accommodate all the surefire box-office elements inherent in Camerini's earlier films, Suor Letizia was almost guaranteed to be a hit.

A young girl comes to prison and experiences the entire prison subculture. The inmates she befriends vary from big tough dangerous dames to smaller submissive ladies who are totally lost in prison life.

Umberto Solaro loses the love of his life Speranza, a noble but poor girl who has been forced to marry a rich Austrian army officer. Heartbroken Umberto becomes a riding instructor but during a competition his horse dies and he decides to give up equitation and become an aviator.

The two drivers Giovanni and Gaetano are friends. Gaetano, bold and ruthless, thrives in the black market, while Giovanni, who is a naive and fundamentally honest worker from the North of Italy, cannot get any profit and his wife, an energetic and talkative Roman woman, can't help blaming him for his poor business skills. Returning from a trip to Naples, he brings home a little hungry orphan, Nello. At first Giovanni's wife doesn't want the boy, but then she begins to like him. The little boy does whatever he can to help the family. Nello's father, who everybody thought to have died during the war, finds his little son and, being a rich business man, he employs the good and generous Giovanni. Meanwhile the former friend Gaetano is caught by the police and convicted for his illegal trades.

An ex-prostitute, feeling an emptiness in her life, decides to fill it by buying a car.

This vehicle for the great actress Anna Magnani was one of the four made for Italian television and shown in 1971-1972 at the end of her career. The other three were "La sciantosa," "Correva l'anno di grazia 1870," and "L'automobile" and were all directed by Alfredo Giannetti.

Television documentary about the making of Roberto Rossellini's 1945 film "Rome, Open City".

A film about the story of princess Élisabeth Tarakanova.

Rome, 1870. Opponents of the church power are being sent to prison. Some of the exhausted prisoners are asking for the mercy of Pope. Others, like Augusto Parenti, prefer to fight for their rights until the end. His wife, Teresa is a simple woman, who gets involved with the rebels.

The life of the legendary Italian photojournalist Paolo Di Paolo through his photographs, which capture the essence of a fascinating and turbulent Italy, the one inhabited by Anna Magnani and Pier Paolo Pasolini, a country that no longer exists.

A homeless girl is taken in by an engineer. They fall in love.

The story of Giuseppe Garibaldi's 1849 campaign to free Italy from Austrian domination.

In the absence of the biological mother, too busy pursuing her theatrical career, we see the glorification of the maternal surrogate, a woman who is a paragon of sacrifice and self-abnegation. La Fuggitiva is also a film in which a child actress takes a prominent role. In this sentimental drama, the little girl suffers for and rebels against the loneliness and neglect stemming from the lack of a mother and a loving family setting.

Forty years after his death, this documentary pays tribute to one of the major filmmakers of Italian cinema, to an original work that continues to inspire today's cinema. Coming from one of the greatest families of the Italian aristocracy, he could have been a rich and cultured man, living in opulence and idleness, but Luchino wanted a different destiny. This is the story that director Elisabeth Kapnist and Christian Dumais-Lvowski wanted to tell. Count Visconti di Modrone wears the clothes of a legend that he never stopped shaping throughout his life. This documentary reconstructs the fabric of a brilliant life, dedicated to art; theater, opera, and cinema. This artistic work is also that of a committed man, who was a fellow traveler of the Communist Party, and who resisted fascism.

Cinecitta is today known as the center of the Italian film industry. But there is a dark past. The film city was solemnly inaugurated in 1937 by Mussolini. Here, propaganda films would be produced to strengthen the dictator's position.

An Italian documentary about Italian cinema.

A mysterious man, who had lost his memory, arrives in San Marino among other refugees during the Second World War.

Adventures of two provincial actors looking for anyway done with something to eat. They are joined by a girl, Lili. They represent a magic number, but all I get are miscues and boos.

Count Alberto has lost his wealth at the gaming table, he wants to commit suicide but is stopped by a doctor who offers him an exchange, a week of life with how much money he wants and then be a guinea pig for a new drug (and maybe die).

