Ninetto Davoli Movies

The three performers (one Italian, one Frenchman and one German) in a ramshackle and miniscule traveling circus are traveling through rural Italy looking for an audience when they encounter Father Gregorio who asks them to portray the three wise men in his village Christmas pageant. This comedy chronicles the many misadventures that ensue when they take the job. First they must deal with irate union actors, then with the women's chorus with whom they dallied, but their biggest problem comes when they must find an infant to play the baby Jesus. For some reason, everyone in town is childless and so the three hit the road in search of their Christ child. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

La Ragazza del Metro translates to The Girl on the Underground -- "underground", of course, referring to "subway." That girl, played by Roberta Olivieri, is wealthy but doesn't want anyone to know it. She is especially determined to keep this information from the handsome pianist (Nino D'Angelo), with whom she has fallen in love. The truth eventually outs when the girl's jealous lover exerts his brutishness upon her. Caring not a whit about class distinctions, the pianist is only concerned with rescuing his lady love from her vicious "protector." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Occhei, Occhei was not "occhei" with the Italian censors, who based their judgment on teen Bianca's sexual liaison with her boyfriend and her later gang-rape by three men who saw her lurid disco dancing -- implying that the rape was "her fault." Bianca (Paula Molina) and her friend Rosy (Giulia Salvatori) are 16-year-olds whose lives are filled with nothing more meaningful than what clothes to wear, music to hear, and sex to experiment with. After Bianca's boyfriend avoids her because she has been raped and is therefore a wanton woman, she and Rosy go to stay with Bianca's grandmother in the countryside and plot their revenge on the rapists and others. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

It is the 15th c. in Hungary. And young prince Gaspar (Laszlo Galffy) was sent off to Italy when he was just two years old, and now he has come back to his father's castle as a grown man, with a troupe of actors in tow. Once arrived at the castle, he discovers his mother is in a kind of trance state, reportedly drinking the blood of virgins to keep her forever young (just like the infamous Bloody Lady Elizabeth Bathory). Gaspar's father has died in very mysterious circumstances - some say it was a bear that killed him (another symbolical, legendary animal in European lore) and others say he was done in by the Turks. Meanwhile, his uncle says the trance-like queen was really in love with him - and sometimes he says not. Yet they marry, and when she comes out of her mesmerized state for awhile she tells Gaspar that just like his friends, none of the castle's inhabitants are real, they are all actors and she is actually younger than he is - and then she falls back into her trance. As Gaspar seems to have nowhere to turn, a Turk comes into the picture to test him for his worthiness to rule, and says he (the Turk) is really Gaspar's father. The tests turn out negative, and Gaspar is told he cannot be king. There seems to be no choice but to leave the castle with his troupe of actors, and as the castle opens up onto a vast field, he and his friends - and an underhanded Turkish priest - make a dash for freedom, hoping to elude the weaponry of the Turkish guards behind them. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Two anarchistic brothers live by petty thievery and try to recover from their Catholic upbringing. Bandiera (Laurent Terzieff) and Rabbino (Franco Citti) were children when they pushed their drunk of a father out of a window for killing their pet sheep. When a girl is raped by her father, she is brought by young "rescuers" to the home of the two brothers who then watch their friends take advantage of her sexually. The brothers take her in, and the three live happy and celibate if not uneventful lives until the brother's are sent to jail for stealing. When they emerge from prison, the two fight over the girl, whom they both have fallen in love with. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Julian (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is the son of German industrialist Klotz (Alberto Lionello) who seeks to go into business with the former Nazi Herdhitze (Ugo Tognazzi). Herdhitze had spent most of World War II collecting human skulls for experiments with brain matter. As a protest, Julian refuses to marry his fiancé from a pre-arranged marriage, and he becomes romantically involved with pigs. Part two finds a man driven to cannibalism by hunger while wandering Mount Etna. He scavenges the mountainside looking for any kind of sustenance. In both cases, humans revert to animal behavior when they are removed from the spectrum of social rules and opinions. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

This updated version of the Greek tragedy from Sophocles bears some slight resemblance to the original mythology. Edipo (Franco Citti) is abandoned by his father after the father receives an oracle telling him he will die at the hands of his own son. Raised by a childless couple, Edipo goes through a series of adventures before he marries his own mother. When they discover they are mother and son, Edipo blinds himself and his mother commits suicide. It's enough to give the audience a complex. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi