Emma Gramatica

Small Hotel

Piccolo Hotel (aka Small Hotel) uses the titular establishment to weave together a vast tapestry of subplots, a la Grand Hotel. The guests include a domineering mother (Lola Braccini), her petulant daughter (Bianca Doria) and the daughter's gigolo boyfriend (Guido Notari). Also on hand is a worldly vamp (Laura Nucci) who also falls for the boyfriend, and the chronic-gambler son (Andrea Checchi) of the hotel's self-sacrificing landlady (Emma Grammatica). Though the film is set in Budapest, the characters are more Mediterranean than mittel-European. Piccolo Hotel was one of the entries in the Vienna Biennial Film Festival.

Miracle in Milan

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.

Don Camillo: Monsignor

Don Camillo (now bishop) and Peppone (now senator) return to the town of Brescello and rekindle their friendly rivalry.

Il mio amico Benito

A clerk has had a picture taken during W.W.I with the future Italian dictator Mussolini and tries to exploit the situation pretending he is a dear friend of his. When he finds out who Mussolini really is he changes his mind and goes back to his bleak life.

The Nun of Monza

Virginia de Leyva, daughter of a Spanish Lord, becomes a nun in Monza, in 1600s. She becomes very strict with herself and the students until she's unable to resist a romance with the nobleman Gian Paolo Osio which will lead both to danger.

L'angelo bianco

A young woman who has been seduced and abandoned is led to believe by her former in-laws that their son, whom they sent to an orphanage, is dead. She takes her vows and returns to her homeland after years of missionary work. She learns that her former lover has been killed in a duel and barely has time to see her dying son before he passes away.

Pobre mi madre querida

Contrary to the principles of his mother and sister, a boy falls in love with a woman of light life.

My Life for Yours

After an accident in a Buenos Aires shipyard a young boy is in the hospital in critical condition, and the boy’s anxious mother has a dream that includes an actress named Gloria Rivas she saw on a poster. Her son, now grown, ends up involved with the actress. Will she be his downfall? Was the dream a premonition?

Sister Angele's Secret

A young novitiate witnesses a murder. Later, she recognizes the culprit, who admits to the killing; the sister works to convince him to turn himself in to the police.

L'angelo del miracolo

I giorni più belli

Napoli d'altri tempi

The Bard's Damsel

The Turin noblewoman Maria Clotilde di Bard, the sole and elderly heir to an ancient Savoyard title, is reduced to living in the attics of the palace due to the embezzlement of a dishonest administrator. The young lady, who has always been alone due to a great love that never led to marriage with Baron Nigra, befriends the daughter of the palace owner, who tells her about her love for an aeronautical engineer: an unhappy love, because her father is against it. Maria Clotilde discovers that the young man is her brother's illegitimate son, taken away at an early age and never recognized, and therefore the sole heir to the Bard name. The shady administrator also ruins the new owners, who find themselves penniless. But in a trunk kept by the damsel there is years of correspondence between her and Baron Nigra, whose immense historical value restores the Bard family to its former glory and thus allows for a happy ending with the marriage of the two young people.

Peppino e la vecchia signora

Voglio bene soltanto a te!