Italiani da vedere

Turin at the end of the fifties: two brothers have emigrated there from Sicily and the older works very hard to let the younger study and free himself from poverty through culture. The boy however is not keen on school and would like to begin to work. When after some time he gets his degree however things take a violent and dramatic turn......

A trilogy of stories of well-off youths who commit murders. In the French episode, a group of high school students kill one of their colleagues for his money. In the Italian episode, a university student's involved in smuggling cigarettes. In the English episode, a lazy poet finds the body of a woman on the downs, and tries to sell his story to the press.

Irene Girard is an ambassador's wife and used to living in luxury. After the dramatic death of her son, she feels guilty of having neglected him and feels compelled to help people in need who cross her path. One day she offers shelter to a man who is evading justice, and she ends being arrested herself. Her husband, for the sake of social propriety, arranges for a doctor to declare her insane. Irene escapes one prison to enter another, and to reflect on what sort of society she lives in.

A middle-aged plumber quits his job and questions his life after seeing somebody his own age suddenly die from a heart attack on his way to work.

Three surreal funerals are intertwined by the murder of a Sicilian immigrant boy in Brooklyn.

In an atmosphere of political tension when the French still control Algiers, an Algerian is killed on the beach and a Frenchman who has lived in Algiers all his life is arrested for the murder. A trial takes place. One of the witnesses was at the funeral of Arthur Meursault's mother. It bothers other mourners and Meursault himself that he showed no emotion when his mother died. His eventful day at the beach takes place shortly after the funeral as he examines what his life has been and what path he should take in the future.

In a bleak rundown industrial area, young Giuliana tries to cope with life. She's married to Ugo, the manager of a local plant, but is having an affair with one of his co-workers, Corrado Zeller, who is visiting. Giuliana is unstable, not quite knowing anymore whether her role is wife, mother, or just another person in the world. Her escape from life is short-lived: Zeller is just using her to satisfy his own needs and desires.

In a seedy section of Rome, Vittorio Cataldi--"Accattone" ("beggar") to those who know him--lives off the avails of prostitution, Maddalena being his only girl. He is married to Ascenza with who he has young son Iaio, but he does not live with them, provide for them, or play any important role in their lives (they live with her father and brother). He generally hangs out with his similarly-slack friends, playing cards and drinking. His income source is threatened when Maddalena is hit by a motorcyclist, then beaten by rivals of his, which leads to her being arrested and jailed for a year. Largely because of Iaio, Accattone contemplates going straight and getting a real job. Then he meets Stella, an innocent young woman who has had a hard life, but is not as naive as she first appears. Accattone falls in love with her, but as the thought of working a steady job now becomes abhorrent, contemplates pimping for Stella. As Accattone and Stella's relationship progresses, Accattone's past might come back to haunt him.

In the industrial North, Giovanni is a skilled factory worker offered a promotion if he'll go to Sicily for 18 months to assist in a new department. His impending absence strains his already nearly wordless relationship with Liliana, his fiancée. They meet regularly at a dance hall and sometimes go riding on his motorcycle. We watch him arrive in Sicily, walk the town, live in a hotel, find lodgings, work, and participate in local events. It's a solitary, melancholy life. In his mind's eye he thinks about Liliana. He hasn't been entirely faithful. There's pain and detachment in her eyes. Across this distance, can anything bring about a breakthrough? Do they have a future?

Back from the hospital where he has been treated after a heart attack, Lorenzo is on his way upstairs to his top-floor apartment in Naples when he meets Michela. The charming young woman, who has just moved to the facing apartment, has forgotten her keys and finds herself locked out. Cynical and grumpy, the retired lawyer who has been living estranged from the rest of the world, should normally leave her to her fate but he mellows under her spontaneous charm. He helps her, becomes friends not only with her but with her husband Fabio and their two children. For once, the self-declared misanthropist seems to be experiencing the long forgotten feeling of empathy.

Film director Blasetti is looking for a little girl for his new movie. Along with other mothers, Maddelena takes her daughter to Cinecittà, hoping she'll be selected and become a star. She is ready to sacrifice anything for little Maria, even if her husband would prefer they save their little money for the rent instead of paying teachers, hairdressers, or bribes for her illusions.

