Thanks to a variety of factors--among them a culture uniquely rich in the visual arts, an artisanal pride in fine printing, and an innate predisposition toward the grand and passionate--Italy produced perhaps the finest film posters in the world for much of the 20th century.

There is no cinema with such effect as that of the hallucinatory horror of Italian horror films. From Riccardo Freda’s I Vampiri in 1956 to Il Cartaio in 2004 (The Card Player), this work recounts the origins of the genre, celebrates ten auteurs who have contributed to Italian horror, mentions the many who have made noteworthy films, and discusses the influential genres associated with Italian horror.

Until I vampiri (The Vampires) in 1956, Italian filmmakers generally eschewed horror in favor of fantasy films and big screen spectacles. In the 1960s, the subjects became as varied as the filmmakers, ranging from the comic strip flavor of The Wild, Wild Planet (1966) to the surrealistic mixture of horror and social commentary of Fellini’s "Toby Dammit" segment of Spirits of the Dead (1969).

Roberto Rossellini (1906–1977)—movie-maker, bon vivant, and passionate intellectual—was the key figure of Italian neo-realism, the godfather of the French New Wave, and a television pioneer; the maker of such classics as Open City, Paisan, Stromboli, Flowers of St. Francis, Voyage in Italy, and Louis XIV; Anna Magnani's lover; Ingrid Bergman's husband; and Isabella Rossellini's father. Continually enmeshed in controversy, perhaps no other figure in the history of world cinema has been so reviled—and so revered.

This study examines Rome Open City and its place in Roberto Rossellini's career. The film is based on events that took place in Nazi occupied Italy 1944, one year before the film was made. The author argues that the film has value both as a commerorative piece and as a documentary record.

Roberto Rossellini's Rome Open City instantly and permanently changed the landscape of film history. Made at the end of World War II, the film has been credited with initiating a revolution in and reinvention of modern cinema. This volume offers an original overview of the production history of Rome Open City; some of its key images, the complexity of its political dimensions, and the legacy of the film in public consciousness. It serves as an accessible introduction to one of the major achievements of filmmaking.

This overview of Roberto Rossellini's works examines issues and themes covering all phases of his career. The directors influence on film-making and criticism is covered and the significance of Rossellini's relationships with Ingrid Bergman and Anna Magnani is also discussed.

Celebrated critic William Arrowsmith did not sit on the fence when it came to Michelangelo Antonioni, the inspired Italian director of such classic films as L'avventura, Blow-up, and Eclipse. "Let me be clear about what I think," Arrowsmith told an audience assembled at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1977. "Antonioni is one of the greatest living artists, and as a director of film, his only living peer is Kurosawa; and he is unmistakably the peer of the other great masters in all the arts.

"It was precisely by photographing and enlarging the surface of the things around me that I sought to discover what was behind those things." -- Michelangelo Antonioni With L'Avventura he piqued the world's curiosity. With La Notte and L'Eclisse, he mystified audiences and broke hearts. With Red Desert, his first color picture, he blurred all the lines between art, cinema, and still photography.