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The 20 Greatest MOVIES of All Time... ARE ITALIAN — Transcript

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0:00No country in the history of cinema has
0:02understood the human soul better than
0:04Italy.
0:05>> [music]
0:09>> The Mecca of cinema was never in Los
0:10Angeles, but in the bare gaze of a
0:12country that transformed the ruins of
0:13war, the desire for redemption, [music]
0:16and faith into pure art.
0:18All the modern cinema you love was born
0:20from the trauma of these gods, who after
0:22World War II descended into the mud to
0:24film the truth with [music] actors from
0:26the streets and revolutionary filmmaking
0:28techniques.
0:29Hollywood has masterpieces, of course,
0:31but most of them are bound by studios
0:32that need to make money and appeal to
0:34the masses.
0:35Italy, on the other hand, just wanted to
0:37survive. And that is how 20 of the
0:39greatest masterpieces in the history of
0:41cinema were made.
0:43>> [music]
0:45>> Italian horror is high art, and Suspiria
0:47is proof of it.
0:49In 1977, Dario Argento directed an
0:52assault on the senses where logic
0:53disappears.
0:55We follow a young American dancer who
0:57arrives at a prestigious German dance
0:58academy only to discover that an ancient
1:01coven breathes within its walls. Argento
1:03constructs an operatic nightmare with a
1:05hyper-saturated primary color
1:07cinematography that burns your eyes,
1:10sustained by Goblin's satanic music that
1:12evokes our most primal fears.
1:14The camera wanders through
1:15claustrophobic corridors like an evil
1:18spirit that blends beauty and horror as
1:20if they were the same thing.
1:22A cathedral of visual decay that serves
1:24as the ultimate proof that Italian
1:26horror was not trying to entertain the
1:27audience, but to profane its
1:29subconscious.
1:35There is a kind of loneliness that
1:36doesn't happen when you're alone, but
1:38when everyone around you has lost their
1:39minds.
1:41While thousands of voices outside roar
1:42with fanaticism, celebrating collective
1:45barbarity, inside, [music] in the
1:47darkness of a deserted building, two
1:49souls discarded by the system look at
1:51each other for the first time. A Special
1:53Day is the most beautiful and
1:55devastating film
1:56>> [music]
1:56>> about human refuge in the face of
1:58horror.
1:59Through the simple chance encounter
2:01between two outcasts, a woman numbed by
2:03domestic expectations and a man
2:05condemned to exile for being who he is,
2:07it tears you apart from within.
2:10Filmed in a palette of desaturated
2:11colors that seems to capture the very
2:13wear of existence, Sophia Loren and
2:16Marcello Mastroianni expose their wounds
2:18on screen with terrifying nakedness.
2:21Because the greatest tragedies in
2:22history happen in the invisible pain of
2:25those who are punished for existing.
2:27Precisely because of this, it is a
2:29tremendous shame that gems like this are
2:31now almost impossible to find on
2:33streaming platforms.
2:35It is the great drama of classic cinema,
2:37especially foreign cinema.
2:39Algorithms and local catalogs make it
2:41invisible. To get around that wall and
2:44access this, along with the thousands of
2:46masterpieces that aren't available on
2:47Netflix or Prime in my country, I use
2:50NordVPN. With it, you can change the
2:53digital location of your TV or phone to
2:55access international catalogs, like the
2:57Italian one, where all these
2:59masterpieces are available, and free
3:01platforms filled with auteur cinema in
3:03the highest quality. Plus, if you use my
3:06link, you get an exclusive discount from
3:08the channel, and you help me out
3:09tremendously. An essential tool for any
3:12cinephile who doesn't want to depend on
3:14what the industry decides to show them
3:15today.
3:17>> [music]
3:23>> The Damned is one of the most
3:24relentless, uncomfortable, and
3:26aesthetically magnificent descents into
3:28hell in the history of cinema.
3:30Through the moral collapse of a powerful
3:32[music] German industrial dynasty during
3:34the rise of Nazism, the screen becomes a
3:36canvas of absolute depravity, betrayal,
3:39and decadence.
3:41There is no room for innocence. Power
3:43corrupts human relationships until it
3:45reduces them to pure pathology.
3:47Visconti has the courage to throw moral
3:49disconnection, existential emptiness,
3:52and the absence of love into the same
3:54pot as sexual perversions, violence, and
3:56fanaticism.
