30 Best Italian Movies of All Time: Classics and Where to Watch

Updated October 5, 2026.

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Italian cinema has never been defined by a single style. It has produced monumental silent spectacles, emotionally direct neorealist dramas, sophisticated comedies, politically charged thrillers, visionary fantasies and some of the most influential Westerns ever made.

Choosing the “best” Italian movies is therefore inevitably subjective. Instead of presenting another constantly changing ratings chart, this guide selects 30 films for their artistry, historical importance, cultural influence and ability to engage viewers today.

The films are arranged chronologically rather than ranked. Together, they provide an accessible journey through more than a century of Italian filmmaking.

For a broader historical overview, begin with Italian Cinema: 100 Years of Masterpieces That Shaped World Film and Italia Mia’s guide to Italian movies and the cinema of Italy.

How to Use This Italian Movie Guide

The 30 films below follow chronological order, not a ranking. Where a dedicated Italia Mia article is available, its link takes you to a fuller discussion of the film.

Each entry also includes country-specific availability searches for the United States and Italy. These links help you find current subscription, rental and digital purchase options; they are not claims that a particular service currently carries the film. Select the matching year and director before following a provider link. Amazon links are searches for physical editions, not verified in-stock products.

For the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and other countries, use the regional guidance after the list. Always confirm subtitles, price and playback availability with the actual provider before paying.

1. Cabiria (1914)

Director: Giovanni Pastrone

Genre: Silent historical epic

One of the landmarks of early cinema, Cabiria unfolds during the Second Punic War and follows a young Roman girl carried through a world of volcanic eruptions, warfare, slavery and religious ritual.

Its enormous sets, mobile camera movements and carefully staged crowd scenes helped establish Italy as a leader in early feature filmmaking. The film also introduced Maciste, the powerful servant who became one of Italian popular cinema’s first recurring screen heroes.

Although its pacing differs greatly from modern cinema, Cabiria remains essential for understanding how filmmakers learned to tell epic stories visually.

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2. Rome, Open City (1945)

Original title: Roma città aperta

Director: Roberto Rossellini

Genre: Neorealist war drama

Made in the immediate aftermath of the German occupation, Rome, Open City transformed wartime Rome into the setting for a story of resistance, fear and moral courage.

Anna Magnani gives one of Italian cinema’s defining performances, while Aldo Fabrizi plays a priest assisting members of the Resistance. Rossellini combines melodrama with the urgency of streets and buildings that still bore the physical scars of war.

The film became an international symbol of Italian neorealism and changed how directors around the world approached location filming and contemporary history.

Read our full guide to Rome, Open City for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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3. Shoeshine (1946)

Original title: Sciuscià

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Genre: Neorealist drama

Two boys working as shoeshiners in postwar Rome dream of buying a horse. Their involvement in a black-market scheme, however, leads them into a juvenile detention system that gradually destroys their friendship.

De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini focus on children affected by poverty and institutions incapable of protecting them. The filmmaking is restrained, but the emotional consequences are devastating.

Shoeshine received an honorary Academy Award before the regular competitive category for foreign-language films was established.

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4. Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Original title: Ladri di biciclette

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Genre: Neorealist drama

Antonio finally finds work posting advertisements around Rome, but the job depends upon a bicycle his family can barely afford. When it is stolen, he and his young son Bruno search the city for it.

The plot is simple, yet the film encompasses unemployment, fatherhood, dignity and the compromises imposed by poverty. De Sica filmed in real locations and cast nonprofessional performer Lamberto Maggiorani as Antonio.

Few films demonstrate the human power of neorealism as clearly. Learn more in our guide to Italian cinema’s neorealist period.

Read our full guide to Bicycle Thieves for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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5. Umberto D. (1952)

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Genre: Neorealist drama

Umberto is a retired civil servant whose small pension no longer covers his rent. Facing eviction and social indifference, he struggles to preserve his dignity and care for his dog, Flike.

Carlo Battisti, a university professor with little acting experience, gives the central performance extraordinary understatement. The film refuses to turn Umberto into either a sentimental symbol or a convenient social lesson.

Its treatment of aging, economic insecurity and loneliness remains strikingly relevant, making Umberto D. one of De Sica’s most humane achievements.

