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When Naples Sings
🇮🇹 ItalyMost likely made for the large Neapolitan immigrant population in the States, Roberto Leone Roberti’s love poem to Naples more than captures the heartache of the countless émigrés who were forced by economic circumstances to leave their homeland.
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Romola
🇮🇹 ItalyIn Renaissance Florence, a Florentine trader meets a shipwrecked stranger, who introduces himself as Tito Melema, a young Italianate-Greek scholar. Tito becomes acquainted with several other Florentines, including Nello the barber and a young girl named Tessa. He is also introduced to a blind scholar named Bardo de' Bardi, and his daughter Romola. As Tito becomes settled in Florence, assisting Bardo with classical studies, he falls in love with Romola.
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Quo Vadis?
🇮🇹 Italy The 1st CenturyThe Roman Banquet The golden glories, the unrivaled luxuries, the wine, the dance, the song, the beautiful women, the sumptuous splendors that taxed a barbaric world for a night of feasting and revel- re-created for your entertainment in the most colossal drama produced. (Print Ad in Daily Argus, Mount Vernon NY, 6 June 1925)
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Messalina
🇮🇹 Italy The 1st Century"Messalina" (1924), the tale of that wicked and lustful empress who had a talent for causing problems.
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Three Weeks
🇮🇹 ItalyA young aristocrat strikes up an affair with a mysterious woman for three weeks.
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Three Ages
🇮🇹 Italy The 1920s Ancient HistoryA cyclone of laughs and thrills — The rituals of courtship, romantic rivalry and love play out three times as a man vies with a villain for the girl. In the Stone Age, the rivalry is set off by dinosaurs, a turtle used as a ouija board, and a round of golf with stones. In ancient Rome, the men display their brawn through a chariot race, using dogs instead of horses. In contemporary times, the man finds himself overcome by modernity, including a very fragile car.
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The White Sister
🇮🇹 ItalyA love that outlived passion! — Angela Chiaromonte is the daughter of a wealthy Italian prince who is killed in a fall from his horse. Though Angela stands to inherit half of a large estate, her older half-sister burns the will and thus inherits everything herself, throwing Angela into poverty. Fortunately, Angela is engaged to marry dashing Captain Giovanni Severi - but he soon is captured by Arabs while on an expedition to Africa. Believing him dead, Angela, dedicating her life to his memory, becomes a nun, unaware that her lover has escaped his captors and is returning to Italy. The dramatic climax takes place against a backdrop of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
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The Man Without Desire
🇮🇹 Italy The 1920s The 18th CenturyA doctor suspends the life of a mourning lover and he is revived 200 years later.
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The Eternal City
🇮🇹 ItalyWar drama - Fitzmaurice was able to film King Victor Emmanuel III and Benito Mussolini reviewing Italian troops. As with many silents directed by George Fitzmaurice this film is now a lost film.
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Othello
🇮🇹 Italy The 16th CenturyEven without the benefit of sound, the 1922 German adaptation of Othello seems more operatic than Shakespearean. This may be due to the casting of Emil Jannings, to whom restraint and subtlety were strangers. Werner Krauss, of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari fame, is on hand as the duplicitous Iago. Appearing as the unfortunate Desdemona is Lea Von Lenkeffy, better known as Lya de Putti. Produced on an elaborate scale, Othello may not be true to the letter of Shakespeare, but is undeniably a smorgasbord of visual delights.
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Vanina
🇮🇹 Italy The 1820sVanina loves rebel leader Octavio, who gets caught. He gets a pardon and marries Vanina. When he is captured again, Vanina helps him to escape prison. They are both caught, and after his execution she dies from grief.
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Lucrezia Borgia
🇮🇹 Italy The 16th CenturyRodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, has three adult children: Juan, who is virtuous and has a sweetheart who is a woman of the people, Lucrezia, who is virtuous and wants to marry Alfonso, and Cesare, who is wicked and lusts after Lucrezia, Juan's girlfriend, and probably others. Cesare has vowed to kill any suitor for Lucrezia's love, and he has three thugs to carry out his wishes. Bodies fall into the Tiber, into the Colosseum (with lions prowling), and onto the Vatican floors.
