Made in Italy

An American housewife (Jennifer Jones) vacationing in Italy reluctantly decides to put an end to her brief affair with an Italian academic (Montgomery Clift). She flees to Rome’s Stazione Termini, where she bids him farewell, but he begs her to stay. The film’s plot is simple; its production was not. The troubled collaboration between director Vittorio De Sica and producer David O. Selznick resulted in two cuts of the same film. De Sica’s version, Terminal Station, was screened at a length of one-and-a-half hours, but after disappointing previews, Selznick severely re-edited it and changed the title to Indiscretion of an American Wife without De Sica’s permission. The Criterion Collection is proud to present both versions of this controversial release.

Bergman plays Karin, a displaced Lithuanian in Italy, who escapes the internment camp by marrying an Italian POW fisherman (Mario Vitale), whom she met in the camp on the other side of the barbed wire. She soon discovers that his home island of Stromboli is very harsh and barren, and the people traditional and conservative. They act with hostility towards this strange, foreign woman.
Karin speaks little Italian adding to her difficulties. Karin becomes increasingly despondent and eventually she wants to escape the volcano island. The film also features documentary-like segments about fishing and an actual evacuation of the town after an eruption of the volcano. Most villagers are played by actual people from the island, as is typical of neo-realism.

In post-World War II Rome, Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) is desperate for work to support his wife Maria (Lianella Carell), his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola), and his baby. He is offered a position posting advertising bills but tells Maria that he cannot accept because the job requires his bicycle, which he has pawned.

When David's father dies, his mother remarries. His new stepfather Murdstone has a mean and cruel view on how to raise a child. When David's mother dies from grief, Murdstone sends David to London to work for a living. When David escapes to his aunt Betsey his life starts to get better.

Roberto Rossellini is one of the most influential European postwar directors, having lead the charge of Italian Neorealism and provided inspiration to the French Nouvelle Vague. This, of course, doesn't meant that he is a household name, nor does it mean that many of his most important films have been available on DVD in North America. Thankfully, with some forthcoming Criterion discs and this new Lions Gate Roberto Rossellini 2-Disc Collector's Edition, the Rossellini library is starting to get its due, though some of what is coming is not particularly his most well-known efforts.

A barbarian army attacks Viking settlements along the Russian steppes.

Hailed around the world as one of the greatest movies ever made, Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette) defined an era in cinema. In postwar, poverty-stricken Rome, a man, hoping to support his desperate family with a new job, loses his bicycle, his main means of transportation for work. With his wide-eyed young son in tow, he sets off to track down the thief. Simple in construction and dazzlingly rich in human insight, Bicycle Thieves embodied all the greatest strengths of the neorealist film movement in Italy: emotional clarity, social righteousness, and brutal honesty.

Kidnapping movies were really big in the 1970's, especially after several high-profile cases like Patty Hearst. The Italian exploitation industry is notorious for taking its cues from the US movies, but that may not have been the case here since there was even a bigger kidnapping problem in Italy. The kidnappers in this movie though are pretty low-rent types, barely connected to the Mafia. Their victim is a very spoiled, but perhaps not especially rich, teenage girl (Rena Neihaus) whose parents seem unable - or perhaps unwilling - to get her back. In this movie the youngest, most handsome kidnapper (Michele Placido) falls for the girl in kind of a reverse Stockholm syndrome, with tragic results for at least one of them. The end of movie, strangely enough, is kind of reminiscent of "Last Tango in Paris" but with nowhere near the dramatic gravitas.

Three phantasmal tales of tormented souls from the pen of Edgar Allen Poe, brought to the screen by three giants of world cinema. Features Metzengerstein directed by Roger Vadim, William Wilson by Louis Malle and Toby Dammit by Federico Fellini, in which Terence Stamp stars as the cynical, alcoholic English actor Toby Dammit, who travels to Rome to make a catholic western, but who is really only interested in receiving the Ferrari promised by the production.