# The best Italian films of all time

The films that most often top critics' rankings (Il Sorpasso, Movieplayer.it, ComingSoon): neorealism, commedia all'italiana, Fellini, Leone and the big recent successes.

- 9 votes · 26 items
- Dec 31, 2025 · Sofia Pellegrini
- https://even.best/en/l/102/the-best-italian-films-of-all-time

## Top 25

1. **La dolce vita** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Federico Fellini, 1960. Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg and the Trevi Fountain; Palme d'Or at Cannes.
2. **8½** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Federico Fellini, 1963. Marcello Mastroianni as a director in creative crisis; Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
3. **Bicycle Thieves** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Vittorio De Sica, 1948. A father and son search Rome's streets for a stolen bicycle; the emblem of neorealism.
4. **The Leopard** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Luchino Visconti, 1963. Burt Lancaster, the ball and the end of the Sicilian aristocracy; Palme d'Or.
5. **The Easy Life** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Dino Risi, 1962. Gassman and Trintignant in a Lancia Aurelia on the coast road over the August holiday.
6. **Fantozzi** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Luciano Salce, 1975. Paolo Villaggio as Italy's unluckiest accountant.
7. **Ossessione** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Luchino Visconti, 1943. Visconti's debut, from James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice.
8. **Nights of Cabiria** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Federico Fellini, 1957. Giulietta Masina as a naive prostitute in Rome; Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
9. **Once Upon a Time in the West** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Sergio Leone, 1968. Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson and Ennio Morricone's harmonica.
10. **The Good, the Bad and the Ugly** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Sergio Leone, 1966. Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach in cinema's most famous three-way duel.
11. **Rome, Open City** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Roberto Rossellini, 1945. Anna Magnani in occupied Rome; the film that launched neorealism.
12. **Once Upon a Time in America** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Sergio Leone, 1984. Robert De Niro and half a century of Jewish gangsters in New York.
13. **Cinema Paradiso** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988. Totò, Alfredo and a Sicilian village cinema; Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
14. **Life Is Beautiful** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Roberto Benigni, 1997. A father turns a concentration camp into a game for his son; three Oscars.
15. **The Battle of Algiers** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966. The Algerian war of independence shot like a documentary; Golden Lion.
16. **L'avventura** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960. A woman disappears on an Aeolian island and is never found.
17. **Big Deal on Madonna Street** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Mario Monicelli, 1958. Gassman, Mastroianni and Totò in a botched heist; the birth of commedia all'italiana.
18. **Umberto D.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Vittorio De Sica, 1952. A pensioner and his dog in post-war Rome.
19. **Rocco and His Brothers** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Luchino Visconti, 1960. Alain Delon and a family from Basilicata who move to Milan.
20. **The Great War** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Mario Monicelli, 1959. Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman as two shirkers in World War I; Golden Lion.
21. **Amarcord** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Federico Fellini, 1973. Memories of Rimini in the 1930s; Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
22. **The Great Beauty** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Paolo Sorrentino, 2013. Toni Servillo as Jep Gambardella in Rome's high society; Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
23. **My Friends** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Mario Monicelli, 1975. The pranks of five friends from Florence; the 'supercazzola' entered the dictionary.
24. **The Conformist** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970. Jean-Louis Trintignant as a fascist official, shot by Vittorio Storaro.
25. **La strada** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Federico Fellini, 1954. Gelsomina and Zampanò on the roads of Italy; the first Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
26. **There's Still Tomorrow** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Paola Cortellesi, 2023. A woman in Rome in 1946; Italy's most-watched film of the season with over 5 million viewers.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.