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The Betrothed
🇮🇹 Italy The 17th CenturyBased on the famous historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni, and set between 1628 and 1630 in Lombardy "northern Italy" during the Spanish domination, tells of the contrasted marriage between the two young textile workers Renzo and Lucia. The 1922 version is the most ambitious and spectacular film in all Italian silent cinema, with remarkable mass scenes and some images that triggered the censorship.
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Meriota, die Tänzerin
🇮🇹 Italy The 16th Century -
Die Verschwörung zu Genua
🇮🇹 Italy The 16th Century -
Intrigue
🇮🇹 ItalyIntrigue or The Martyrium is a 1920 German silent drama film directed by Paul L. Stein and starring Pola Negri and Eduard von Winterstein.
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Blind Husbands
🇮🇹 ItalyAn Austrian military officer and roue' attempts to seduce the wife of a surgeon. The two men confront each other in a test of abilities that ends surprisingly.
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The Plague in Florence
🇮🇹 Italy The 14th CenturySuddenly appearing in Florence, an evil seductress causes Cesare, the city's ruler, and his son to both fall madly in love with her. The son, killing his father before an order to torture the woman can be carried out, then turns the city's churches into dens of sexual debauchery. Acts of evil and corruption continue unabated until the arrival of Death, who brings with her a horrible plague which she is about to loose upon the city.
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The Romance of Lady Hamilton
🇮🇹 Italy The 1800sAn aged ambassador's wife loves an admiral but is rejected by society after his death.
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Fabiola
🇮🇹 Italy The 4th CenturyIn "Fabiola" (1918) Herr Guarzzoni moved from the earliest days of Christianity when the new faith was struggling to just survive to a later period in the Roman Empire when the religion was a major force and attempting to win over Rome.
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Addio giovinezza!
🇮🇹 ItalyTwo young men move to the city in order to study. One of them gets entangled in a love triangle.
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Woman
🇮🇹 Italy The 1860s The 12th Century The 1st CenturyA series of stories reflecting the changing position of women in the world, including the familiar tales of Adam and Eve, Messalina and Claudius, Abelard and Heloise, Cyrene and the Fisherman, as well as that of a young girl and an officer in the American Civil War.
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Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
🇮🇹 Italy The 1910s The 1st Century The 16th CenturyThe Cruel Hand of Intolerance — The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
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The Dumb Girl of Portici
🇮🇹 Italy The 17th CenturyFenella, a poor Italian girl, falls in love with a Spanish nobleman, but their affair triggers a revolution and national catastrophe.
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Assunta Spina
🇮🇹 ItalyAssunta and Michele are in love, but others come between them and jealousy arises. Assunta Spina stands out as an early landmark of naturalistic acting and a blueprint for the Italian Neorealist films to come.
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Cabiria
🇮🇹 Italy The 3rd Century BCAll Nations Bow to This - The Greatest Spectacle the World Has Seen! — Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, and Fulvius sent away to fight for Rome, is there any hope of our heroes reuniting?
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Cajus Julius Caesar
🇮🇹 Italy The 1st Century BCA colossal epic film like this that tries to depict the life and glory of Julius Caesar, must have a variety of scenery appropriate to the film's hero. This includes the Senate and its conspirators..or .. strange places beyond Rome full of barbarians that must fall under the Rome yoke. Let's not forget the sequences depicting the masses mentioned before.. or.. the human side of Caesar and his troublesome relationship with his son Brutus.