3:58With an operatic and baroque
3:59mise-en-scène, where the opulence of the
4:01palaces contrasts with the decay of the
4:03spirit, the film shows how ideologies do
4:05not emerge from nothing, but from the
4:07selfishness and deviations of an elite
4:09willing to make a pact with the monster
4:11to preserve its privileges.
4:15What is left for a man who has seen
4:17everything, tasted every excess, and
4:19discovered that behind the noise of high
4:21society there is absolutely nothing? The
4:24Great Beauty is the definitive autopsy
4:26of contemporary emptiness. Through the
4:29eyes of Jep Gambardella, a writer
4:31trapped in the nostalgia of a single
4:32book and the paralysis of his own life,
4:35the camera wanders [music] through a
4:36monumental, decadent, and anesthetized
4:38Rome. Every grotesque party, every
4:41silence in front of the ruins, and every
4:43fleeting flash of beauty works as a
4:45devastating mirror of our desperate need
4:47to find meaning in a world [music] that
4:49has forgotten the sacred.
4:51A melancholic poem about the pain of
4:53discovering that true love was the only
4:55thing that could have saved us.
5:02There is a brutal paradox in the history
5:04of art. The most sacred, stripped-down,
5:07and spiritually violent work about the
5:08figure of Christ was made by a Marxist,
5:11atheist, homosexual poet.
5:13The Gospel According to St. Matthew
5:15captures the revolutionary and bloody
5:17pulse of Jesus Christ in a way that no
5:20one has surpassed in 60 years.
5:22Pasolini films the faces of Southern
5:24Italian peasants, their skin cracked by
5:26the sun and poverty. Authentic gazes
5:28that carry the weight of dogma through
5:30the most naked realism. Transcendence
5:32erupts directly from battered flesh,
5:34from the dust of the road, and from the
5:36silence of a desert landscape that seems
5:38like the beginning or the end of the
5:40world. It is no coincidence that the
5:42Vatican itself considers it the greatest
5:44film ever made about the life of Jesus.
5:47>> [music]
5:50>> Amarcord is the self-destruction of an
5:52entire generation filmed with the false
5:55nostalgia of those who idealize it to
5:57endure their hellish present. Fellini
5:59returns to the Italian province of his
6:01childhood in the 1930s to film a
6:03community on the brink of cultural
6:05collapse where fascism is not presented
6:07as a distant monster, but as the natural
6:09consequence of an infantilized and
6:11hedonistic society with sexual desire
6:13completely warped and unleashed by
6:15dogmatic repression.
6:17The story follows teenagers in the midst
6:19of awakening moving through grotesque
6:21[music] scenes, enormous banquets,
6:23inquisitorial priests, walks through the
6:25snow, and an obsessive desire for
6:27idealized figures like Gradisca.
6:30But when the laughter fades, the true
6:31tragedy hides underneath.
6:33That need to idealize the past and love
6:36the exact place that destroyed your
6:37life.
6:39>> [music]
6:45>> Few films in the history of cinema are
6:47as legendary as The Good, the Bad, and
6:50the Ugly.
6:51While thousands of soldiers outside
6:53destroy their lives for countries and
6:55ideals in the middle of the Civil War,
6:57three outcasts stripped of all morality
6:59wander through the desert driven by the
7:01same sick obsession, a grave filled with
7:04gold coins.
7:05The title is pure irony because neither
7:08the good is morally superior to the ugly
7:10nor the ugly to the bad.
7:12This work is the total perfection of
7:14rhythm, editing, and cinematic
7:15composition.
7:17Faces filmed as if they were landscapes,
7:19extreme close-ups of brutal intensity
7:21together with Ennio Morricone's immortal
7:23score elevate every moment to a sacred
7:26dimension. The climax in Sad Hill
7:28Cemetery is the Olympus of cinema.
7:30Three men measuring each other's pupils
7:32among thousands of crosses turning the
7:34basest greed into the most perfect
7:36ballet ever filmed.
7:43>> [music]
7:45>> No one in the history of cinema has
7:46filmed the pathology we live through
7:48today better than Michelangelo
7:49Antonioni. In 1962, L'Eclisse disturbed
7:53the entire world without needing to show
7:55anything explicit. It was enough to hold
7:57up a mirror to us.
7:59The film shows the existential emptiness
8:01caused by materialism and
8:02superficiality, culminating in
8:04depression and absolute apathy.
