Giorgio Bassani

During the fascist era, Adriana a beautiful young model, becomes a prostitute after a love affair gone wrong. She meets Mino, a partisan who falls in love with her and wants to redeem her.

A troubled and neurotic Italian Countess betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affair with an Austrian Lieutenant.

In 1930s Italy, a wealthy Jewish family tries to maintain their privileged lifestyle, hosting friends for tennis and parties at their villa. As anti-Semitism intensifies under Fascism, they must ultimately face the horrors of the Holocaust.

Villa Borghese, Rome's biggest urban park, is the place where everyday laughs and dramas are consumed. The movie is made of six vignettes set there.

When peasant girl Nives is deserted by smuggler Gino Lodi, she betrays him to the police. Police officer Enzo Cinti, who loves Nives, traces her to the Po River cane-fields, where she is working as a cutter to support herself and an infant son, and warns her that Gino has escaped from prison and is seeking revenge. She rejects his offer to protect her. Gino finds Nives, mourning the drowning death of their son. He surrenders himself to the police and then walks at Nives' side in the funeral procession.

Gemma, caught between her desires and reality, struggles to navigate her marriage and personal ambitions.

Nine episodes about life in Italy in the period just before its economic boom.

1943. The affair between Anna, unhappily married to wheelchair-bound Pino, and deserter Franco unfolds in foggy Ferrara, intertwining with the power struggle taking place within local Fascist ranks that culminates in a massacre of civilians, including Franco's father – Pino sees it all from his window, but will he tell anyone?

A Jewish couple and a homosexual doctor fall to prejudice and scandal in 1938 Italy.

Documentary footage (from the 1950s) and accompanying commentary to attempt to answer the existential question, Why are our lives characterized by discontent, anguish, and fear? The film is in two completely separate parts, and the directors of these respective sections, left-wing Pier Paolo Pasolini and conservative Giovanni Guareschi, offer the viewer contrasting analyses of and prescriptions for modern society. Part I, by Pasolini, is a denunciation of the offenses of Western culture, particularly those against colonized Africa. It is at the same time a chronicle of the liberation and independence of the former African colonies, portraying these peoples as the new protagonists of the world stage, holding up Marxism as their "salvation", and suggesting that their "innocent ferocity" will be the new religion of the era. Guareschi's part, by contrast, constitutes a defense of Western civilization and a word of hope, couched in traditional Christian terms, for man's future.

Three gorgeous seamstresses meet on the historic steps of the Piazza de Spagna in Rome to discuss one another's love lives.

Eight-year-old Roger Court is in Venice expecting to reunite with his father, British diplomat Major Court (Trevor Howard), whom he hasn't seen in three years. Roger lives with his Aunt Rose since his mother abandoned him.

A film made up of four episodes: a jar repairer gets trapped in a vat because of his hunch; a young unmarried mother is forced to beg to buy herself a fan; Rosario Chiarchiaro appears before a law court for casting spells; the discomfort of an overtight jacket gives a wedding witness the strength to persuade the bridegroom's reluctant parents to bless his union.

Mandrin, the French army deserter, becomes the leader of a gang of smugglers in Piedmont. He is loved by the beautiful innkeeper Rosetta but draws attention to the Marquise de Montbricourt, favorite of the king, who comes from Versailles just to see him. She will saved his life and allow him to marry Rosetta.