Fellini, De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti, Antonioni--Italian cinema has its fair share of masters. This top ten isn't meant as an end-all list to the great films of Italy, but as a starting-off point for exploration. You could do worse than picking any of the films on this list, but of course, it's just a beginning, so feel free to add your favorites in the forums. Ciao ciao!
Italian film is unthinkable without Federico Fellini, and this heartbreaking classic about a poor girl who is taken away by a cruel strongman to become a circus performer is impossible to resist. With wonderful performances by Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina. For more early Fellini, check out
Nights of Cabiria, also with Masina.
Vittorio De Sica's 1952 neo-realist film about an old man who is stripped of his dignity is sad but not sentimental. We prefer it to
The Bicycle Thief.
Bernardo Bertolucci's epic history about a peasant and a land owner over the course of the first half of the century stars Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu. If you don't have the time (
1900 is over five hours long), try
The Conformist.
Gillo Pontecorvo's legendary re-telling of the struggle for Algerian independence from France is a timelessly powerful film.
This sprawling drama, the most recent film on this list, follows two brothers from the 1960s to the present.
Yet another masterpiece by Federico Fellini,
La Dolce Vita features Marcello Mastroianni as the original Paparazzo who chases Anita Ekberg through the streets of room and right into the Fontana di Trevi.
Roberto Rossellini's landmark film portrays the struggle of Rome's citizens during the final days of World War II.
Monica Vitti plays a woman searching for a missing friend in the Mediterranean in Michelangelo Antonioni's breakthrough film.
Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon star in an epic story of elegiac grace in Visconti's Sicilian tale of revolution and decline.
Tornatore's sentimental love letter to the movies is a film we love to hate, but we cannot ignore it.