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6. La Strada (1954)

Director: Federico Fellini

Genre: Drama

Giulietta Masina plays Gelsomina, a vulnerable young woman sold to travelling strongman Zampanò, played by Anthony Quinn. Their journey through an austere Italian landscape becomes a fable about cruelty, companionship and the human need for meaning.

La Strada retains traces of neorealism while introducing the poetic imagery, music and circus atmosphere that would define Fellini’s later films. Masina’s expressive performance and Nino Rota’s score give the story an almost timeless quality.

The film won the Academy Award for foreign-language film and established Fellini internationally.

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7. Nights of Cabiria (1957)

Original title: Le notti di Cabiria

Director: Federico Fellini

Genre: Drama

Cabiria is a sex worker living on the outskirts of Rome who continues to search for affection despite betrayal and exploitation. Giulietta Masina makes her hopeful, stubborn and completely individual rather than reducing her to a stereotype.

The film moves between comedy, humiliation, religious spectacle and heartbreak, culminating in one of Fellini’s most beautiful endings. Cabiria’s final expression conveys devastation, resilience and a tentative return to life without relying on dialogue.

Explore the director’s life and creative development in Italia Mia’s biography of Federico Fellini.

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8. Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958)

Original title: I soliti ignoti

Director: Mario Monicelli

Genre: Comedy

A group of inexperienced Roman criminals attempts what should be a straightforward burglary. Poor planning, personal complications and general incompetence turn the supposedly perfect crime into a magnificent failure.

The ensemble includes Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, Renato Salvatori, Claudia Cardinale and Totò. Beneath the humor lies a sympathetic portrait of people trying to survive on society’s margins.

The film helped define commedia all’italiana, in which comedy exposes class divisions and social contradictions. Read more about the development of Italian comedy movies.

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9. La Dolce Vita (1960)

Director: Federico Fellini

Genre: Drama and social satire

Marcello Mastroianni plays Marcello Rubini, a journalist drifting through Rome’s celebrity culture while searching for something more substantial than gossip, parties and temporary romances.

Rather than following a conventional plot, Fellini constructs a series of episodes: a religious statue flying over Rome, Anita Ekberg entering the Trevi Fountain, an intellectual gathering, an apparent miracle and a final beachside encounter.

The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and gave the world the term “paparazzo.” Its critique of spectacle feels even more relevant in the age of social media.

Read our full guide to La Dolce Vita for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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10. L’Avventura (1960)

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Genre: Modernist drama

A woman disappears during a yachting trip among the Aeolian Islands. Her lover Sandro and friend Claudia begin searching for her, but the investigation gradually gives way to a complicated and uncertain relationship.

Antonioni’s real subject is emotional disconnection. Landscapes, buildings, pauses and unspoken tensions become as important as dialogue or plot. Monica Vitti’s performance captures both Claudia’s attraction to Sandro and her growing unease.

Initially controversial for frustrating conventional narrative expectations, L’Avventura became a central work of modern cinema.

Read our full guide to L’Avventura for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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11. Two Women (1960)

Original title: La ciociara

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Genre: War drama

Sophia Loren plays Cesira, a widowed shopkeeper who leaves Rome with her daughter during the Second World War, hoping to find safety in the countryside.

The film examines war through civilians who have little control over the armies and political forces surrounding them. Loren rejects glamour for a physically and emotionally demanding performance built around maternal determination.

She became the first performer to win an Academy Award for a leading performance primarily in a language other than English. Read more in Italia Mia’s biography of Sophia Loren.

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12. Divorce Italian Style (1961)

Original title: Divorzio all’italiana

Director: Pietro Germi

Genre: Satirical comedy

Marcello Mastroianni plays a Sicilian aristocrat who wants to leave his wife but lives in an Italy where divorce is illegal. He devises a grotesque plan to exploit the era’s legal and social tolerance of so-called crimes of honor.

The film’s comedy is deliberately uncomfortable. Germi exposes the hypocrisy of a society that publicly defends morality while tolerating misogyny and violence.

Mastroianni’s vain, calculating performance helped overturn his international image as a straightforward romantic idol. Discover more in the biography of Marcello Mastroianni.

Read our full guide to Divorce Italian Style for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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13. Il Sorpasso (1962)

Director: Dino Risi

Genre: Road comedy and drama

On a quiet August holiday in Rome, shy law student Roberto accepts an invitation to drive with Bruno, a loud, impulsive stranger played brilliantly by Vittorio Gassman.

