Best Italian war movies
A curated collection of popular war movies from Italy.
The Great War (1959)
The Great War (1959)
Italy, 1916. Oreste Jacovacci and Giovanni Busacca are called, as all the Italian youths, to serve the army in the WWI. They both try in every way to avoid serving the army.
Seven Beauties (1975)
Seven Beauties (1975)
Pasqualino Frafuso, known in Naples as "Pasqualino Seven Beauties" is a petty thief who lives off of the profits of his seven sisters while claiming to protect their honor at any cost, Pasqualino is arrested for murder and later sent to fight in the army after committing sexual assault. The Germans capture him and he gets sent to a concentration camp where he plots to make his escape by seducing a German officer.
The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982)
The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982)
The Night of San Lorenzo, the night of the shooting stars, is the night when dreams come true in Italian folklore. In 1944, a group of Italians flee their town after hearing rumours that the Nazis plan to blow it up and that the Americans are about to arrive to liberate them.
Sunflower (1970)
Sunflower (1970)
After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?
My Honor Was Loyalty (2015)
My Honor Was Loyalty (2015)
Captain Ludwig Herckel a devoted and patriotic soldier of the SS Leibstandarte fights in every major conflict from the Eastern front to the battle of the bulge. Fiercely loyal to his country and his brothers in arms, loved by his men, Herckel will face his greatest battle yet when he discovers the truth about the Nazi regime.
Many Wars Ago... (1970)
Many Wars Ago... (1970)
Time after time, soldiers of the Italian Army are forced to leave their mountain trenches in attempts to storm an enemy fortress, always with the same disastrous results. As casualties mount, indignation spreads among the rank and file. Disturbed by his superiors' decisions, Lieutenant Sassu is led to question the purpose of war and reconsider where his real duties lie.
Kapo (1960)
Kapo (1960)
Determined to survive at any price, Edith, a young Jewish woman deported to an extermination camp, manages to survive by accepting the role of kapo, a privileged prisoner whose mission is to ruthlessly guard other prisoners.
Gestapo's Last Orgy (1977)
Gestapo's Last Orgy (1977)
Lise Cohen is taken to a special prisoner-of-war camp for female Jews, a camp run as a bordello to entertain the German officers and troops going in to battle. The camp is run with an iron fist by Commandant Starker and his minion Alma. Starker becomes frustrated when Lise demonstrates no fear, and devises cruel experiments to scare her, to no avail. Once she realizes her guilt is unfounded, Lise begins to play Starker's game, but even though she begins living a better life, she doesn't forget the atrocities she has seen and experienced.
Everybody Go Home! (1960)
Everybody Go Home! (1960)
When Italy surrenders to the Allies, part of the Italian army is dispersed and soldiers begin to return to their homes.
Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976)
Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976)
The setting is a Central European kingdom, near the turn of the century. Bored by his very proper wife, the youthful heir to the throne spends his time in amorous dalliances at a sprawling country estate. His wife departs at the arrival of his friends, and they organize a celebration which becomes a wild orgy and culminates in death and tragedy.
Violent Summer (1959)
Violent Summer (1959)
Summer, 1943: wealthy youth in the Riccione district of Rimini play while the war gets closer. Carlo Caremoli, a young man who follows the crowd, has found ways to avoid military service. Then, on the beach, he meets Roberta, a war widow with a child. Roberta's mother warns Roberta to avoid Carlo, but to her, he seems attentive and to her daughter he is kind. Romance develops. Within a few weeks, Roberta is risking everything. Can there be a resolution between passion, on the one hand, and war, duty, and social expectation on the other?
Rainbow: A Private Affair (2017)
Rainbow: A Private Affair (2017)
Summer 1943, Piedmont, Italy. Milton loves Fulvia who plays with his love: she only likes the depth of his thought and the letters he writes to her. One year later, Milton has joined the Resistance and fights beside other partisans. He learns during a conversation that Fulvia was secretly in love with his best friend Giorgio, a partisan like him. Milton decides to go find Giorgio in the Langhe region of Italy with all its misty hills...But Giorgio has just been arrested by the Fascists.