8:07Vittoria is a woman who, after leaving
8:09her partner and feeling lost in life,
8:11walks aimlessly until she meets Piero,
8:13the embodiment of the man who has
8:15replaced love with money.
8:17They feel some desire and attraction,
8:19but it is so fragile and superficial
8:21that every shot seems to slowly make it
8:23evaporate,
8:24reflecting the vast majority of
8:26relationships.
8:27Two people trying to camouflage their
8:29isolation through physical attraction,
8:31friendship, or affection, mistaking
8:33attachment for true love.
8:35But what L'Eclisse does in its final 7
8:37minutes is something that, even today,
8:40you simply cannot believe when you see
8:41it.
8:42Something so extreme that it destroyed
8:44cinematic narrative forever and forced
8:46us to reconsider what we are doing with
8:48our lives.
8:52>> [music]
8:54>> Although Bertolucci's filmography
8:55crosses the line into empty provocation
8:57and pornography far too often, there is
9:00one work where he touched absolute
9:02grace, The Conformist. Here, excess
9:05becomes restraint, and the director
9:07creates one of the most beautifully
9:08photographed films in history. Beneath
9:11the visual beauty lies the absolute
9:13ugliness of Marcello,
9:15a man who completely embraces fascism,
9:17and he doesn't even do it out of
9:19ideological conviction.
9:21He does it out of a sick and desperate
9:22desire to be normal.
9:24It is the definitive portrait of a
9:25broken individual who would rather make
9:28a pact with collective madness and
9:29surrender himself to the system than
9:31face the abyss of his own freedom.
9:33Alongside Vittorio Storaro's
9:35unparalleled light, we see how the day
9:37you mutilate your own soul to fit in
9:39with the herd, you lose everything that
9:41made you human.
9:44>> [music]
9:49>> There is a form of goodness so pure, so
9:52absolute, that in a world sick with
9:53cynicism, it ultimately becomes a
9:55devastating tragedy.
9:57In Rocco and His Brothers, Luchino
9:59Visconti did something unprecedented in
10:01the history of cinema. He elevated a
10:03family drama into a 3-hour biblical
10:06scale epic.
10:07The story begins with a mother and her
10:09five sons fleeing the poverty of the
10:11rural south to seek a future in cold
10:13industrialized Milan. But the central
10:16conflict is the collision between two
10:17irreconcilable forces.
10:19On one side, Simone, the embodiment of
10:22pure ego, sin, and depravity. On the
10:25other, Rocco,
10:27a pure soul, incapable of holding a
10:29grudge, and willing to ruin himself just
10:31to save his brother.
10:33Their shared desire for a broken woman
10:35unleashes an abyss of jealousy and
10:37relentless violence.
10:39And Visconti films this descent into
10:40hell with breathtaking black and white
10:42cinematography.
10:44But the lesson the film leaves behind is
10:46truly devastating. It shows us how
10:48absolute goodness, when it is blind and
10:51unable to set boundaries, can be just as
10:53destructive as evil itself.
10:57>> [music]
11:00>> We enter the top 10, and with it the
11:02territory of the sacred. Andrei
11:04Tarkovsky conceived Nostalghia as an
11:06exploration of the pain of the exiled
11:08soul and humanity's spiritual
11:10disconnection.
11:11Filmed in a decaying Italy filled with
11:13fog and ancient ruins, the story follows
11:16a Russian poet wandering aimlessly
11:18searching for reconciliation between the
11:20beauty of the outside world and the
11:22aridity he carries within.
11:24The film abandons conventional pacing to
11:26immerse you in a purely metaphysical
11:28experience.
11:29Tarkovsky films the tearing of intuition
11:31and the longing for the divine through
11:33hypnotic long takes in which water,
11:35steam, and suspended light seem to speak
11:37the direct language of memory.
11:39With a colossal performance by Oleg
11:41Yankovsky and the masterful candle
11:43sequence in the empty pool, Nostalghia
11:45is a summit of mystical cinema.
11:50>> [music]
11:52>> Some works are born directly from the
11:53wounds of history.
11:55Rome, Open City, is the testimony of
11:58horror filmed over the still smoking
12:00ruins of a capital devastated by Nazi
12:02occupation.
12:03Roberto Rossellini shot this film
12:05immediately after the Second World War
12:07ended with no budget, using scraps of
12:09expired film stock, and capturing the
12:11real panic of a city that had just
12:13witnessed hell on earth.
