The Golden Age of French and Italian Cinema

As many of you know by now, I am an insatiable lover of film. If I had life my way, I would watch a film per day, writing reviews, making observations and sharing mutual recommendations with my readers. As part of my recent resolution, I decided to take some educational classes. I had friends who took painting or computer science at the time, complimenting their rigid work schedules with a subject they fell passionate about it. Following their lead, I signed up for a continuing education class at Stanford University, naturally pursuing foreign film. The class taught by knowledgeable and charming Laura Wittman called “The Golden Age of French and Italian Cinema” spoke for itself and covered acclaimed film masterpieces of the 20^th century, ranging from late 1930 to 1970’s.  As our semester rounds up, I want to share the list of the movies I’ve seen with you. Many of them you might have watched yet plenty could also be discoveries, intriguing and pushing you to search further by reading about the era, cinematographic movements and film criticism. Without further delay, I give you the movies that proved inspiring and simply enchanting:

“The Rules of the Game” by Jean Renoir (1939)

“Rome Open City” by Roberto Rossellini (1945)

“The Children of Paradise” by Marcel Carne (1945)

“Hiroshima Mon Amour” by Alain Resnais” (1959)

“La Dolce Vita” by Federico Fellini (1960)

“Breathless” by Jean-Luc Godard (1960)

“The Conformist” by  Bernardo Bertolucci (1970)

All these films are incredible given an often grim historical circumstances under which they were created, lack of resources driven only by passionate creative vision. If you are a fan of classic movies and this sample has woken up an appetite for more film, I strongly suggest checking out THE CRITERION COLLECTION – fantastic resource for  hard-to-find cinematic treasures.