Their journey through Lazio and Tuscany captures the energy of Italy’s postwar economic boom: new cars, popular music, beach resorts and rising consumerism. Beneath the carefree surface, however, lies a culture moving too quickly to examine its direction.

Il Sorpasso is funny, fast and increasingly unsettling—a perfect demonstration of how commedia all’italiana turns entertainment into social criticism.

Read our full guide to Il Sorpasso for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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14. 8½ (1963)

Director: Federico Fellini

Genre: Fantasy and psychological drama

Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a successful filmmaker unable to begin his next production. Producers, actors, journalists, memories and fantasies crowd around him while an enormous set waits for a film he cannot explain.

Fellini turns creative paralysis into an exhilarating meditation on filmmaking. Reality, dreams and childhood memories flow into one another until separating them becomes almost impossible.

The title refers playfully to Fellini’s place within his own filmography. Personal, self-critical and endlessly inventive, 8½ became one of the most influential films ever made about artistic creation.

Read our full guide to 8½ for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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15. The Leopard (1963)

Original title: Il Gattopardo

Director: Luchino Visconti

Genre: Historical drama

Burt Lancaster plays Prince Fabrizio of Salina, a Sicilian aristocrat watching the world of his family decline during Italian unification. Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale represent a younger generation adapting more successfully to the new order.

Visconti’s magnificent interiors and costumes do not simply romanticize aristocratic life. They show a society performing its own continuity while power quietly moves elsewhere.

The celebrated ballroom sequence brings historical change, mortality and social ritual together with extraordinary visual control. The Leopard won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Read our full guide to The Leopard for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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16. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)

Original title: Il Vangelo secondo Matteo

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Genre: Biblical drama

Pasolini presents the life of Jesus using dialogue largely drawn from the Gospel of Matthew. Filmed in the landscapes and towns of southern Italy, the picture combines nonprofessional performers, austere black-and-white photography and music ranging from Bach to spirituals.

The result avoids the glossy spectacle associated with many biblical epics. Pasolini’s Christ is intense, demanding and closely connected to the poor and marginalized.

The film remains remarkable for its ability to approach a familiar story with both intellectual rigor and emotional sincerity.

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17. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Original title: Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo

Director: Sergio Leone

Genre: Spaghetti Western

Three gunmen pursue a fortune in buried gold against the destructive background of the American Civil War. Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach embody the title roles, although Leone continually complicates those moral labels.

Extreme close-ups, immense landscapes, carefully prolonged confrontations and Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable score transform the Western into something operatic.

This Italian-led international production became the culminating chapter of the Dollars Trilogy and one of the most influential genre films ever made. Continue with Italia Mia’s history of the Spaghetti Western.

Read our full guide to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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18. The Battle of Algiers (1966)

Original title: La battaglia di Algeri

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo

Genre: Historical and political drama

This Italian-Algerian production reconstructs the struggle between the Algerian independence movement and French authorities during the 1950s.

Pontecorvo’s grainy black-and-white photography and large cast create the immediacy of documentary footage, although the film was carefully staged. It examines bombings, torture, surveillance and political organization without turning colonial conflict into conventional adventure.

Ennio Morricone and Pontecorvo collaborated on the score. The film’s formal precision and political complexity have kept it central to debates about colonialism, resistance and state power.

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19. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

Original title: Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto

Director: Elio Petri

Genre: Political thriller and satire

Gian Maria Volonté plays a senior police official who commits murder and deliberately leaves evidence pointing toward himself. Convinced that authority makes him untouchable, he treats the investigation as an experiment in institutional obedience.

Elio Petri blends crime drama, psychological grotesque and political satire. Ennio Morricone’s eccentric score intensifies the atmosphere of instability.

The film won the Academy Award for foreign-language film and remains one of the sharpest cinematic studies of authoritarian power and the willingness of institutions to protect their own.

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20. The Conformist (1970)

Original title: Il conformista

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Genre: Political and psychological drama

Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Marcello Clerici, a man who embraces Fascism less from deep conviction than from a desperate desire to appear ordinary. He accepts an assignment to help assassinate his former professor in Paris.

Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography uses architecture, shadow and color to express Marcello’s emotional imprisonment. The film examines fascism not only as an ideology but also as an escape from personal responsibility.

Its visual style influenced generations of filmmakers, while its portrait of moral cowardice remains disturbing.

