contact: Jeff Matthews

Bracco was born in Naples in 1861 and was the grandson of the founder and director of the Royal Botanical Garden of Naples. His immediate family lived in Naples on Via San Gregorio Armeno, still the well-known street of craftsmen who make nativity scenes, the presepi.

He was not a good student and quit school to work as a porter for a transport and moving company. He took ill and his parents sent him off to recuperate in the countryside near Castellammare di Stabia, where he lodged in a small hotel run by the Ossani family, frequented by journalists and intellectuals. Here he fell in love with a young girl of Greek origin. When he returned to Naples, he learned that the girl had innocently shown his love letters to the Ossani family. They, in turn, liked the way he wrote and showed the letters to Martino Cafiero, the editor of the Corriere del Mattino of Naples. On the basis of those letters, Cafiero offered Bracco a job and set him to work writing fiction that was then serialized in the paper. His first work was Una Parentisi (An Interval); his style was simple --adventures and realism, a combination of Manzoni and Dumas. The common reader liked that style and it sold newspapers.

When Cafiero died, Bracco wrote for Matilde Serao and Edoardo Scarfoglio at their Corriere di Napoli as a music and theater critic. He then followed them to their new venture, Il Mattino, which became a popular opinion-shaping paper, with works by D’Annunzio, Ferdinando Russo, and many others.  That paper (still in existence) included  serialized novels by such authors as Dostoevsky and de Maupassant. As theater critic, Bracco mingled with actors and directors in the Italian cultural world, and in 1886 actor Ermete Novelli (1851-1919) asked him to write a comedy for his troupe. The comedy, Non Fare ad Altri (Don’t do unto Others), played in December of 1886 and was a notable success. His comedies and dramas kept coming, and some of the best Italian actors of the day performed his thirty-six plays; among them Maschere (1893), Sperduti nel Buio (1901), I Fantasmi (1906), and I Pazzi (1922). His lyrics for Neapolitan songs include: Salamelic (1882), Comme te voglio amà (1887), Africanella (1894), Sentinella (1917), and ‘O Munaciello (1924). He even composed the music for the song ‘A Francetta to lyrics by Salvatore Di Giacomo.

Between 1881 and 1926 his astonishing output included ten novels, a collection of poems, four opera libretti, and several shorter pieces. He saw in the new medium of film the potential for a new art form and 17 of his own plays became movies. Film historians see one of them, Sperduti nel Buio (Lost in the Dark) as an early precursor of Neo-Realism. Here the trail goes cold. There is confusion as to what happened, physically, to the film Sperduti nel Buio -- to the reel(s)  themselves. Does the film still exist? Can we watch it? The most common opinion is that it is "lost", either taken away by the Germans as they retreated from Rome in 1944 and then, who knows where? Thus this great silent film of early realism by Roberto Bracco simply wound upon the staggering waste heap of everything else crunched, burned and bombed into nothingness in WWII. That is certainly a possibility; yet there is another one.

Italian state radio and television, RAI, addressed this in 2018. They say, plausibly, that after the Germans set up their puppet state, the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI) in 1943, Mussolini had most of the movie archives of the Italian School of Cinematography in Rome moved north. The movie reels, including Sperduti nel Buio, went by train to Venice. Film sleuths have found a list of those movies, including Sperduti nel Buio (no. 18 on the list). It looks as if that film and many others probably ended up in Germany. Historians have tried to trace the train after it got to Venice, where the RSI was to re-found the Italian film industry. The Germans were obsessed with getting as many Italian films as possible to Germany and storing then in secret sites. What really happened to the train and the movie reels? Here comes the very "iffy" part. Maybe they're in Moscow, moved there by the Red Army after the fall of the Nazi regime. I have no idea why the Russkies don't tell us.

Since 1962 "Teatro Bracco" has been housed on the premises
of the Palazzo Spinello di Tarsia, the large, yellow structure
in the center of this image. Now Bracco has his own theater.
These things take time, you know.

