Lucia di Lammermoor

1949 movie version of the Rossini opera

An Italian adaptation of the Richard Wagner opera Lohengrin, where a woman prays for a saviour, and receives it in the form of the title character, a man who will marry her and stay by her if she never asks him his name.

In a sea port, where he has landed after a long voyage, a sailor meets a girl. To overcome her reluctance, he gives up on leaving again and works as a barker in a fair booth where she works and takes her with him.

Piccolo Hotel (aka Small Hotel) uses the titular establishment to weave together a vast tapestry of subplots, a la Grand Hotel. The guests include a domineering mother (Lola Braccini), her petulant daughter (Bianca Doria) and the daughter's gigolo boyfriend (Guido Notari). Also on hand is a worldly vamp (Laura Nucci) who also falls for the boyfriend, and the chronic-gambler son (Andrea Checchi) of the hotel's self-sacrificing landlady (Emma Grammatica). Though the film is set in Budapest, the characters are more Mediterranean than mittel-European. Piccolo Hotel was one of the entries in the Vienna Biennial Film Festival.

Sicily, early 1900s. An impoverished prince settles into the house of a rich shipowner and becomes his counselor.

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.