Skip to Main Content

European Film

This guide includes introductory readings and resources on European film, including books, articles, moving images, and more.

Italian Film Resources

Additional Resources on Selected Major Italian Films

Selected Italian Films

Rome Open City (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1945)

"Though told with more melodramatic flair than the other films that would form this trilogy and starring some well-known actors—Aldo Fabrizi as a priest helping the partisan cause and Anna Magnani in her breakthrough role as the fiancée of a resistance member."

Received the Grad Prix at Cannes and a nomination for Best Writing at the 1947 Academy Awards.

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

The Battle of Algiers (dir. Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966).

"THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, by Gillo Pontecorvo, vividly re-creates a key year in the tumultuous Algerian struggle for independence from the occupying French in the 1950s."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

Bicycle Thieves (dir. Vittorio de Sica, 1948).

"With his young son in tow, he sets off to track down the thief."

Bicycle Thieves received an Academy Honorary Award (most outstanding foreign language film) in 1950. 

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

La Notte (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961).

"Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star as a novelist and his frustrated wife, who, over the course of one night, confront their alienation from each other and the achingly empty bourgeois Milan circles in which they travel."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

Paisan (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1946).

"With its documentary-like visuals and its intermingled cast of actors and nonprofessionals, Italians and their American liberators, this look at the struggles of different cultures to communicate and of people to live their everyday lives in extreme circumstances is equal parts charming sentiment and vivid reality. PAISAN is a treasure of Italian cinema."

Nominated for Best Writing at the Academy Awards. Nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source.

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

Il Posto (dir. Ermanno Olmi, 1961).

"When young Domenico ventures from the small village of Meda to Milan in search of employment, he finds himself on the bottom rung of the bureaucratic ladder in a huge, faceless company. The prospects are daunting, but Domenico finds reason for hope in the fetching Antonietta."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

Rocco and His Brothers (dir. Luchino Visconti, 1960).

"Looking for opportunity, five brothers move north with their mother to Milan, finding fame in the boxing ring and love in the same woman."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

Seven Beauties (dir. Lina Wertmüller, 1975).

"A petty thief who lives off of the profits of his seven sisters while claiming to protect their honor at any cost, Pasqualino is arrested for murder and later sent to fight in the army after committing sexual assault. The Germans capture him and he gets sent to a concentration camp where he plots to make his escape by seducing a German officer."

Nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards. Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes.

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

La Strada (dir. Federico Fellini, 1954).

"Gelsomina is sold by her mother into the employ of Zampanò, a brutal strongman in a traveling circus. When Zampanò encounters an old rival in highwire artist the Fool, his fury is provoked to its breaking point." 

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1956.

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

Suspiria (dir. Dario Argento, 1977).

"A newcomer to a fancy ballet academy gradually comes to realize that the school is a front for something far more sinister and supernatural amidst a series of grisly murders."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

The Great Beauty (dir. Paolo Sorrentino, 2013) 

"For decades, journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the glittering nightlife of Rome. Since the legendary success of his only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city’s literary and elite social circles. But on his sixty-fifth birthday, Jep unexpectedly finds himself taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the lavish nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome itself, in all its monumental glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.