What's your favorite Italian movie?

Life is Beautiful
Il Postino
Mediteranno(sp?)

"L'Aventura" Exposes what is meant by the idle rich and in an off-kilter metaphysical atmosphere.
Likely some of the most striking black-and-white cinematography ever committed to film.

"The Gardens of the Finzi Contini" Examine in a drama on unrequited love the condition and fate of the Italian Jews in WWII.

"The Night of the Shooting Stars" Surreal and enthralling tale of a small town and the Allies driving out the Nazi army.

Marriage Italian Style with Sophia Loren was pretty good.

The Conformist - Betolluci (Sp?)

Gorgeous to look at, brilliant cast & acting, great direction, suspenseful, political ... What more can I say? One of my all time favourites!

... Oh, & Fellini's Amarcord is wonderful, too!

You had to ask, do you have a half hour?

Down and Dirty (Sporchi e brutti e something else, according to fbaezer) with Nino Manfredi et al.

We all loved each other so much, with Vittorio Gassmann, et al.

General della Rovere

Seven Beauties

Amarcord

Christ stopped at Eboli (Carlo Levi writing about his exile)

Three Brothers

Yes, Night of the Shooting Stars

Tree of the Wooden Clogs, perhaps

Riso Amaro

The one I can never remember the name of... The Organizer?

Just haunt the Foreign film patch, such as it is, and try them all.

Oh, the one with three guys in naples.. or was it Rome, where one fell through the glass roof?

yes, Garden of the Finzi Continis for sure.

Death in Venice

The one by fellini with his wife, giuletta massina... er, blank, I forget.

quiet, now, osso..








ack, how could I forget Bread and Chocolate?

OK, the one by Fellini with Giulietta Massina was Nights of Cabiria. I wouldn't put that at the top but I remember liking it.

I haven't mentioned La Strada or Bicycle Thief just because they weren't favorites of mine.

"Juliet of the Spirit," by Fellini. I suppose you've seen Satyricon?

Well, in my case, I tried not to see it. I was bored and it was long and I didn't want to walk out but tried to nap through it.

I did like Fellini's Roma though.

Okay, I rented and watched La Vita e' Bella and La Dolce Vita this weekend.

As a learning tool, I don't think either of them were much use right now, because they spoke so damn fast. I'm too new to get much from it yet.

I have a feeling that since La Dolce Vita was made around 1960, it was probably filled with colloquialisms and dialects that aren't even in use with italian today. It really didn't matter though, because I couldn't make out about 98% of what they were saying anyway, in either movie.

I saw La Voce Della Luna a while back, and I liked it better than La Dolce Vita.

I had seen La Vita e' Bella before, and I love that movie. I might get the DVD of that one, and make it a long-term goal to be able to understand it.

I realized that I have a long way to go in learning italian. But I did pick up a couple of new words and expressions. "Basta", for example, and "Sono stanco". And in La Dolce Vita, I loved it when Marcello was fighting with his wife in the car and kept shouting, "Scendi!".

P.S., There was a scene in La Dolce Vita where Marcello and the American actress (Sylvia) are standing in a fountain somewhere and he almost kisses her. Does anyone know where that fountain is?

Bertolucci's "Besieged"

I liked this one a lot and it's fairly recent, Kicky...

"The White Sheik" (early Fellini and lotsa fun)

That's the Trevi fountain in Roma.... a city of incredible fountains.

http://www.world66.com/europe/italy/lazio/rome/sights/trevifountain

It is in a small and colorful piazza, piazza dei Trevi, which changes moods as dawn breaks and tourists start to slowly arrive....

Best Italian film? Many candidates - some already noted here.

How about "Cinema Paradiso" (circa 1990)

Osso, wow, that was fast! I thought that would be one of those obscurities that would be hard to find. I should have known you'd be the one. Thanks. It awed me when I saw it in that scene. Pretty amazing.

Just looked into my database.
I've seen 230 Italian films.

The best IMHO are:

1. I Compagni (The Organizer), Mario Monicelli, 1963
2. La Ricotta, Pierpaolo Pasolini, a short, part of "RoGoPaG", 1962
3. 8½, Federico Fellini, 1963.
4. La vita è bella, Roberto Benigni, 1997
5. Amarcord, Federico Fellini, 1973
6. C'eravamo tanto amati, Ettore Scola, 1974
7. La Caduta degli dei, Luchino Visconti, 1969
8. Novecento (1900), Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976
9. La lunga notte del '43, Fiorestano Vancini, 1960
10. La notte di San Lorenzo, (The Night of Shooting Stars), Taviani brothers, 1982

im gonna have to go with life is beautiful
i own it, in italian, with the subtitles... the language was just too beautiful to try to get the dubbed version

The Leopard is a stunning visualisation of the end of an era although Burt Lancaster sometimes seems a strange choice as the protagonist.