La maestrina

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.

The story of the life of St. Catherine of Siena

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.

In Milan, an unwed mother, forced to flee from her town because of the scandal, meets a doctor who falls in love with her and marries her. But the couple's relationship breaks down almost immediately: the husband is unable to leave behind the woman's past and can not stand a son not his. So Dina, in an attempt to readjust the rapport, entrusts the child to the care of the mother of her seducer (meanwhile deceased). But the sacrifice is beyond her strength, and she's soon taken by the irresistible desire to get her child back: in damp and foggy night, on her way to the station...

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 Italian neorealism, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family’s disintegration.

Gaby is expelled from school after a married teacher commits suicide after telling her he can't live without her. Though she has done nothing, she is punished for his act.

A biopic of soprano Maria Malibran (1808–1836). A beautiful singer, Maria Malibran, is forced to turn to the stage after her husband takes to gambling, and goes to Paris where she falls in love with a famous violinist. When her money-seeking husband reappears, the couple go to London, where they find happiness. A composer falls in love with Maria but when his affections are unrequited, he becomes broken, takes to drinking and dies.

The last days of Napoleon on the island of Saint Helena.

In 1893, on an island in the Strait of Sicily, a woman is beginning to go crazy due to an officer that she loved leaving. When she believes a newly arrived official to be the man that left her, he plays along.

Successful WWI pilot Luciano Serra has problems adjusting to an ordinary life in peace, so he leaves his family and becomes a pilot in America. In the 30s, his son in Italy wants also to become a pilot, and Luciano accepts an offer of a double dealing agent for a flight from Rio to Rome, but his plane crashes in the Atlantic. For the world Luciano Serra is missing, but he has entered the Italian army under a new name to fight in Ethiopia. The train in which his unit travels is attacked by Ethiopian soldiers, his son flying a reconasaince mission is shot down and wounded by the same attacking enemies. Will Luciano be able to fly the plane back, to get close air support for the outnumbered Italian troups?

Seduced by count Diego and then abandoned, Adriana finds a job at a large hairdresser shop, so she can lead a dignified life together with her daughter.

Daniele Orsenigo, a young Venetian fighting for the unification of Italy, has an important message to deliver to the Carboneria of Parma.

Behind the facade of a fashionable Milanese home, headed by Arabella, lies an efficient ring of high prostitution.

In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.

One of the most famous movie stars of the moment has a problem with his car. The actor is obliged to stop in a provincial hotel, where he finds himself surrounded by his admirers.

The film portrays the comic adventures of a group of summertime travellers. Produced at the height of the fascist era, Treno popolare was nonetheless free of propaganda, and featured the first film score by the legendary composer Nino Rota.

Former batsman Carlo Mezzetti, who has been left homeless with his daughter Annuccia, takes advantage of favorable situations and legal loopholes to find temporary accommodation, illegally occupying vacant houses.

In Naples, a voice from the skies announces one morning that the final judgment will be at 6 p.m. on that day. What follows is a series of vignettes depicting various people's reactions (or lack thereof) to the announcement.

Alberto Menichetti lives with an aunt and an old housekeeper, Clotilde; he has a job in a firm and his boss is Mrs. De Ritis, a widow whose husband was killed during a wild boar hunt. She likes him but Alberto likes Marcella; she is under age and he is awaiting her birthday to declare his love. His greater traits are to be fearful of everything and to be selfish. This nature will get him into trouble..

A good lady, taken by the fear of getting old, gives herself to the frivolities of worldly life.

The retired general Antonio Cavalli is a nuisance to his family: to his wife Francesca who still works, to his son and to his daughter-in-law. Then he finds a job in a building firm. Only by chance Cavalli finds out that his salary is paid by his wife to keep him busy. But the general is well known as a very reliable man, and Sandrelli, the firm's owner, uses him and his name to win a valuable contract. When Sandrelli is arrested, the general finds the money to honour his debt but he is robbed while he is going to the bank...

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

An unscrupulous theatrical agent introduces his latest "discovery" to an elderly baron who becomes infatuated with her.

Guido Renzi and his lawyer friend chase a beautiful girl to return a purse that he lost and after a long drive in the car reach the laboratory of an improvised astrophysicist - the girl's father - who, together with another scientist, is about to take off in the direction of Mars aboard a missile.

A doctor unwittingly drinks an aphrodisiac fluid and thus has relationships with an acquaintance's wife.

The young lady-in-waiting of a millionairess is kidnapped, in her stead, by people who had an interest in the disappearance of the rich heiress. The girl is entrusted to a shady figure who has, for years, organized a special "hotel" where - in rigorous segregation - he holds prisoners the people entrusted to him by those who, for reasons of interest, have decreed their disappearance.

A television broadcast launches a proclamation for amateurs: "If you know how to speak, you will know how to sing". The award mirage lured many person, with ambitions or financial problems, to enroll in the competition.