Bracco was versatile and eclectic. He moved from one genre to another easily (which made some critics say he lacked depth and was more an imitator that an original). Bracco avoided the romanticism and naturalism of the fin de siècle. If he had an “-ism” it was intimism, exploring the mysteries of the soul, sometimes aiming at wider social problems. He wrote in standard Italian. (Only one of his plays is in Neapolitan.) His appeal was humanistic, universal and modern. Thus, his plays, like those of D’Annunzio, for different reasons, often played abroad in that period. I have no idea what Bracco would say to the irony of the Teatro Bracco, named for him (who wrote almost exclusively in standard Italian) being a venue for plays in Neapolitan dialect. He might have liked the irony -- or he might have bitten someone in the head! (two paragraphs below)

This theater is not the only memorial to Bracco. In and near Naples there are a number of memorial marble plaques, some put up soon after the war ended (May 8, 1945). The oldest one in Naples is at the entrance to Via Tasso 65, where he lived for many years (image, right). In translation, it reads: “To the memory of Roberto Bracco, who in the dark years of the dictatorship lived in this house among the ghosts of his art and the tenacious nobility of his ideals of liberty. The city, fulfilling the promise of the people of Naples, set this plaque on April 20, 1946.” There are others: a plaque on the building where he was born; a street named for him; and a plaque in Sorrento on the villa where he lived in WWII. In Agerola (near Positano) where he vacationed during the summer, there is a plaque in front of the town hall to honor him and one of his plays, reading, “From this alpine refuge in 1909 the avant-garde art of Roberto Bracco gave to the Italian theater with Il Piccolo Santo, the example of tragedy in which men stay silent when mystery speaks. The Municipality, 1947.”

Bracco was outgoing, generous and faithful in his friendship, but also highly emotive and rash. As a young man, he fought at least six duels with swords. He was once a defendant in a criminal case, charged with assaulting future Italian Prime Minister Francesco Saverio Nitti (1868-1953) by biting him on the head (!) after Nitti criticized his first play. At the trial, the judge said that the two should make peace. Bracco apologized and the judge dismissed the case. After they left the courtroom, Bracco walked over to Nitti and said: “Vuje site nu’ fetente!” (You're a piece of crap!).

At age 60, Bracco met Aurelia Del Vecchio (1900-61), whom he called Laura, a beautiful girl in her early twenties, almost 40 years younger than he was. They fell in love and she moved in. They were together for 20 years. It's almost as simple as that. Bracco did not talk much about his earlier affairs of the heart, yet the letters between the two show their solid, loving bond. He trusted her and depended on her for companionship and for advice. He spoke of her to a friend and said, "This is the kind of love that lasts forever." They were finally married in 1939.

Bracco got into political hot water as early as 1915, when his one-act comedy L’Internazionale (The Internationale) played in Naples. Italy had joined World War I in May of 1915, and this sweet-sad comedy about anti-war sentiment and feminism was not popular. In 1919, Bracco was one of only two Italian intellectuals (the other was Benedetto Croce) to sign the Declaration for the Independence of the Mind drafted by Romain Rolland (1866–1944), calling for the intellect and the arts to lift the human spirit and bring humanity together, regardless of ethnic background, social class, or national origin. That kind of pacifist internationalism was something else Fascists would later hold against Bracco. In 1922 he published a new play, I Pazzi (The Insane), with its idea that the line between sanity and mental illness is uncertain. It caused a furor among critics.

In April 1924, Bracco ran for the Italian Parliament and was elected as a member of the anti-Fascist coalition led by philosopher Giovanni Amendola. In 1926 there was an attempt on Mussolini's life. The Fascist majority in parliament then dissolved all opposition parties, expelling the members. The same night as the assassination attempt, anti-Fascists were violently attacked all over Italy. In Naples, Fascist hoodlums broke into Bracco’s home and destroyed his books.

As noted, Bracco was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature numerous times in the 1920s. He never got it. His own Italian government opposed him! Authorities denied permits to stage his plays, or stage companies would simply not put them on. Newspapers, for their part, were afraid to print his pieces. In 1929, actress Emma Gramatica (1874-1965) personally asked Mussolini to let Bracco's 1922 play I Pazzi run in Naples and the Duce said 'yes'. The first performance at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples in June of 1929 was a critical and popular success, but a month later Gramatica took the play to the Teatro Eliseo in Rome, where Fascist thugs stopped the show when they broke in to  the theater and roughed up spectators. The play was not staged again in Italy until after WWII.