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21. We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974)

Original title: C’eravamo tanto amati

Director: Ettore Scola

Genre: Comedy-drama

Three former Resistance fighters attempt to preserve their friendship and ideals as Italy changes over three decades. Their lives diverge through politics, work, romance, compromise and disappointment.

Scola combines intimate storytelling with a larger reflection on postwar Italian history. The film also celebrates cinema itself, referring affectionately to neorealism, Fellini and the transformative experience of watching movies.

Vittorio Gassman, Nino Manfredi, Stefano Satta Flores and Stefania Sandrelli form an exceptional ensemble. The result is funny, melancholy and deeply generous toward its imperfect characters.

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22. A Special Day (1977)

Original title: Una giornata particolare

Director: Ettore Scola

Genre: Historical drama

On May 6, 1938, most residents of a Roman apartment complex leave to attend the public celebrations for Hitler’s visit to Mussolini. Two people remain behind: Antonietta, an overworked housewife, and Gabriele, a former radio announcer persecuted because he is gay.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni give restrained performances far removed from their glamorous screen images. Their brief connection exposes the private loneliness produced by fascist expectations surrounding gender, sexuality and family.

The film turns one apartment building into a powerful portrait of life under dictatorship.

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23. The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)

Original title: L’albero degli zoccoli

Director: Ermanno Olmi

Genre: Historical drama

Olmi follows several peasant families living on a Lombard estate near the end of the nineteenth century. The narrative emerges from work, meals, births, religious traditions and the changing seasons rather than a conventional central plot.

The performers were largely local nonprofessionals, and the dialogue uses the Bergamasque dialect. Olmi observes rural hardship without treating his characters as picturesque decorations.

Winner of the Palme d’Or, the film is patient, compassionate and visually beautiful—a detailed record of a world shaped by land, labor and rigid class divisions.

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24. Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Original title: Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Genre: Coming-of-age drama

A successful filmmaker returns to Sicily after learning that Alfredo, the projectionist who encouraged his childhood love of cinema, has died.

Through memories of the village movie theatre, Tornatore explores friendship, first love, censorship, emigration and the disappearance of communal filmgoing. Philippe Noiret brings warmth and authority to Alfredo, while Ennio Morricone and Andrea Morricone provide the celebrated score.

Both the theatrical and longer director’s cuts are available. Viewers should check the running time before buying, because the additional material significantly changes the treatment of Salvatore’s adult life.

Read our full guide to Cinema Paradiso for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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25. Life Is Beautiful (1997)

Original title: La vita è bella

Director: Roberto Benigni

Genre: Comedy-drama

Roberto Benigni plays Guido, a Jewish Italian father deported to a concentration camp with his young son. He attempts to protect the child psychologically by presenting their ordeal as an elaborate game.

The film deliberately moves from romantic comedy into tragedy, a tonal decision that has generated both admiration and debate. It should not be treated as a realistic depiction of the Holocaust; its focus is a father’s attempt to preserve his son’s inner world amid persecution.

The film won three Academy Awards, including foreign-language film and Best Actor for Benigni.

Read our full guide to Life Is Beautiful for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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26. The Best of Youth (2003)

Original title: La meglio gioventù

Director: Marco Tullio Giordana

Genre: Family and historical drama

Originally conceived for television, this six-hour epic follows two brothers and their family from the 1960s into the early twenty-first century.

Personal relationships intersect with the Florence flood, student protest, psychiatric reform, political terrorism and organized crime. Rather than turning history into a lecture, the film shows how public events redirect individual lives.

Luigi Lo Cascio and Alessio Boni create memorably contrasting brothers, one drawn toward healing and the other increasingly isolated. Despite its length, The Best of Youth is emotionally direct and remarkably absorbing.

Read our full guide to The Best of Youth for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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27. Gomorrah (2008)

Original title: Gomorra

Director: Matteo Garrone

Genre: Crime drama

Inspired by Roberto Saviano’s book, Gomorrah follows several interconnected lives affected by the Camorra in and around Naples.

Garrone avoids the seductive rise-and-fall structure of many gangster movies. Criminal power appears as a system embedded in housing, employment, waste disposal, fashion production and everyday survival.

The film’s fragmented narrative and observational style deny viewers a single heroic protagonist. Violence is abrupt and frequently pathetic rather than glamorous. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, Gomorrah renewed international attention on contemporary Italian cinema.

