Our tribute to legendary Italian studio Titanus runs through May 31. The 23-film retrospective (all screening in glorious 35mm!) showcases some of Italy's greatest directors: Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, and many others. Prepare to be dazzled by powerhouses of the silver screen including Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, and Jean-Louis Trintignant in roles that immortalized them in Italy and around the world.
To get you excited, we rounded up vintage posters for some of the films screening in the retrospective…
A Hero of Our Times
Mario Monicelli | 1957 | 35mm | 85 mins
A hard-charging boor exploits his widowed boss’s affections in this blackly comedic rumination on postwar amorality from Big Deal on Madonna Street director Mario Monicelli.
Bandits of Orgosolo
Vittorio De Seta | 1961 | 35mm | 98 mins
Vittorio De Seta’s tough, post-neorealist study of survival in the highlands of Sardinia moved Martin Scorsese to observe: “It was as if De Seta were an anthropologist who spoke with the voice of a poet.”
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Dario Argento | 1970 | 35mm | 98 mins
Dario Argento’s directorial debut! An American in Rome witnesses a botched murder, and then becomes obsessed with tracking down the mysterious attacker.
Bread, Love and Dreams
Luigi Comencini | 1953 | 35mm | 90 mins
A middle-aged police chief pursues a spirited country girl in this Oscar-nominated farce, which supplied Gina Lollobrigida with perhaps her most popular role.
Evil's Commandment
Riccardo Freda | 1957 | 35mm | 77 mins
The first Italian horror film of the sound era, a cheap but chilling twist on vampirism, anticipates decades of Euro Horror—including the works of its cinematographer and unbilled co-director, Mario Bava.
Sweet Deceptions
Alberto Lattuada | 1960 | 35mm | 95 mins
A 17-year-old girl examines her feelings for a much older family friend in Fellini collaborator Alberto Lattuada’s tender portrait of burgeoning adulthood that defies coming-of-age clichés.
Two Women
Vittorio De Sica | 1960 | 35mm | 100 mins
A widow (Sophia Loren, in an Oscar-winning role) and her daughter find peace (and an affable Marxist played by Jean-Paul Belmondo) in the countryside, but their idyll is shattered on their way back to Rome.
Rome 11:00
Giuseppe De Santis | 1952 | 35mm | 107 mins
An overlooked entry in the neorealist canon, Rome 11:00 chronicles the buildup to and aftermath of a real-life tragedy derived from the dearth of opportunities in postwar Rome.
The Demon
Brunello Rondi | 1963 | 35mm | 94 mins
A love-crazed girl is taken for a witch by fanatical villagers in Brunello Rondi’s profoundly unnerving treatise on compulsion and superstition, a clear forerunner to The Exorcist.
The Fiances
Ermanno Olmi | 1963 | 35mm | 77 mins
A Milanese factory worker relocates to Sicily and leaves behind his fiancée in Ermanno Olmi’s lyrical study of loneliness, which Kent Jones calls “by far his most beautiful foray into modernist territory, simply because it feels so homegrown.”
The Swindle
Federico Fellini | 1955 | 35mm | 112 mins
Fellini’s heartrending portrait of three itinerant con men is among his most socially conscious works, highlighted by exceptional acting from its international cast.
Le Amiche
Michelangelo Antonioni | 1955 | 35mm | 104 mins
New restoration! New to Turin, a fashion designer befriends a quartet of wealthy, lovelorn women in this elegant character study that inaugurated the themes that would define Antonioni as a filmmaker.
The Sign of Venus
Dino Risi | 1955 | 35mm | 101 mins
Dino Risi’s touching human comedy gave Sophia Loren an early triumph as Agnese, the town’s effortless object of male desire with whom her husband-seeking cousin cannot compete.
