The Best Italian Films of All Time
Neorealism, Fellini, the spaghetti Western — Italian cinema ranked by composite score across the international canon.
The Godfather (1972) leads with a composite score of 8.37.
- 1The Godfather1972 · Francis Ford Coppola8.37
Oscar Best Picture winner 1972 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #3 · AFI 100 (2007) #2
- 2The Wages of Fear1953 · Henri-Georges Clouzot8.02
Palme d'Or winner 1953 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1955 · Berlin Golden Bear winner 1953
- 3La Dolce Vita1960 · Federico Fellini5.21
Palme d'Or winner 1960 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1960 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #35
- 4The Battle of Algiers1966 · Gillo Pontecorvo4.80
Venice Golden Lion winner 1965 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1967 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22
- 5The Last Emperor1987 · Bernardo Bertolucci4.55
Oscar Best Picture winner 1987 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1988 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1987 #5
- 6The Working Class Goes to Heaven1971 · Elio Petri4.50
Palme d'Or winner 1972 · Cannes Grand Prix winner null
- 7Blowup1966 · Michelangelo Antonioni4.41
Palme d'Or winner 1967 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1967 #2 · BFI Top 100 British films #60
- 8The Tree of Wooden Clogs1978 · Ermanno Olmi4.01
Palme d'Or winner 1978 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1979 #2 · Vatican film list
- 9The Leopard1963 · Luchino Visconti3.97
Palme d'Or winner 1963 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #90 · Vatican film list
- 10Bicycle Thieves1948 · Vittorio De Sica3.96
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1950 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #20 · BAFTA Best Film nominee 1950
- 11Last Year at Marienbad1961 · Alain Resnais3.69
Venice Golden Lion winner 1961 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1964 #3 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #169
- 12Eternity and a Day1998 · Thodoros Angelopoulos3.68
Palme d'Or winner 1998 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1999 #4 · Letterboxd Top 250 #68
- 138½1963 · Federico Fellini3.67
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #6 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1965 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #31
- 14The Son's Room2001 · Nanni Moretti3.60
Palme d'Or winner 2001 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2001 #9 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2002 #9
- 15La Notte1961 · Michelangelo Antonioni3.53
Berlin Golden Bear winner 1961 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #52 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1961 #7
- 16Black Orpheus1959 · Marcel Camus3.52
Palme d'Or winner 1959 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1960 #6 · Criterion Collection spine #48
- 17Padre Padrone1977 · Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani3.47
Palme d'Or winner 1977 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1982 #10 · Kurosawa's 100 favorite films
- 18The White Ribbon2009 · Michael Haneke3.43
Palme d'Or winner 2009 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2010 #4
- 19Red Desert1964 · Michelangelo Antonioni3.41
Venice Golden Lion winner 1964 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #169 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1964 #6
- 20The Wind That Shakes the Barley2006 · Ken Loach3.39
Palme d'Or winner 2006 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2006 #5
- 21The Queen2006 · Stephen Frears3.33
BAFTA Best Film winner 2007 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2006 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2007 #4
- 22The Mattei Affair1972 · Francesco Rosi3.32
Palme d'Or winner 1972 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1974 #8
- 23The Silent World1956 · Jacques Cousteau, Louis Malle3.30
Palme d'Or winner 1956 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1956 #9
- 24Dancer in the Dark2000 · Lars von Trier3.30
Palme d'Or winner 2000 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2000 #9
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- 28Life Is Beautiful1997 · Roberto Benigni2.96
Cannes Grand Prix winner 1998 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1998 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1999 #9
- 29Belle de Jour1967 · Luis Buñuel2.93
Venice Golden Lion winner 1967 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1967 #2 · Criterion Collection spine #593
- 30L'Avventura1960 · Michelangelo Antonioni2.64
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1960 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #38 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #72
Neorealism: filming in the rubble
Modern art cinema was born in Rome in the mid-1940s, in the most literal sense: the city was barely liberated when Rossellini shot Rome, Open City in its streets, and the movement that followed — non-professional actors, real locations, stories of ordinary survival — was as much a production necessity as an aesthetic program (Cinecittà's stages had been bombed and were housing refugees). Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) became neorealism's canonical summit: a father, a son, a stolen bicycle, and an ending that refuses every consolation. Its measurement history is remarkable — it topped the very first Sight & Sound poll in 1952, took Kinema Junpo's international list in 1950, sits on the Vatican's film list, and carries Criterion spine #4 — a film canonized simultaneously by critics, foreign markets, the Church and collectors.
The generation that apprenticed inside neorealism then transcended it. Federico Fellini began as Rossellini's co-writer and ended as world cinema's ringmaster: La Dolce Vita (1960) won the Palme d'Or, scandalized the Vatican, added "paparazzo" to every language, and marks the exact hinge where neorealism's streets turn into the modernist circus; 8½ (1963) — a film about its own director's inability to make a film — became the most canonized movie about filmmaking ever made, a fixture near the top of both critics' and directors' polls.
The genre empire
Italy's other canonical engine was disreputable and world-conquering: genre cinema made for export. Sergio Leone shot Westerns in Spain with international casts and Morricone scores, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) out-mythologized the American original so thoroughly that community canons now rank it above nearly every Hollywood Western. The same industrial base produced the giallo thrillers that seeded the slasher film, and the poliziotteschi that fed the crime genre. High and low never fully separated — Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (1997), Grand Prix at Cannes and a Best Picture nominee, is a music-hall comedian's film wearing art-cinema laurels. Ranked by composite score, the Italian canon shows both faces: the festival aristocracy and the export trade, each with institutional receipts.