"number of European actors moved their careers to Hollywood, some film historians, like Enno Patalas, prefer the term ‘stranger’ instead of a ‘lover’. Because of the American idea what a Latin lover should look like (dark hair, darker complexion), initial representatives of the type were indeed of Latin American or Mediterranean origin. Most popular among the first were Italian-born Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Novarro, born in Mexico. Director George Fitzmaurice, who directed Valentino in several of his movies, was very important for the launching of Latin lover character. Valentino is universally considered as the supreme representative of the type in"
"Romolo Bacchini Romolo Bacchini, also credited as Bachini (11 April 1872 – ?) was a filmmaker, musician, painter and Italian dialect poet, who spent his career during the silent film era. Born Romolo Bachini in Rome, Bacchini, as he later spelled it, was one of the pioneers of Italian silent cinema, directing, and sometimes acting in, more than 50 films. Some have been lost while others were recovered and restored, such as ""La leggenda dell'edelweiss"", of which coils and the original screenplay have been found by researchers of the (International museum of film and entertainment), in 1988. In 1909 he"
"with the project, ""The Thousand Miles"", based on various works of Fellini including his unpublished drawings and writings. General Federico Fellini Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness, he is recognized as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. His films have ranked, in polls such as ""Cahiers du cinéma"" and ""Sight & Sound"", as some of the greatest films of all time. ""Sight & Sound"" lists his"
"years ago in Taormina at a film festival. I introduced myself and told him that I adored his movies, his contributions to film, because he was the first guy who really started making films about the reality of the vacuity between people, the difficulty in traversing this space between lovers in modern day ... and he never gives you an answer, Antonioni—that's the beautiful thing."" Michelangelo Antonioni Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007), was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story author. Best known for his ""trilogy on modernity and"
"Federico Fellini Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness, he is recognized as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. His films have ranked, in polls such as ""Cahiers du cinéma"" and ""Sight & Sound"", as some of the greatest films of all time. ""Sight & Sound"" lists his 1963 film ""8½"" as the 10th-greatest film of all time. In a career spanning almost fifty years, Fellini won"
"Cinema of Italy The Cinema of Italy comprises the films made within Italy or by Italian directors. The first Italian director is considered to be Vittorio Calcina, a collaborator of the Lumière Brothers, who filmed Pope Leo XIII in 1896. Since its beginning, Italian cinema has influenced film movements worldwide. As of 2018, Italian films have won 14 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (the most of any country) as well as 12 Palmes d'Or (the second-most of any country), one Academy Award for Best Picture and many Golden Lions and Golden Bears. Italy is the birthplace of Art"
"Pio Pion Pio Pion (4 July 1887 – 15 May 1965) was an Italian entrepreneur, known for founding the first Italian company producing movie projectors, the Fumagalli, Pion & C. Pion vas born in Varese in 1887 to his father Pierre, whose premature death forced the young Pio to move abroad in search for work. He returned to his native Italy in the first years of the 1900s, where he heard of the recent invention of the first movie projector and, consequently, of what is considered to be the first motion picture, thanks to the Lumière brothers. Fascinated by this"
"Singers such as Mina, Andrea Bocelli, Grammy winner Laura Pausini, Zucchero, Eros Ramazzotti and Tiziano Ferro have attained international acclaim. The history of Italian cinema began a few months after the Lumière brothers began motion picture exhibitions. The first Italian film was a few seconds, showing Pope Leo XIII giving a blessing to the camera. The Italian film industry was born between 1903 and 1908 with three companies: the Società Italiana Cines, the Ambrosio Film and the Itala Film. Other companies soon followed in Milan and in Naples. In a short time these first companies reached a fair producing quality,"
"Ivo Illuminati Ivo Illuminati (11 June 1882 – 6 September 1963) was an Italian film director, actor and screenwriter and a pioneer of the Italian silent movie. In 1887 he moved with his parents and two brothers from his native Ripatransone to Rome, where his father worked as a state civil servant. There Illuminati met personnel of Auguste and Louis Lumière, who imported the new techniques of the cinema from France and taught them to young people. He became a pupil of Gaston Velle, director of the production company Cines and learned how to use the movie camera. Between 1902"