The merchant Giovanni Illes is tracked down by the debtors, but cannot pay his debts. To save her father from bankruptcy, Anna talks to the lawyer, trying to earn an extension. The lawyer grants it to him, but he gets too close, even physically. She wants to defend herself, but his power dominates the impotence of the woman.

Elena invites her former husband Roberto to her country house with the aim of winning him back while her sister Monica invites her lover Filippo.

Traces the life of Anna Magnani, her creations, her successes, her triumphs, her boycotted career, her nonconformism, her anxieties, her generosity ... Punctuated with photos that tell her career in theater and cinema, Extracts of films, this documentary portrait also gives the floor to his friends and relatives, from Roberto Rossellini to Marcello Mastroianni, through Federico Fellini.

A painter gives his daughter a television set for her 18th birthday. On the evening of the party, the family sits in the living room and watches a series of variety shows taken from the sets of theatrical performances and various films recited by the famous Totò,

A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family.

A virtually plotless, gaudy, impressionistic portrait of Rome through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens.

Documentary consisting of archival footage that depicts the evolving conditions of Italian women during the first half of the 20th century.

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

A documentary about the Italian cinema as art form and industry.

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

A study of Tennessee Williams's life and work as a whole, ranging from his youth in Mississippi and in St. Louis to success and acclaim, followed by the final difficult years. Includes some of the most celebrated scenes from film adaptations of Williams' work, among them extracts of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951),Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Night of the Iguana, The (1964), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1993) (TV). Contains footage of Williams being interviewed, including conversations with David Frost, 'Edward R. Murrow (I)', and Melvyn Bragg, as well as reminiscences from people who knew and worked with him, among them Edward Albee, Gore Vidal, and his lifelong friend, Lady Maria St. Just. Features readings from Elia Kazan's Notebook by Kim Hunter.

Bonus DVD accompanying the special edition CD "The Movie Album". The DVD contains Barbra performing "Wild Is The Wind" & "I'm In The Mood For Love", with excepts from the films they originate from playing in the background. The Movie Album is the thirtieth studio album by American singer Barbra Streisand, released on October 14, 2003, by Columbia Records. Overall her sixtieth release with her record label, it was executively produced by Streisand and her manager, Jay Landers. A concept album, it contains twelve songs from the singer's favorite films ranging in release from 1935 to 1988.

In 1948, a fan letter arrived for director Roberto Rossellini from Ingrid Bergman, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars; after a meeting in New York, Rossellini invited Bergman to Italy to work on a project. Meanwhile, Anna Magnani, one of Italy’s biggest stars and Rossellini’s longtime lover, was furious. When the Rossellini/Bergman project was announced as a tale set on Stromboli, one of the volcanic Aeolian Islands, Magnani quickly set up her own Aeolian project, financed by Hollywood, to be called Volcano. Italy’s tabloids simply went wild: the prospect of these two great divas battling it out with rival productions was breathlessly followed, especially as it became clear that the Rossellini/Bergman relationship was more than professional. Francesco Patierno has created an engrossing, revealing and highly entertaining chronicle of this cinematic battle royal.

The destiny of legendary actress Anna Magnani through archive footage, often unpublished.

Among others, Ernesto returns to Turin after the war from a German POW camp; his household destroyed and family deceased, he tries making an honest living.

The fascinating story of a man destined to be only a son of and who sought all his life to become "someone" by getting rid of the overwhelming image of his genius as a father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

A short film in which Isabella Rossellini discusses the life and work of her father, Roberto Rossellini.

A married woman hits a pedestrian with her car who requests that she must perform a particular punishment as a penance.

Anthology film by three directors, "A Day in the Country", "Jofroi" and "The Miracle".

On the way to a singing engagement, Anna Magnani and a taxi driver have an argument over whether her dog is a lap dog, since it costs one lira more to carry a non-lap dog in a taxi.

The story of Giuseppe Garibaldi's 1849 campaign to free Italy from Austrian domination.