After years of detachment Alberto Valli returns to the home of Margherita, his widowed mother, with his mistress Germaine.

A host of college girls take different life paths in the Italy of the 1930s.

La Contessa di Parma was the sole directorial contribution by Allesandro Blasetti in 1937. The first of several expensive costume dramas upon which the director established his international reputation, the film stars Elisa Cegani as Marcella, a model in the dress shop owned by enterprising Umberto Melnati. To improve his business, the owner instructs his models to dress up as society ladies and attend all the best parties. And that's how humble little Marcella comes to be mistaken for the popular Duchess of Parma -- and by extension, how our heroine wins the love of football hero Gino Vanni (Antonio Centa). A little wanting in the way of plot or logic, La Constessa di Parma is at least consistently good to look at.

1959 film by Sergio Grieco

A struggling model concocts a story of being raped and beaten by three strangers and soon becomes a media darling. Complications arise when the police eventually arrest three suspects.

Maria and Paul love them, but they are very young and, moreover, Maria is the daughter of the municipal sweeper while Paul is the lawyer Bonelli, vice mayor and head of the opposition. To complicate the story there is the reconstruction of a hermitage destroyed during the war. Reconstruction would take the view of the Paseroni villa, big industrial and political traffic. Bonelli's lawyer, a great speaker, becomes a mayor for the death of his predecessor and is bought by Paseroni, while rejecting the love of Paul and Mary for social differences and why Paul should stay behind Doddy Paseroni. At this point, Paul and Mary flee to kill, just as Bonelli has to hold a talk on the radio for the inauguration of Paseroni's villa ...

Liana, an architecture graduate, is about to get married until she is confronted with the fact she is sacrificing the rest of her life for a man she barely knows. So begins a series of romantic encounters in which Liana tries to find her freedom and happiness, but which will ultimately lead her to a tragic fate.

Some Italian partisans want to take refuge in a convent to escape German raids. The nuns are a little perplexed at first but then agree since one of the men is seriously wounded. When the partisans eventually leave, the Germans take a terrible revenge.

A deadly tournament for a princess' hand, a mystic "golden deer," babies switched at birth, a raised-by-lions quasi-Tarzan; everything but the proverbial kitchen sink was thrown into this extravagant fantasy adventure. Loin-clothed foundling Arminio (Massimo Girotti) leaves the jungle he grew up in upon reaching adulthood, unknowingly commencing the fulfillment of a prophecy that will have him regain the royal throne that is his birthright. Reviving the invincible muscleman hero of popular Italian silent films, THE IRON CROWN also anticipated the "sword and sandal" craze originating from that country in the 1950s, more directly triggered by two international hits: Alessandro Blasetti's own 1949 FABIOLA (released in 1949) and, not quite a decade later, HERCULES with American bodybuilder Steve Reeves. THE IRON CROWN won the "Mussolini Cup" for Best Italian Film at the Venice Festival but wasn't released in the U.S. until years after the end of World War II. Though little-remembered today (compared to some of the films it partly inspired), it survives as a vigorous if goofy gem of all-stops-out escapism. Here, it is presented it in its original language with English subtitles, minus the clumsy dubbing of poorly re-edited versions that were seen for decades outside Italy - Dennis Harvey