The film follows the anguish of the four-year-old, Prico, after his mother, Nina, leaves his father, Andrea, for her lover Roberto. Prico is sent to his aunt and then to his grandmother. Nina returns when Prico is sick and vows to give up Roberto, even though he persists in seeing her. The family situation gradually improves until they take a holiday on the Italian Riviera.

1945. Enrico Corsi, in Rome, reflects on his relationship with his eight year younger brother, Lorenzo Corsi, following Lorenzo's recent passing from a long and debilitating illness at age twenty-seven in Florence. Their mother passed away days after Lorenzo's birth due to complications from the childbirth exacerbated by illness. With their veteran father still in hospital at the time unable to care for the children, Lorenzo was taken in by Sig. Salocchi, the butler of a wealthy English baron, literally to be raised as his and his wife's son in privilege, while Enrico remained with their maternal grandmother in relative poverty. The brothers did not truly get to spend time with and get to know each other until 1935 when Lorenzo was on the cusp of adulthood. For Enrico, theirs ended up being a largely strained but still loving relationship. Despite growing up in wealth, Lorenzo, who longed for what Enrico had, namely a history with blood relations, was unable to cope with real life once he no longer had access to that privilege. Although Enrico would admit that his own life was nowhere near perfect, he struggling to discover and thus achieve his own dreams, he tried to get Lorenzo at least to search for his place in life rather than just lament what could or did not be in what cards he was dealt.

With a fervent yearning for respectability and enough money to buy herself a brand-new life in Rome, the uninhibited, fearless, determined former streetwalker Mamma Roma renounces her ignominious past to reunite with her loafing 16-year-old son Ettore. Free at last from her disgusting pimp and ex-lover Carmine, Roma is bent on making an honest living running a humble vegetable stall, but a malicious extortion scheme and the equally insidious menace of exposure threaten to put an end to her zealous aspirations for a decent bourgeois existence. For his own sake, Ettore must be spared the violence of the adult world; nevertheless, can a lone single mother protect her only son from the same snares that wounded her youth?

After living seven years with the mechanic Aldo and having a daughter with him, simple Irma is informed that her absent husband has just died in Sydney. She becomes upset when Aldo proposes to marry her and informs him she's leaving him. Unable to explain how much he loves her, Aldo takes their daughter Rosina and travels with her, meeting different women in different places, trying to establish a new relationship and fill the emptiness of his sentimental life. He visits his former lover Elvia; he meets and lives with widow Virginia, who owns a gas station; he lives with the prostitute Andreina. But these relationships never complete the needy Aldo.

In a farmhouse in southern Italy, an old woman dies. Her husband summons their sons: from Rome, Raffaele, a judge facing a political case for which he risks assassination; from Naples, the religious and ideological Rocco, a counselor at a correctional institute for boys; from Turin, Nicola, a factory worker involved in labor disputes. Once home, each encounters the past and engages in reveries of what may come: Raffaele imagines his death, Rocco dreams of lifting the youth of Naples out of violence, drugs, and corruption, Nicola pictures embracing his estranged wife. Meanwhile, the old man and his young granddaughter explore the rhythms of the farm and grieve together.

The railroad engineer Andrea Marcocci has been working with his partner and friend Gigi Liverani for thirty years and feels happy and proud with his work, drinking wine after hours with his friends in a bar owned by the former railroad man Ugo. Andrea is married with Sara and his young son Sandro is very close to him; however Andrea has issues with his unemployed son Marcello and with his pregnant daughter Giulia, whose boy-friend Renato Borghi was forced to marry her. When a suicidal crosses the tracks of his train in a curve, Andrea feels deeply affected by the accident and almost collides with another train. The railroad company investigates the accident and steps Andrea down from his position. The domestic life of Andrea is also affected by his aggressive behavior and Marcello and Giulia leave home. Later Andrea also leaves home and starts to drink until the day Sandro visits his father in a bar.

It's the late 1930's Rome. It's a national holiday in Italy today for the first state visit of