12:15From that urgency, neorealism was born.
12:18The need to capture the truth of the
12:19human being at their darkest moment.
12:21Here we see the Roman resistance through
12:23the figure of an exhausted mother and a
12:25priest willing to give his life for his
12:27faith.
12:28That desperation permeating every frame
12:30changed the language of cinema forever,
12:32influencing entire generations of
12:34directors. This unrepeatable miracle
12:37possesses the brutal force of a
12:38historical document and the weight of a
12:40classical tragedy.
12:46If in L'Eclisse Antonioni exposed the
12:48average couple, in La Notte he went one
12:50step further by portraying with
12:52devastating coldness the broken marriage
12:54that reigns in our society.
12:56The anatomy of two empty and
12:58disenchanted beings who married out of
13:00inertia, out of fear of being alone, or
13:02simply because at first they thought
13:04they loved each other, and now
13:06anesthetize each other to avoid the
13:07abyss of their own existence.
13:10We follow Giovanni, a writer whose
13:12creativity has died, and Lidia, a woman
13:14drowned in a melancholy she cannot
13:16explain.
13:17Over the course of 24 hours, we wander
13:20with them through a cold Milan filled
13:22with skyscrapers and bourgeois parties
13:24where people desperately seek to sedate
13:26their isolation. This is what happens
13:28when society rejects romantic love.
13:31When people stop aspiring to it, they
13:32end up accepting a distorted reflection,
13:35convinced that they are in love.
13:37But obviously they aren't. Because as
13:39Shakespeare said, love is not love if it
13:41alters when alteration finds. The
13:44tragedy we witness in La Notte has no
13:46physical drama, because death has
13:48already occurred inside.
13:53The Battle of Algiers completely
13:54transcends cinema. A document of
13:56absolute neutrality that captures the
13:59guerrilla war between the Algerian
14:00National Liberation Front and the French
14:02Army in the late 1950s. Gillo Pontecorvo
14:05shot this film in the streets of
14:07Algiers, barely 4 years after the war of
14:09independence, using ordinary citizens
14:11and former partisans instead of
14:13professional actors.
14:15The result is so raw, so
14:17documentary-like, and so precise in its
14:19realism that the Pentagon itself
14:21screened it decades later as a manual on
14:23counterinsurgency and urban warfare.
14:26The director's genius lies in his moral
14:28sobriety.
14:29He exposes with the same relentless
14:31coldness the resistance's bomb attacks
14:33and the systematic torture carried out
14:35by the French Army.
14:37Never before in history had anyone
14:39erased the boundary between fiction and
14:41historical document, making the
14:43cinematic image capture truth with the
14:45same force as a war news report.
15:00The Western was an American invention,
15:02but it took an Italian's gaze to carry
15:04the genre to its absolute peak.
15:06Once Upon a Time in the West is an opera
15:08about the extinction of the old world at
15:11the hands of a voracious modernity.
15:13Sergio Leone took the mythology of the
15:15West and elevated it to its purest
15:17essence.
15:18Progress arriving at the cost of the
15:19soul, the railroad pushing forward over
15:22greed, blood, and smoke.
15:24Leone displays a completely superhuman
15:26formal mastery.
15:28That opening at the train station, where
15:30the sound of a mosquito, the creaking of
15:32the wind, and the dripping of water
15:33build almost unbearable tension, proves
15:36that cinema can achieve the rhythm of a
15:38symphony without a single word.
15:41But, the miracle is not only that
15:42historic opening, but how the film
15:44surpasses itself in the very next scene
15:46to give us the greatest opening in the
15:48history of cinema.
15:50With the score by the legendary Ennio
15:51Morricone,
15:52Once Upon a Time in the West becomes a
15:54requiem on the level of the Greek myths.
15:59If you thought cinema needed huge
16:01budgets [music] to move you, Bicycle
16:02Thieves is here to destroy that
16:04prejudice.
16:05In 1948, Vittorio De Sica filmed the
16:08purest and most universal film about
16:10human dignity.
16:12With no professional actors, no sets,
16:14[music] and no bloated budgets, he
16:15managed to turn the loss of a simple
16:17work bicycle into a tragedy as crushing
16:19as [music] the fall of an empire.
16:21In a Rome devastated by the aftermath of
16:23war, an unemployed father gets a job
16:26that absolutely requires a bicycle. When
16:28it is stolen on his first day, a
16:30desperate search begins alongside his
16:32young son through the streets of an
16:34indifferent city.