In 1936, when Bracco was ill and strapped for money, Gramatica wrote to ask the government for financial help for Bracco. Mussolini sent him 10,000 lire in care of the actress. When she delivered the check, Bracco refused it. His obscurity continued after his death. Maybe there were reasons for that. Was his work too facile, dated, without depth? Well, that's an opinion, and you're entitled to it. Another reason, however, might have been his stubborn refusal to bend with the prevailing winds. His decency was a sad reminder, a reproach to the majority of intellectuals who had closed their eyes and their minds under Fascism. His moral stance was also profoundly un-Italian. That is, he was either a fesso (fool) or, even worse, a saint ignoring the centuries-old Italian trait of adapting to all circumstances, to be a chameleon, to survive at all costs.

  As of 2020 I find these directors interesting:

Cristina Comencini; Edoardo de Angelis; Matteo Garrone; Luca Guadagnino; Mario Martone;
Nanni Moretti; Gennaro Nunziante; Gianfranco Rosi; Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli; Stefano Sollima; Gabriele Salvatores; Paolo Sorrentino; Giuseppe Tornatore; Paolo Virzì.

1. Cristina Comencini - (b. 1956 in Rome) is a film director, screenwriter and novelist. Her 2005 film The Beast in the Heart, based on her own novel La bestia nel cuore (Don't Tell), was nominated  for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Her upcoming film When the Night, also based on her own novel and published in the United States by Other Press, is scheduled to compete at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in September. She tarted making films in 1989 and so far has made 12. Her recent Tornare (Feel Your Memories) movie reunites her with acclaimed Giovanna Mezzogiorno fourteen years after “La Bestia nel Cuore”.

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2. Edoardo de Angelis   see link

3. Matteo Garrone - (b.1968 in Rome) is a filmmaker. In 1966 he won the Sacher d'Oro, an award sponsored by Nanni Moretti, with the short film Silhouette. It that became one of the three episodes that are on his first long feature, Terra di Mezzo in 1997. He won Best Director at the European Film Awards and at the David di Donatello Awards for Gomorrah (2008).. His film Reality (2012) competed in competition at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix. His films Tale of Tales (2015) and Dogman (2018) were selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and the 2018 Cannes Film Festival respectively. He won Garrone both Best Producer and Best Director with Dogman. He received the latter again for Pinocchio (2019).

4. Luca Guadagnino - (born 1971 in Palermo, Sicily) is a filmmaker. He spent his early childhood in Ethiopia, where his father taught history and Italian literature at a technical school in Addis Ababa (his mother was Alegerian). The family left Ethiopia for Italy in 1977 to escape the Ethiopian Civil War, settling in Palermo. He cites early influences as Psycho (1960), Suspiria (1977) Starman (1984) and a particular fondness for the films of Ingmar Bergman. From 1999 to the present, his film have included The Protagonists, Mundo Civilizado, Cuoco Contadino, and Call Me by Your Name. So far he has made 11 feature films, 11 shorts, and 10 documentaries and been nominated for best direction at film festivals around the world (and won some of them) from Venice to Berlin to Melbourne to Los Angeles. His university degree is in literature and cinema history from the Sapienza University of Rome. His thesis was on American filmmaker Jonathan Demme (director of The Silence of the Lambs). Guadagnino's plans seem to be boundless, including possibly directing Stanley Kubrick's unrealized Holocaust project Aryan Papers.


5. Mario Martone (b.1959 in Naples) is a film director and screenwriter. He has directed 18 films since 1985. His film L'amore molesto was entered into the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. His 2010 film Noi credevamo competed for the Golden Lion at the 67th Venice International Film Festival. He was the stage director for Lorenzo Ferrero's opera Charlotte Corday, premiered at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma on 21 February 1989. His 2014 film Leopardi was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival. His 2019 crime drama Il sindaco del Rione Sanità (The Mayor of Rione Sanità), based on the 1960 play of the same name by Eduardo De Filippo, was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 76th Venice International Film Festival.


