Società Italiana Cines

Six episodes (adapted from as many short stories: Gozzano, D'Annunzio, Guido Rocca, Marino Moretti, Alba de Céspedes and Oreste Biancoli), six love stories set in different moments in italian recent history.

During the latter years of the reign of the tyrannical Roman emperor Nero, Marcus Vinicius, one of Nero's officers, falls in love with a young Christian named Lygia, attempting to enslave her. Lygia's protector, the noble and burly Ursus, works to save her from Vinicius' clutches. Pursuing Lygia, Vinicius finds himself at a catacomb prayer meeting led by the apostle Peter and finds his conscience stirring-- just as Nero orders Rome burned. A landmark in epic film, Enrico Guazzoni’s grand-scale masterpiece laid the foundations for what colossal Italian spectacles would become. The film had tremendous influence on Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914) and D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916).

Four criminals commit a robbery at a soccer stadium, and then split up to try to hide separately from the police.

A family man travelling for work, Paolo Bianchi, meets on a train a lonely girl, Maria. He sees her again on a bus and she reveals him that she's in troubles: she's pregnant, her baby's father has left her and she doesn't know how to tell to her parents that she's not married. She asks Paolo to play the role of her husband and he accepts....

Mario and the new kid Franco gradually become the best of friends, but their friendship is tested when one of them wins a competition.

Maria is a housmaid and she is being engaged to Berto for fifteen years. Berto has not a lasting job so he is waiting for the death of his uncle Matteo to come into an inheritance. In the meantime Maria goes on with her work, first in the house of an unfaithful wife; then for an actor and his wife on the verge of leaving each other and last for Raffaele who wants to marry her. At last uncle Matteo dies...

Lorna, the daughter of an American playboy, enters a girls' school for the international smart-set, in the Alps, where the main course of study appears to be how to trap a rich man. At first, she is dominated and looked down on by the school ring-leaders, and forced into rooming with - horrors - a scholarship student. But when a rich young American shows interest in her she is elevated to the international clique of the upper-termers. Then she falls in love with - horrors again - a poor local mountaineer.

The public and private life of Eugenio Pacelli, elected Pope Pius XII.

Two siblings lose their parents amidst turmoil in revolutionary France and are adopted by a peasant family. Once grown up, the older brother enlists in the Napoleonic Wars.

A Faustian tale about an old woman who makes a pact with Mephisto to regain her youth, but in return she must stay away from love. After making the deal, she meets two brothers who fall in love with her.

Nine episodes about life in Italy in the period just before its economic boom.

Bruno, a chauffeur having some problem in keeping a job, meets one morning Mariuccia, a taxi driver’s daughter working as a perfumery’s shop assistant, and trying to impress her, pretending to be rich, uses his employer’s car to took her on a trip to the lakes, but things don’t work as planned and to conquer Mariuccia’s hearth won’t be so easy…

The unexpected arrival of his mother-in-law causes uncontrollable hysteria in Kri-Kri's home. Determined to scare her off, indeed get rid of her, he starts developing Machiavellian plans. Trying to poison, sabotage and beat her up, Kri-Kri stops at nothing to attempt to frighten his terrible mother-in-law, to the great displeasure of his sweet wife.

The film follows men from all walks of life, seeking to give meaning to their lives and rediscover their inner peace during a retreat in the “House of Silence”. For three days, they meditate on their lives.

The owner of a lottery store refuses to pay a large sum won by one of his workers that he hates, because that man received the winning numbers in a dream.

A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.

Sold as slaves to a wealthy Roman, Lea and Esther, two Carthaginian sisters, are offered as gifts to the ambitious daughter of a proconsul and end up involved in spite of themselves in a dangerous game of power.

Lyda is a prostitute with no education and no hope for the future. Unfortunately, this ungrateful job leads her to have an unwanted pregnancy, and once born the child abandons her. Lyda becomes obsessed with the life of her only child.

After being hurt in the face, Count de Roger Tinchebraye is forced to hide his disfigured face behind a leather mask. Dispirited for a while, he decides to become a Casanova-like seductor. When he meets true love, cynical Roger does not believe in it and lets pure Judith marry an old marquis. But once Judith's husband dies, he sees Judith again, shows her his disfigured face, which does not discourage the young woman from loving him. Nevertheless, he distances himself from her forever