The Skin (1981)
The Skin (1981)
Based on the memoirs of author Curzio Malaparte, diplomatic liaison between the Allied and Italian forces after the defeat of the Nazis in Italy, The Skin follows the collapse of Italian society under the US occupation and the desperate measures required for survival.
Greenery Will Bloom Again (2014)
Greenery Will Bloom Again (2014)
World War I, Italian north-eastern front after the 1917 bloody battles on the Altipiano. A group of soldiers face the difficulty of war in a story that unfolds in the space of one night. Events follow one after the other without any kind of pattern: the peaceful mountains suddenly become a place where men die. But every story told in this film is a true story.
The Best of Enemies (1961)
The Best of Enemies (1961)
During World War II, a plane full of RAF fighter crashes in the Ethiopian desert and they are met upon by an enemy Italian patrol that allows them to go free. But, when the Brits are given orders to attack the Italians, lots of problems ensue.
The Four Days of Naples (1962)
The Four Days of Naples (1962)
September 1943. After Italy surrenders to the Allies, people in Naples believe the war is finally over, but soon they realize Germans are still in control — and as ruthless as ever. Armed with makeshift weapons, civilians rise up en masse against the invaders — and overwhelming odds.
Attila (1954)
Attila (1954)
Attila, the leader of the barbarian Huns and called by the Romans "The Scourge of God", sweeps onto the Italian peninsula, defeating all of the armies of Rome, until he and his men reach the gates of the city itself.
The Desired War (2022)
The Desired War (2022)
A diplomatic incident threatens to break out a war inside Europe that only an unlikely couple of bickering lovers seems able to stop.
Escape by Night (1960)
Escape by Night (1960)
In Nazi-occupied Rome, a beautiful bootlegger, to the chagrin of her lover, gives sanctuary to three escaped POWs: an American pilot, a Russian sergeant and a British major.
The Fascist (1961)
The Fascist (1961)
1944. Primo Arcovazzi is a fanatical and dim-witted Fascist Party militiaman who accepts to escort an opponent of the regime to Rome in the hope of be promoted — still oblivious as ever to the forthcoming fall of the regime.
Long Night in '43 (1960)
Long Night in '43 (1960)
1943. The affair between Anna, unhappily married to wheelchair-bound Pino, and deserter Franco unfolds in foggy Ferrara, intertwining with the power struggle taking place within local Fascist ranks that culminates in a massacre of civilians, including Franco's father – Pino sees it all from his window, but will he tell anyone?
The Camp Followers (1965)
The Camp Followers (1965)
In WWII, Lieut. Martino and his men are assigned to lead a group of prostitutes through the mountainous ways to serve in brothels for Italian soldiers in Albania.
To Live in Peace (1947)
To Live in Peace (1947)
Vivere in pace is a 1947 Italian comedy-drama war film directed by Luigi Zampa.
And Agnes Chose to Die (1976)
And Agnes Chose to Die (1976)
After the Nazis take her husband away, an illiterate old washerwoman joins the Resistance as a bike courier in the Central Italian countryside.
Attention! Bandits! (1951)
Attention! Bandits! (1951)
During the winter of 1944, the partisans stationed in the Ligurian Apennines must go to a factory in Genoa, in order to pick up a delivery of weapons. Meanwhile, there's a strike in the city and the Nazis are trying to suppress it violently. The factory becomes the scene of fighting between the Germans and the partisans but the latter, aided by the workers, will be able to get the better.
Abandoned (1955)
Abandoned (1955)
A group of rich young intellectuals hiding from the war in rural Italy play at being partisans when some disbanded soldiers and some refugees ask them for shelter in their villa. The young and aristocratic Andrea strikes up a friendship with a peasant girl, Lucia. Then the Germans suddenly appear, looking for the real partisans, and the time comes for serious decisions.