6. Giovanni "Nanni" Moretti - (born 1953, in Bruneck in South Tyrol) is a director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. In 1973 he directed his first two short films: Pâté de bourgeois and La sconfitta (The Defeat). In 1976 his first feature film came out, Io sono un autarchico (I Am Self-Sufficient). In 1978, he wrote, directed and starred in Ecce Bombo; it was screened at the Cannes Festival. Sogni d'oro (Sweet Dreams) won the Silver Lion at the 38th Venice International Film Festival. La messa è finita won the Silver Bear – Special Jury Prize at the 36th Berlin International Film Festival. He is best known for his films Caro Diario (Dear Diary, 1993) and La Stanza del figlio (The Son's Room, 2001), the latter of which won the Palme d'Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. His other work has not been widely seen outside Europe, but within his country Moretti is known as a maker of wryly humorous and eccentric films, usually starring himself! His most recent role was in the film Mia Madre (My Mother, 2015). Since 1976 he has made 13 feature films, 13 shorts, and 3 documentaries.

7. Gennaro Nunziante- (b. in 1963 in Bari) is a film director. He directed the three highest-grossing Italian films ever, headed by Quo Vado?(2016)  (Where am I going?), then Sole a catinelle (2013), and then Cado dalle nubi (2009). The pseudo-Latin title of Quo vado? (Italian would be Dove Vado?) is a pun not so much on Sienkiewicz's 1896 book Quo Vadis? as on what that title refers to in Christian tradition: they are Peter's first words to the risen Christ during their encounter along the Appian Way, recounted in the Vulgate (Latin translation) of the Bible by Jerome of Stridon. Nunziante usually teams up with Checco Zalone. The former is the director, and the latter the actor. Quo Vado became the highest-grossing Italian film of all-time in Italy, passing Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful, which, however, still retains the worldwide grossing record for an Italian film.

8. Gianfranco Rosi  - (b. 1963) is an Italian-American documentary filmmaker. His 2013 film Sacro GRA (Grande Raccordo Anulare, the ring-road highway that circles Rome) won the Golden Lion at the 70th Venice Film Festival, while his 2016 film Fire at Sea won the Golden Bear at the 66th Berlin Film Festival. Rosi is the only documentary filmmaker to win two highest awards at the three major European film festivals (Venice, Berlin, and Cannes). He was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Fire at Sea.

9. Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli  (born in Roma, 1980) is a film director, screenwriter and producer. He made his first film, a short, Carne e Cielo (Flesh and Heaven) in 2006. He founded a production company Essentia to make his own independent films. He has a diploma (2012) from the London Film School and in 2015 took part in the Berlinale Talents exposition.  His first feature film was Last Summer and previewed at the Rome Film Festival where it received special mention for a first film. His second feature film, Likemeback, was shown in 2018 at the Locarno Festival (Switzerland) in the section on Films of the Present. His third feature Gli Indifferenti (The Time of Indifference), was highly anticipated and is based on the novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia and has recently been released in streaming format. So far he has 7 shorts and 3 features.

10. Stefano Sollima -(born Rome 4 May 1966) is a director and screenwriter and from a family of such "film people". He started his career as a camera operator on reports from war zones for several television networks, including CNN, CBS, and NBC.[He is best known for his crime-drama films such as ACAB – All Cops Are Bastards (2012), Suburra (2015), and Sicario [hired killer]: Day of the Soldado (2018), as well as the television series Romanzo criminale – (2006–2008); Gomorrah (2014–present, based on the 2006 non-fiction book of the same name by Roberto Saviano) and ZeroZeroZero (2020–present). His Suburra was co-produced by Netflix and developed into a prequel television series, the first Italian Netflix original series.  He has won various awards for Best Director and Best New Director. So farm he 4 features and a number of TV series.

11. Gabriele Salvatores - (born in Naples, 1950) is an Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter.  He started as a theater director in 1972, founding the Teatro dell'Elfo in Milan, for which he directed several avant-garde pieces until 1989. In that year, he directed his third feature film, Marrakech Express, which was followed in 1990 by Turné, which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. In 1991, Salvatores received international praise for Mediterraneo, which won an Academy Award as best foreign film. It won three David di Donatello, the most important award for Italian cinema, and a Silver Ribbon. 20 feature films so far.

 12. Paolo Sorrentino - (b. 1970)[1] is a film director, screenwriter, writer, and songwriter. His 2013 film La Grande Bellezza won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for the  Foreign Language Film. His direction and screenplays, including Il Divo, The Consequences of Love, The Family Friend, This Must Be the Place, and the 2016 TV series The Young Pope, have won three Cannes Lions, three Venice Film Festival Awards and four European Film Awards. He has published three novels in Italian.