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The Sign of the Cross
🇮🇹 Italy The 1st CenturyIn 64 A.D., Marcus Superbus is Prefect of Rome. When the Emperor Nero decides to renew persecution of the Christians, Marcus opposes him, fearing for the safety of Mercia, the Christian woman whom he loves. Through the machinations of the Empress Poppaea and other women at court, Tigellinus, Nero's agent in the war against the Christians, convinces Nero to have Mercia arrested. Marcus appeals to the emperor for mercy, but is told that she can be saved only by renouncing Christianity. Waiting to enter the arena to be killed, Mercia steadfastly refuses to reject her religion, despite Marcus' pleas. Finally, Marcus is converted by her and they enter the arena to face death together.
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Zapata's Gang
🇮🇹 ItalyComedy about a film crew shooting a movie about guns and robbers, when real robbers turn up. Having to go home in robbers costume, they are mistakingly accused. In the end the real robbers are brought to justice. One of the earliest films portraying bisexual characters.
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Quo Vadis?
🇮🇹 Italy The 1st Century"Quo Vadis?" was a landmark in early Italian historical epic films, and certainly Enrico Guazzoni’s grand scale masterpiece laid the foundations for what genuine colossal Italian spectacles should be. It had a great deal of influence on Giovanni Pastrone’s "Cabiria" (1914) and D.W. Griffith’s "Intolerance" (1916).
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The Last Days of Pompeii
🇮🇹 Italy The 1st Century79 AD. In the city of Pompeii the young Glaucus loves beautiful Jone, although he's courted by Giulia and secretly loved by his blind slave Nidia. One day Glaucus is wrongly accused of murder by a priest of Isis, Arbace, who wants to marry Jone and please Giulia. Glauco is condemned to be devoured by lions in the arena of the city, on that very day the erupting Vesuvius. Jone ovvero gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1913) was one of two major Italian productions of The Last Days of Pompeii done in 1913, and not to be confused by the more famous Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1913).
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Agrippina
🇮🇹 Italy Ancient HistoryIn "Agrippina" (1910), Herr Guazzoni recreates the particular and troublesome relationship between Frau Agrippina, the second wife of the Emperor Claudius, and her son Nero. Such family troubles of course were not confined to Imperial Rome since family feuds were customary in German aristocratic circles as well. However even though mother figures in Germany are strong it is true that aristocratic mammas preferred going to the opera rather than fretting over little troubles with their sons.
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La Tosca
🇮🇹 Italy The 1800sRome, June 1800. Floria Tosca is a celebrated opera singer, better known as La Tosca. Her lover is Mario Cavaradossi, a young artist and Bomapartist sympathizer. When the latter helps Angelotti, the leader of the opposition, to escape from prison and hides him in La Tosca's home, he antagonizes Baron Scarpia, the ruthless chief of police, all the more as his love for Tosca is unrequited. Scarpia has Mario arrested and condemned to death. Upset, Floria begs the Baron for her lover's life. He accepts to have the bullets of the firing squad replaced by blanks if... she sleeps with him. She agrees nominally but when she finds herself with Scarpia, she stabs him to death. She then goes to see Mario in his cell and lets him know about his phony execution. But Scarpia had had time to get the order reversed and in the early hours of the morning, Mario is executed in the proper manner. In despair, Tosca throws herself into the void...
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Humanity Through the Ages
🇮🇹 Italy The 1st CenturyAn episodic narrative displaying examples of humankind's brutality, from the story of Cain and Abel through the Hague Convention of 1907.
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Ben Hur
🇮🇹 Italy Ancient HistoryThe first adaptation of Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
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Pinocchio
🇮🇹 Italy The 1930sSet during the rise of fascism in Mussolini's Italy, Pinocchio is a story of love and disobedience as Pinocchio struggles to live up to his father's expectations.
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Napoli d'altri tempi
🇮🇹 Italy The 1900s -
Shanti Sandesham
🇮🇹 Italy Ancient HistoryIndian version of the Jesus story. Following Jesus' birth he performs many miracles and gathers a band of followers. He runs into trouble with the authorities and the Romans execute him. He rises again and ascends to heaven.
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