"of the caves. Among the most famous visitors of the caves in the period of their launching as tourist attraction there were Luigi Einaudi (1874-1961), Aldo Moro (1916-1978), Enrico Mattei (1906-1962), Gina Lollobrigida, Silvana Pampanini, Margareth aus England (1930-2002) and Tito Schipa (1888-1965). Similarly, several film producers were fascinated by the caves and eight films were shot in the caves. They are: The Age of the Love (1953) by Michael Hamilton (but he is Lionello De Felice), Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) by Mario Bava and Franco Prosperi, Maciste in Hell (1962) by Riccardo Freda; Casanova 70 (1965) by"
"in Europe which opened in 1937. The refurbished Cines studios continued to operate until 1956, but were often rented out for the use of other companies. Cines Studios The Cines Studios were film production studios located in the Italian capital Rome. They were established on Via Veio in 1930 by Stefano Pittaluga, head of the Cines film company, at the beginning of the sound era. It produced Italy's first sound film ""The Song of Love"" the same year. For several years it was the leading studio complex in Italy, until September 1935 when it suffered a major fire and was"
"ever made. Popular early Italian actors included Emilio Ghione, Alberto Collo, Bartolomeo Pagano, Amleto Novelli, Lyda Borelli, Ida Carloni Talli, Lidia Quaranta and Maria Jacobini. Enrico Guazzone's 1913 film ""Quo Vadis"" was one of the earliest ""blockbusters"" in cinema history, utilizing thousands of extras and a lavish set design. Giovanni Pastrone's 1914 film ""Cabiria"" was an even larger production, requiring two years and a record budget to produce, and it was the first epic film ever made. Nino Martoglio's ""Lost in Darkness"", also produced in 1914, documented life in the slums of Naples, and is considered a precursor to the"
"Grand Prix in 1971 by the Berlin International Film Festival. Note: on many sources, ""Fontana di Trevi"" by Carlo Campogalliani (1960) and ""La bonne soupe"" by Robert Thomas (1964) are included but de Sica does not appear in those films. Vittorio De Sica Vittorio De Sica (; 7 July 1901 – 13 November 1974) was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement. Four of the films he directed won Academy Awards: ""Sciuscià"" and ""Bicycle Thieves"" were awarded honorary Oscars, while ""Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow"" and ""Il giardino dei Finzi Contini"" won the Best Foreign Language"
"Mario Bonnard Mario Bonnard (24 December 1889 – 22 March 1965) was an Italian actor and film director. Bonnard was born and died in Rome. He began his cinematic career as an actor becoming a popular romantic lead in numerous silent films made before World War I. In 1917 he ventured into film directing for the first time. Before the arrival of sound films he worked for a period in Germany in films directed by Luis Trenker. Back in Italy in 1932, he became a prolific director working with the major stars of the time as: Assia Noris, Elsa Merlini,"
"long career. Having directed more than one hundred films, Gallone is noted as one of the most prolific filmmakers in the history of Italian cinema, active both in the silent and sound eras. Carmine Gallone Carmine Gallone (10 September 1885 – 4 April 1973) was an early acclaimed Italian film director, screenwriter, and film producer. Considered one of Italian cinema's top early directors, he directed over 120 films in his fifty-year career between 1913 and 1963. Carmine Gallone was born on 10 September 1885 in Taggia (in the province of Imperia), but grew up in Naples. His father was Italian,"
"and films were soon sold outside Italy. Cinema was later used by Benito Mussolini, who founded Rome's renowned Cinecittà studio for the production of Fascist propaganda until World War II. After the war, Italian film was widely recognised and exported until an artistic decline around the 1980s. Notable Italian film directors from this period include Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni and Roberto Rossellini; some of these are recognised among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Movies include world cinema treasures such as ""Bicycle Thieves"", ""La dolce vita"", ""8½"","
"main studios were and still are amongst the most important in the world, hosting some of the greatest films of all time. They were built in 1937, and they rose to fame as the Neorealist films of the 1940s, for example Roberto Rosselini's ""Roma Città Aperta"", and Vittorio De Sica ""Bicycle Thieves"". Possibly Italy's greatest film director, Federico Fellini, was often associated with Cinecitta and Roman cinema, with his classic films ""La Dolce Vita"" of 1960, and ""Rome"" in 1971. Pier Paolo Pasolini was also a highly controversial director associated with the studios, with famous films such as Il Decamerone"