Read our full guide to Gomorrah for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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28. The Great Beauty (2013)

Original title: La grande bellezza

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Genre: Drama

Jep Gambardella, played by Toni Servillo, is a journalist and once-promising novelist who has spent decades moving through Rome’s parties, palaces and cultural circles.

Following his sixty-fifth birthday, encounters with death, memory and lost love force him to reconsider the life he has constructed. Sorrentino presents Rome as both overwhelmingly beautiful and spiritually exhausting.

The film’s relationship to La Dolce Vita is deliberate, but its tone and visual imagination are distinctively Sorrentino’s. It won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film.

Read our full guide to The Great Beauty for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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29. Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

Original title: Lazzaro felice

Director: Alice Rohrwacher

Genre: Magical-realist drama

Lazzaro is a gentle young farmworker living among an isolated community of sharecroppers who are being illegally exploited. A sudden break in time carries his innocence into a very different Italy.

Alice Rohrwacher moves between rural realism, fable and social criticism without clearly separating them. The film asks whether exploitation truly disappears when society modernizes or merely assumes new forms.

Adriano Tardiolo’s open, unaffected performance gives Lazzaro an almost saintly presence, while the film’s shifts in place and time continually challenge expectations.

Read our full guide to Happy as Lazzaro for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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30. There’s Still Tomorrow (2023)

Original title: C’è ancora domani

Director: Paola Cortellesi

Genre: Comedy-drama

Paola Cortellesi directs and stars as Delia, a wife and mother living in working-class Rome shortly after the Second World War. Her daily routine is controlled by domestic violence, economic hardship and rigid expectations surrounding women.

Filmed mainly in black and white, the movie combines social drama with elements of comedy, music and stylized movement. Cortellesi uses these tonal shifts to keep Delia’s identity from being defined solely by victimhood.

The film became a major popular success in Italy and brought renewed attention to women’s political and social position in the country’s postwar transformation.

Read our full guide to There’s Still Tomorrow for the story, cast, background and viewing details.

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More Italian Movies to Explore

Our individual film guides extend beyond the core 30. Continue with these additional titles, including recent Italian cinema:

• Rocco and His Brothers: Visconti follows a southern family confronting migration, ambition and conflict in Milan.
• Amarcord: Fellini revisits provincial life through memory, humor and fantasy.
• Suspiria: Dario Argento turns a dance academy into a nightmare of color and sound.
• Ricomincio da tre: Massimo Troisi brings his distinctive comic voice to a young man’s search for a different life.
• Let’s Hope It’s a Girl: Mario Monicelli explores family life through a memorable ensemble of women.
• Mediterraneo: Gabriele Salvatores follows Italian soldiers stranded on a Greek island during the Second World War.
• Il Postino: Poetry and friendship transform a postman’s understanding of his world.
• The Son’s Room: Nanni Moretti examines the different ways a family responds to loss.
• The Hand of God: Paolo Sorrentino returns to Naples for a deeply personal coming-of-age story.
• Io Capitano: Matteo Garrone follows two young Senegalese cousins on a dangerous journey toward Europe.
• La chimera: Alice Rohrwacher brings together lost love, ancient objects and the people who search for them.
• Vermiglio: Maura Delpero observes a mountain community as war unsettles family life.
• The Last One for the Road: Francesco Sossai explores friendship and unexpected encounters on a journey through Veneto.

For another perspective, explore our guide to queer Italian cinema.

Where Should a Newcomer Begin?

If you have never explored Italian cinema, these five films make an accessible starting point:

• For neorealism: Bicycle Thieves
• For Fellini: La Dolce Vita
• For Italian comedy: Il Sorpasso
• For genre cinema: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• For a modern audience: Cinema Paradiso

After those, explore Antonioni for modernist cinema, Visconti for historical grandeur, Scola for comedy and political memory, and Rohrwacher for contemporary Italian filmmaking.

Italia Mia also offers guides to Italy’s influential directors from the 1950s to the 1970s and Italian cinema’s visionary directors from the 1950s to today.

Where to Watch Italian Movies in the U.S. and Other Countries

A film can be included in a subscription in one country, available only to rent in another, and absent from a third. A platform’s title page may also remain visible when playback is unavailable. Treat the provider’s offer for your location as the final check.