Vittorio De Sica was an Italian film director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement.
Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone, known professionally as Sophia Loren, is an Italian former actress. With a career spanning over 70 years, she was named by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest stars of classical Hollywood cinema and is one of the last surviving major stars from the era. Loren is also the only remaining living person to appear on AFI's list of the 50 greatest stars of American film history, positioned 21st.
Wild is the Wind is a 1957 American drama film directed by George Cukor and starring Anna Magnani, Anthony Quinn, and Anthony Franciosa. It tells the story of an American rancher who, after his wife dies, goes to Italy to marry her sister, but finds that she falls in love with his young ranch hand.
Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni was an Italian film actor, regarded as one of his country's most iconic male performers of the 20th century. He played leading roles for many of Italy's top directors in a career spanning 147 films between 1939 and 1997, and garnered many international honours including 2 BAFTA Awards, 2 Best Actor awards at the Venice and Cannes film festivals, 2 Golden Globes, and 3 Academy Award nominations.
Alberto Sordi was an Italian actor, comedian, director, singer, and screenwriter.
Sword-and-sandal, also known as peplum, is a subgenre of largely Italian-made historical, mythological, or biblical epics mostly set in the Greco-Roman antiquity or the Middle Ages. These films attempted to emulate the big-budget Hollywood historical epics of the time, such as Samson and Delilah (1949), Quo Vadis (1951), The Robe (1953), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), and Cleopatra (1963). These films dominated the Italian film industry from 1958 to 1965, eventually being replaced in 1965 by spaghetti Western and Eurospy films.
Domenico Modugno was an Italian singer, actor and, later in life, a member of the Italian Parliament. He is known for his 1958 international hit song "Nel blu dipinto di blu", for which he received Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. He is considered the first Italian cantautore.
John Saxon was an American actor who worked on more than 200 film and television projects during a span of 60 years. He was known for his work in Westerns and horror films, often playing police officers and detectives.
Polish Film School refers to an informal group of Polish film directors and screenplay writers active between 1956 and approximately 1963. Among the most prominent representatives of the school are Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munk and Jerzy Kawalerowicz.
Mario Bava was an Italian filmmaker who worked variously as a director, cinematographer, special effects artist and screenwriter, frequently referred to as the "Master of Italian Horror" and the "Master of the Macabre". His low-budget genre films, known for their distinctive visual flair and stylish technical ingenuity, feature recurring themes and imagery concerning the conflict between illusion and reality, as well as the destructive capacity of human nature. He was a pioneer of Italian genre cinema, and is regarded as one of the most influential auteurs of the horror film genre.
Ben-Hur is a 1959 American religious epic film directed by William Wyler, produced by Sam Zimbalist, and starring Charlton Heston as the title character. A remake of the 1925 silent film with a similar title, it was adapted from Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay is credited to Karl Tunberg, but includes contributions from Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. The cast also features Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Hugh Griffith, Martha Scott, Cathy O'Donnell and Sam Jaffe.
Monica Vitti was an Italian actress who starred in several award-winning films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni during the 1960s. She appeared with Marcello Mastroianni, Alain Delon, Richard Harris, Terence Stamp, and Dirk Bogarde. On her death, Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini called her "the Queen of Italian cinema".
Titanus is an Italian film production company, founded in 1904 by Gustavo Lombardo (1885–1951). The company's headquarters are located at 28 Via Sommacampagna, Rome and its studios on the Via Tiburtina, 13 km from the centre of Rome.
Hercules is a 1958 Italian sword-and-sandal film based upon the Hercules and the Quest for the Golden Fleece myths. The film stars Steve Reeves as the titular hero and Sylva Koscina as his love interest Princess Iole. Hercules was directed by Pietro Francisci and produced by Federico Teti. The film spawned a 1959 sequel, Hercules Unchained, that also starred Reeves and Koscina.
Pietro Germi was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor, noted for his development of the neorealist and commedia all'italiana genres.
A list of some notable films produced in the Cinema of Italy ordered by year and decade of release For an alphabetical list of articles on Italian films see Category:Italian films.
Portrait of Gina, or Viva Italia is a 1958 documentary film by Orson Welles. It was funded by ABC TV. Around 30 minutes long, it follows a similar style to The Fountain of Youth (1958) and F for Fake (1973).
Commedia all'italiana, or Italian-style comedy, is an Italian film genre born in Italy in the 1950s and developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely considered to have started with Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street in 1958, and derives its name from the title of Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style (1961). According to most of the critics, La Terrazza (1980) by Ettore Scola is the last work considered part of the commedia all'italiana.
Hollywood on the Tiber is a phrase used to describe the period in the 1950s and 1960s when the Italian capital of Rome emerged as a major location for international filmmaking attracting many foreign productions to the Cinecittà studios. By contrast to the native Italian film industry, these movies were made in English for global release. Although the primary markets for such films were American and British audiences, they enjoyed widespread popularity in other countries, including Italy.
