Ever wondered what started the Oscar for Best Foregin Language Film category? It was Shoeshine, Vittorio De Sica’s fifth film that initially received a Special Academy Award in 1948 and two years later for his masterpiece The Bicycle Thief.
Shoeshine is a special film for many reasons. First, it marks the start of one of the [...]

Where have you been during winter 1946?
Since some of us would likely say – nowhere, here is a time capsule from that period in Rome, right after WW2 is over. The American GI’s are still in town and the people wake up into the rough realities of making a living in a battered economy.

The film [...]

In one of the greatest accomplishments of the Neorealist film movement, Vittorio De Sica dedicates this film to his father and effectively captures the grim life of the elderly in post-war Italy.
The film paints a vividly emotional picture of Umberto D. (Carlo Battisti non-proessional actor – a university professor from Florence), an older man in [...]

Ricky Tognazzi’s classic anti-mafia thriller is deeply grounded in reality. The film was made a year after judge Giovanni Falcone was murdered as he was on his way to Palermo airport. The judge, his wife, and three police bodyguards were killed. Interestingly the film is not about the judge or the case, but [...]

Do your memories carry a soundtrack?
Ermanno Olmi in a genuine masterpiece believes they sure do. And why not? We all tend to associate old songs to places and people we used to know and this way create more vivid and richer “mini-episodes” in our mind. Olmi skillfully uses a lively tune of a dance hall [...]