13. Giuseppe Tornatore - (born in Bagheria near Palermo in Sicily in 1956) is an Italian film director and screenwriter.  In a career spanning over 30 years he is best known for directing and writing drama films such as Everybody's Fine, The Legend of 1900, Malèna, Baarìa and The Best Offer. His most noted film is Cinema Paradiso, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and made everyone in the world nostalgic for small-town Sicily. As a youth he staged and directed plays of Luigi Pirandello and Eduardo De Filippo, worked as a freelance photographer, then made his film debut with Le minoranze etniche in Sicilia (The Ethnic Minorities in Sicily), a collaborative documentary that won a Salerno Festival prize. He then worked for RAI (Italian radio and TV) before releasing his first full-length film, Il Camorrista, in 1985 for which he won an award for best new director. Tornatore is also known for his association with composer Ennio Morricone, who composed music for thirteen Tornatore feature films.


14. Paolo Virzì - (1964 in Livorno) is a film director, writer and producer.  Since 1994 he has made 14 feature films. His trademark style is the commedia all'italiana"  the "Italian-style comedy". His first film was The Beautuful Life, which won acclaim at the Venice International Film Festival, along with the Best New Director award. He has done satirical comedies such as  "Tutta la vita davanti" [You Whole Life Awaits You] and some straight drama such as his 2010 film The First Beautiful Thing, a film following a family over the course of 40 years that was selected as Italy's submission for Best Foreign Language Film at that year's Academy Awards.

15. Bernardo Bertolucci  -(1941 – 2018) was a director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris,  The Last Emperor (which won 9 Academy Awards (he got one statuette; it said Best Everything) The Sheltering Sky,
Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers. In recognition of his work, he was given the first Honorary Palme d'Or Award at the opening ceremony of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. He was born in  Parma, in the region of Emilia-Romagna and began writing early: His father's  background helped his career: the elder Bertolucci was a poet, art historian, and film critic and had helped the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini publish his first novel, and Pasolini reciprocated by hiring Bertolucci as first assistant in Rome on Accattone (1961). The high (or low) point of his career was his 1972 film The Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. The film cause a great scandal and after the film's release, Schneider became a drug addict and suicidal. Criminal proceedings were brought against Bertolucci in Italy for the rape scene; the film was sequestered by the
censorship commission, a situation that was eventually resolved. The Last Emperor was his most acclaimed film. The Last Tango in Paris was the most controversial. Between 1962 and his death, he made 21 feature films and 4 documentaries.

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                    A List of 100 Italian Films to be saved

The project was established in 2008 by the Venice Days festival section of the 65th Venice International Film Festival, in collaboration with Cinecittà Inc. and with the support of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. The list was created with the aim of listing "100 films that have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978". The list was edited by Fabio Ferzetti, film critic of the newspaper Il Messaggero and various directors, film critics, and journalists.


In chronological order. English title, if available, first in boldface. (Italian in Italics).