"Cines Studios The Cines Studios were film production studios located in the Italian capital Rome. They were established on Via Veio in 1930 by Stefano Pittaluga, head of the Cines film company, at the beginning of the sound era. It produced Italy's first sound film ""The Song of Love"" the same year. For several years it was the leading studio complex in Italy, until September 1935 when it suffered a major fire and was largely destroyed. This became a spur for the Italian government of Benito Mussolini to invest in the construction of a new development Cinecittà, the largest studio"
"""La cieca di Sorrento"" (""The Blind Woman of Sorrento"") (1934) and later achieved international fame in Rossellini's ""Rome, Open City"" (1945), considered the first significant movie to launch the Italian neorealism movement in cinema. As an actress she became recognized for her dynamic and forceful portrayals of ""earthy lower-class women"" in such films as ""L'Amore"" (1948), ""Bellissima"" (1951), ""The Rose Tattoo"" (1955), ""The Fugitive Kind"" (1960) and ""Mamma Roma"" (1962). As early as 1950 ""Life"" magazine had already stated that Magnani was ""one of the most impressive actresses since Garbo"". Magnani's parentage and birthplace are uncertain. Some sources suggest she"
"of earlier drafts, all published in Italy or France. Ricciotto Canudo Ricciotto Canudo (; 2 January 1877, Gioia del Colle – 10 November 1923, Paris) was an early Italian film theoretician who lived primarily in France. In 1913 he published a bimonthly avant-garde magazine entitled ""Montjoie!"", promoting Cubism in particular. He saw cinema as ""plastic art in motion"", and gave cinema the label ""the Sixth Art"", later changed to ""the Seventh Art"", still current in French and Spanish, among others. Canudo subsequently added dance as a precursor to the sixth—a third rhythmic art with music and poetry—making cinema the seventh"
"was liberated from German occupation. This period, known as the ""Italian Spring,"" was a break from old ways and an entrance to a more realistic approach when making films. Italian cinema went from utilizing elaborate studio sets to shooting on location in the countryside and city streets in the realist style. Although the true beginning of neorealism has been widely contested by theorists and filmmakers, the first neorealist film is generally thought to be ""Ossessione"" by Luchino Visconti (1943). Neorealism became famous globally in 1946 with Roberto Rossellini's ""Rome, Open City"", when it won the Grand Prize at the Cannes"
"be involved in the film industry, taking over the management of UFA's animation department in 1935 and publishing several books for amateur filmmakers. Guido Seeber Guido Seeber (22 June 1879 in Chemnitz – 2 July 1940 in Berlin) was a German cinematographer and pioneer of early cinema. Seeber's father, Clemens, was a photographer and therefore Seeber had experience with photography from an early age. In the summer of 1896, he saw the first films of the Lumière Brothers and became fascinated by this new technology. He bought a film camera and devoted himself to the development of cinematography and of"
"he wrote , a poem in blank verse and quatrains, all in Roman dialect, dealing with the birth of Rome and illustrated by the painter-ceramicist Romeo Berardi. Romolo Bacchini Romolo Bacchini, also credited as Bachini (11 April 1872 – ?) was a filmmaker, musician, painter and Italian dialect poet, who spent his career during the silent film era. Born Romolo Bachini in Rome, Bacchini, as he later spelled it, was one of the pioneers of Italian silent cinema, directing, and sometimes acting in, more than 50 films. Some have been lost while others were recovered and restored, such as ""La"
"and Riccardo. In the sixties Pion left the business to his sons and retired. He died in 1965, aged 78. Pio Pion Pio Pion (4 July 1887 – 15 May 1965) was an Italian entrepreneur, known for founding the first Italian company producing movie projectors, the Fumagalli, Pion & C. Pion vas born in Varese in 1887 to his father Pierre, whose premature death forced the young Pio to move abroad in search for work. He returned to his native Italy in the first years of the 1900s, where he heard of the recent invention of the first movie projector"
"Love"", in 1940 for Spring Parade. In 1949, on his fifth nomination, he won for ""Joan of Arc"". Joseph Valentine Joseph A. Valentine (July 24, 1900 in New York City, as ""Giuseppe Valentino"" – May 18, 1949 in (Cheviot Hills, California) was an Italian-American cinematographer, five-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and co-winner once in 1949. Trained in photography, he moved to working in films in the 1920s and from 1924 became a chief cinematographer. Working on several B-films, his final years were spent on the cinematography for three Alfred Hitchcock films. Valentine was nominated for the"
