She wrote and collaborated on the scripts for some of the most renowned films of Italian cinema’s extraordinarily fertile postwar era, but master screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico has often been overshadowed by the directorial titans she worked with over the course of her career. This survey—culled from her more than 100 screen credits—plays like a greatest-hits package of mid-twentieth-century Italian cinema and includes no less than the neorealist lightning bolt BICYCLE THIEVES, Michelangelo Antonioni’s modernist milestone LE AMICHE, Mario Monicelli’s irresistibly charming caper comedy BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET, and several of the ravishing melodramas and period pieces she wrote with her closest long-term collaborator, Luchino Visconti. Taken together, Cecchi d’Amico’s work represents an extraordinary through line connecting the myriad strands—neorealism, period splendor, commedia all’italiana—of Italy’s cinematic golden age.
Directed by Vittorio De Sica • 1948 • Italy
Starring Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell
Hailed around the world as one of the greatest movies ever made, the Academy Award-winning BICYCLE THIEVES, directed by Vittorio De Sica, defined an era in cinema. In poverty-stricken postwar ...
Directed by Luchino Visconti • 1954 • Italy
Starring Alida Valli, Farley Granger
This lush, Technicolor tragic romance from Luchino Visconti stars Alida Valli as a nineteenth-century Italian countess who, during the Austrian occupation of her country, puts her marriage and political principle...
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni • 1955 • Italy
Starring Eleonora Rossi Drago, Gabriele Ferzetti, Franco Fabrizi
This major early achievement by Michelangelo Antonioni bears the first signs of the cinema-changing style for which he would soon be world-famous. LE AMICHE (THE GIRLFRIENDS) is ...
Directed by Luchino Visconti • 1957 • Italy
Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Maria Schell
Marcello Mastroianni, as a lonely city transplant, and Maria Schell, as a sheltered girl haunted by a lover’s promise, meet by chance on a canal bridge and begin a tentative romance that quickly entangles the...
Directed by Mario Monicelli • 1958 • Italy
Starring Vittorio Gassman, Renato Salvatori, Memmo Carotenuto
An all-star cast and jazzy score highlight this charming comedy, a deft satire of classic caper films like RIFIFI. BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET hilariously details the plight of a sad-sack grou...
Directed by Luchino Visconti • 1960 • Italy
Starring Alain Delon, Annie Girardot, Renato Salvatori
Looking for opportunity, five brothers move north with their mother to Milan. There, Simone and Rocco find fame, in the boxing ring, and love, in the same woman. Jealousy mounts, blood is shed, ...
Directed by Francesco Rosi • 1962 • Italy
Starring Salvo Randone, Frank Wolff, Pietro Cammarata
July 5, 1950—Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano’s bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon t...