    1.         Four Steps in the Clouds (Quattro passi fra le nuvole) by Alessandro Blasetti (1942)
    2.        Ossessione by Luchino Visconti (1943)
    3.        Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta) by Roberto Rossellini (1945)
    4.        Paisà by Roberto Rossellini (1946)
    5.        Shoeshine (Sciuscià) by Vittorio De Sica (1946)
    6.         L'onorevole Angelina by Luigi Zampa (1947)
    7.        Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette) by Vittorio De Sica (1948)
    8.        La terra trema by Luchino Visconti (1948)
    9.        Bitter Rice (Riso amaro) by Giuseppe De Santis (1949)
    10.      City of Pain (La città dolente) by Mario Bonnard (1949)
    11.      Heaven over the Marshes (Cielo sulla palude) by Augusto Genina (1949)
    12.      Stromboli, terra di Dio by Roberto Rossellini (1949)
    13.      Chains (Catene) by Raffaello Matarazzo (1949)
    14.      Path of Hope (Il cammino della speranza) by Pietro Germi (1950)
    15.      Sunday in August (Domenica d'agosto) by Luciano Emmer (1950)
    16.       Story of a Love Affair (Cronaca di un amore) by Michelangelo Antonioni (1950)
    17.      Variety Lights (Luci del varietà) by Alberto Lattuada and Federico Fellini (1950)
    18.      Father's Dilemma (Prima comunione) by Alessandro Blasetti (1950)
    19.      Bellissima by Luchino Visconti (1951)
    20.      Two Cents Worth of Hope (Due soldi di speranza) by Renato Castellani (1951)
    21.      Cops and Robbers (Guardie e ladri) by Steno e Mario Monicelli (1951)
    22.      Miracle in Milan (Miracolo a Milano) by Vittorio De Sica (1951)
    23.      La famiglia Passaguai by Aldo Fabrizi (1951)
    24.      Umberto D. by Vittorio De Sica (1952)
    25.      Europa '51 by Roberto Rossellini (1952)
    26.      The White Sheik (Lo sceicco bianco) by Federico Fellini (1952)
    27.      Toto in Color (Totò a colori) by Steno (1952)
    28.      Little World of Don Camillo (Don Camillo) by Julien Duvivier (1952)
    29.      Bread, Love and Dreams (Pane, amore e fantasia) by Luigi Comencini (1953)
    30.      I Vitelloni by Federico Fellini (1953)
    31.      Neapolitans in Milan (Napoletani a Milano) by Eduardo De Filippo (1953)
    32.      Eager to Live (Febbre di vivere) by Claudio Gora (1953)
    33.      The Wayward Wife (La provinciale) by Mario Soldati (1953)
    34.      Neapolitan Carousel (Carosello napoletano) by Ettore Giannini (1953)
    35.      Empty Eyes (Il sole negli occhi) by Antonio Pietrangeli (1953)
    36.      The Beach by Alberto Lattuada (1954)
    37.     The Gold of Naples (L'oro di Napoli) by Vittorio De Sica (1954)
    38.     An American in Rome (Un americano a Roma) by Steno (1954)
    39.     The Art of Getting Along (L'arte di arrangiarsi) by Luigi Zampa (1954)
    40.     Senso by Luchino Visconti (1954)
    41.     La strada by Federico Fellini (1954)
    42.     A Free Woman (Una donna libera) by Vittorio Cottafavi (1954)
    43.     The Abandoned (Gli sbandati) by Francesco Maselli (1955)
    44.     A Hero of Our Times (Un eroe dei nostri tempi) by Mario Monicelli (1955)
    45.     Poveri ma belli by Dino Risi (1956)
    46.     Il grido by Michelangelo Antonioni (1957)
    47.     Nights of Cabiria (Le notti di Cabiria) by Federico Fellini (1957)
    48.      Big Deal on Madonna Street (I soliti ignoti) by Mario Monicelli (1958)
    49.     You're on Your Own (Arrangiatevi!) by Mauro Bolognini (1959)
    50.     The Great War (La grande guerra) by Mario Monicelli (1959)
    51.     I Magliari by Francesco Rosi (1959)
    52.     Everybody Go Home (Tutti a casa) by Luigi Comencini (1960)
    53.      La dolce vita by Federico Fellini (1960)
    54.     Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli) by Luchino Visconti (1960)
    55.     Girl with a Suitcase (La ragazza con la valigia) by Valerio Zurlini (1960)
    56.     Long Night in 1943 (La lunga notte del '43) by Florestano Vancini (1960)
    57.     Il bell'Antonio by Mauro Bolognini (1960)
    58.     A Difficult Life (Una vita difficile) by Dino Risi (1961)
    59.     Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all'italiana) by Pietro Germi (1961)
    60.     Il posto by Ermanno Olmi (1961)
    61.     Accattone by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1961)
    62.     Leoni al sole by Vittorio Caprioli (1961)
    63.     Il sorpasso by Dino Risi (1962)
    64.     Salvatore Giuliano by Francesco Rosi (1962)
    65.     L'eclisse by Michelangelo Antonioni (1962)
     66.      Mafioso by Alberto Lattuada (1962)
    67.     I mostri by Dino Risi (1963)
    68.     Hands over the City (Le mani sulla città) by Francesco Rosi (1963)
    69.     8½  (8½)  by Federico Fellini (1963)
    70.     The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) by Luchino Visconti (1963)
    71.     The Ape Woman (La donna scimmia) by Marco Ferreri (1963)
    72.     Chi lavora è perduto  by Tinto Brass (1963)
    73.     La vita agra by Carlo Lizzani (1964)
    74.     Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca) by Marco Bellocchio (1965)
    75.     I Knew Her Well (Io la conoscevo bene) by Antonio Pietrangeli (1965)
    76.     Love Meetings (Comizi d'amore) by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1965)
    77.     The Birds, the Bees and the Italians (Signore & signori) by Pietro Germi (1966)
    78.     The Hawks and the Sparrows (Uccellacci e uccellini) by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1966)
    79.     The Battle of Algiers (La battaglia di Algeri) by Gillo Pontecorvo (1966)
    80.     China Is Near (La Cina è vicina) by Marco Bellocchio (1967)
    81.     Dillinger Is Dead (Dillinger è morto) by Marco Ferreri (1968)
    82.     Bandits in Milan (Banditi a Milano) by Carlo Lizzani (1968)
    83.     Be Sick... It's Free (Il medico della mutua) by Luigi Zampa (1968)
    84.     Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto by Elio Petri (1970)
    85.     The Conformist (Il conformista) by Bernardo Bertolucci (1970)
    86.     L'udienza by Marco Ferreri (1971)
    87.     Diario di un maestro by Vittorio De Seta (1972)
    88.     The Mattei Affair (Il caso Mattei) by Francesco Rosi (1972)
    89.     The Scientific Cardplayer (Lo scopone scientifico) by Luigi Comencini (1972)
    90.     Nel nome del padre by Marco Bellocchio (1972)
    91.     Amarcord by Federico Fellini (1974)
    92.     We All Loved Each Other So Much (C'eravamo tanto amati) by Ettore Scola (1974)
    93.     Bread and Chocolate (Pane e cioccolata) by Franco Brusati (1974)
    94.     Fantozzi by Luciano Salce (1975)
    95.     1900 (Novecento) by Bernardo Bertolucci (1976)
    96.     Illustrious Corpses (Cadaveri eccellenti) by Francesco Rosi (1976)
    97.     A Special Day (Una giornata particolare) by Ettore Scola (1977)
    98.     An Average Little Man (Un borghese piccolo piccolo) by Mario Monicelli (1977)
    99.     Padre padrone by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1977)
   100.    The Tree of Wooden Clogs (L'albero degli zoccoli) by Ermanno Olmi (1978)

