The work provides a survey of the seminal works in Italian cinema and focuses on the cultural, political, and historical factors that influenced Italian film from 1945-1963. It includes illustrations from films by De Sica, Antonioni, Pasolini and Fellini It was first published in 1995, and then it has been updated with a new epilogue that extends the study's range into the 1970s. The author examines over twenty key works of the period, seminal films produced by Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, Michael Antonioni, and Federico Fellini. Themes are the debate over regional dialects and a unified national language, the father-son relationship, filial loyalty and individuality, romantic love juxtaposed with lust. For every film, Sitney provides the relevant political and cultural context to demonstrate how the changes in Italian life found their way into cinema. A new afterword extends the range of the study to the early 1970s.