"Europe '51 Europe '51 (, , also known as ""The Greatest Love"") is a 1952 Italian neorealist film directed by Roberto Rossellini, starring Alexander Knox and Ingrid Bergman as a woman who's declared insane after her son's suicide. Long fascinated by Francis of Assisi, Roberto Rossellini decided to create a film that placed a person of the saint's character in post-war Italy and showed what the consequences would be. The film's sets were designed by Virgilio Marchi, a veteran Futurist architect. Industrialist George Girard (Alexander Knox) and his wife Irene (Ingrid Bergman) are a wealthy couple living in post-war Rome"
"Italian cinema screening occurred in Turin in March 1896. In November 1896, Italian filmmakers performed the first cinema screening of a film before a fee-paying audience. By the start of the 20th century (especially after 1907), a number of the first Italian films were aired in Turin. Examples include Giovanni Pastrone ""Cabiria"", in 1914, one of the first blockbusters in history. The Turin-based company Ambrosio Film, established in 1906 by Arturo Ambrosio, was one of the leading forces in Italian cinema and boosted the importance of the city as a filmmaking destination. The company, noted in particular for its historical"
"on 30 December 1982, shortly before undergoing a major surgery. Giuseppe Aquari Giuseppe Aquari (1 January 1916 – 30 December 1982) was an Italian film cinematographer. Born in Rome into a noble family, Aquari studied as an engineer and then enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, graduating as an operator. He began his film career in 1942, working as an operator in Luigi Chiarini's ""La locandiera"". After several years in which Aquari worked mainly for documentaries, in 1952 he made his debut as a cinematographer in the melodrama film ""Ultimo perdono"". From then he worked in dozens of films"
"Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini also distinguished himself as an actor, journalist, novelist, playwright, and political figure. He remains a controversial personality in Italy due to his blunt style and the focus of some of his works on taboo sexual matters, but he is an established major figure in European literature and cinematic arts. His murder prompted an outcry in Italy and its circumstances continue to be a matter of heated debate. Pasolini was born in Bologna, traditionally one of the"
"movies. D'Amico had a very outgoing personality. He was a non-conformist, which was reflected in his work throughout his life. D'Amico was born in CastelFrentano, Italy, a small village in Abruzzo. At a young age, he felt he had to leave and dive into the big world. After being a seminarist with the Salesiani during World War II, he left Naples, where he studied architecture, and began a great adventure in Rome. He specialized at the time in decorating nightclubs and bars, and invented a special type of double ceiling to hide the lights. D'Amico, who was self-taught as a"
"achieved international renown. Leading writers of the postwar era are Ignazio Silone, Alberto Moravia, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Dario Fo, and the poets Salvatore Quasimodo and Eugenio Montale. The Italian film industry was born between 1903 and 1908 with three companies: the Roman ""Società Italiana Cines"", the ""Ambrosio Film"" and the ""Itala Film"" in Turin. Other companies soon followed in Milan and in Naples. The early Italian film industry became internationally known for its historical spectacles. But during the World War I, Italy like other European governments, diverted raw material from their film industries to military needs. Few major motion"
"of flowers. With the worldwide film boom, yet more countries now joined Britain, France, Germany and the United States in serious film production. In Italy, production was spread over several centres, with Turin being the first and biggest. There, Ambrosio was the first company in the field in 1905, and remained the largest in the country through this period. Its most substantial rival was Cines in Rome, which started producing in 1906. The great strength of the Italian industry was historical epics, with large casts and massive scenery. As early as 1911, Giovanni Pastrone's two-reel ""La Caduta di Troia (The"
"Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese (; born November 17, 1942) is an Italian-American filmmaker and historian, whose career spans more than 50 years. Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Sicilian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, faith, machismo, modern crime, and gang conflict. Many of his films are also known for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity. Part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers in cinematic history. In 1990, he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to"