Some of these films are generally held to be Neo-Realist. This is a link to my entry on Neo-Realism on this site
Other films of interest, some of which are on this list, may be mentioned here (on De Sica), or here on the film A Special Day, or here on Pasolini. The film and literature index almost at the top of this page has many other names connected
with Italian films, going back to the earliest days of the film industry.
I took this list from the Wikipedia English-language page, which is here. It has additional information on the films and directors. If you want to read it all in Italian, that page is here.
If you are asking, "What link do I hit to actually watch the film?" You don't. You have to search for it on the internet. You may get lucky and find a free film or two on YouTube, but (spoiler alert) generally companies are not in business to give you films
for free. You can try: use search terms such as "Old Italian films", "Classic Italian movies", etc.

===========================added March 30, 2023======================================

Carmine Gallone (1885–1973) was an early Italian film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He was controversial for his works of pro-Fascist propaganda and historical revisionism. (For example, in 1943 he made Harlem, set in the US and critical of the American lifestyle. As extras he used black American and colonial British P.O.W.s in the roles of black Americans. It was nasty and racist —not unlike WWII, I suppose. He was one of Italian cinema's leading early directors, he directed over 120 films in his 50-year career between 1913 and 1963 and was one of the most prolific filmmakers in the history of Italian cinema, both in the silent and sound eras. He liked to direct historical films (The Last Days of Pompei-1926); he had a passion for films inspired by the world of opera (Casta Diva- 1935); but he a had sense of humor still enjoyed by Italians today (the Don Camillo series starring Fernandel and Gino Cervi. I like old film posters and there were many to choose from. I chose this 1954 one because it has something "cute" in it —a name everyone knows. Look at the poster. The only cast member likely to be known to non-Italians is there as composer Gaetano Donizetti in a film about Ricordi, the music publishing house. He was young and his days as the iconic Latin lover were years in the future. You have to start somewhere — Marcello Mastroianni.