16:35With a perfect structure from beginning
16:37to end, the film poses an impossible
16:39dilemma. How far is a decent man capable
16:41of going when the system corners him
16:43completely?
16:47At Cannes in 1960, the crowd booed the
16:50premiere of L'Avventura. Nobody
16:52understood anything, and they didn't
16:54like seeing themselves portrayed. The
16:56next day, a legion of filmmakers issued
16:58a manifesto defending the film, earning
17:01it the special jury prize.
17:03Michelangelo Antonioni committed the
17:05most revolutionary act in modern cinema
17:07here,
17:08blowing up traditional narrative to film
17:10the emptiness of the human spirit.
17:12Nobody was prepared to see a plot
17:14disappear halfway through the film,
17:16leaving the viewer alone with the
17:17emotional desert of its characters.
17:20A woman disappears without a trace on a
17:22deserted island. The search begins, but
17:24very soon the mystery dissolves, giving
17:27way to something truly terrifying.
17:29[music]
17:30Emotional amnesia, the eruption of
17:32superficial desire, and the cowardly
17:34rush to forget.
17:35Antonioni uses jagged rocks, wind, and
17:38silence to frame the alienation and
17:40boredom of an emotionally dead
17:41bourgeoisie.
17:42It is the work that invented cinematic
17:44modernity, ending without consolation or
17:46catharsis, leaving us alone with the
17:48emptiness of its protagonists.
17:52If the imagination of an entire country
17:54had to be summed up in a single frame,
17:56it would be La Dolce Vita.
17:59And today, it's time to break through
18:01the barrier of objectivity, because I
18:03confess that this is one of my five
18:05favorite films of all time.
18:11Behind the tailored suits, the nighttime
18:13jazz, and Anita Ekberg's immortal swim
18:15in the Trevi Fountain, lies a deeply
18:17hopeless work about the decay of the
18:19modern soul.
18:20Rome has ceased to be the hungry city of
18:22the post-war period and become a noisy
18:24circus infected by frivolity and
18:27dominated by a new plague of scavenger
18:29photographers, whom this very film
18:31baptized for eternity, the paparazzi.
18:34The opening shot condenses all the
18:36decadence of the modern age. A statue of
18:38Christ suspended from a helicopter over
18:40the rooftops of Rome, while the crowd
18:42searches for the sun on the terraces.
18:45Federico Fellini captured the exact
18:46moment when Western civilization decided
18:49to trade transcendence for spectacle,
18:51surrendering purity in exchange for
18:53lethargy and glamour. For 7 days and 7
18:56nights, we follow Marcello, a journalist
18:58desperately searching for the meaning of
19:00life in every party and intellectual
19:02conversation he attends.
19:04Of course, he is too afraid to surrender
19:06himself to true love, but ironically, it
19:08is the only thing capable of filling the
19:10chronic emptiness he carries.
19:12La Dolce Vita is the portrait of a
19:14society drowning in its own champagne,
19:17dancing on the edge of the abyss with a
19:18fake smile while waiting for the lights
19:20to go out.
19:25Luchino Visconti committed the greatest
19:27betrayal in the history of cinema to
19:29make this boundless work.
19:31Being an aristocratic count himself and
19:33a committed communist, he used all his
19:35authorial weight to film the definitive
19:38requiem for the extinction of his own
19:39lineage.
19:41The Leopard is a treatise on principles,
19:43melancholy, and the cynicism of power in
19:45the face of the relentless passage of
19:47time.
19:48Burt Lancaster gives the performance of
19:50his life as the prince of Salina, the
19:52embodiment of an endangered species who
19:55watches with sovereign resignation as
19:57the upstart bourgeoisie and soulless
19:59ambition take his place.
20:01The staging is obsessive, but where the
20:03film reaches eternity is in the mythical
20:05ball sequence.
20:0745 minutes of opulence and sweat where
20:09luxury acts as the mask of a dying
20:11world.
20:12The camera moves through the halls,
20:14capturing the clash between the
20:15freshness of ambitious youth and the
20:17exhaustion of a social class that is
20:19fading away.
20:20In the end, everything comes down to one
20:23sentence.
20:24Change everything so that nothing
20:26changes.
20:30With 8 and 1/2, Fellini achieved the
20:32ultimate miracle of the seventh art,
20:34taking the chaos of the human mind and
20:36the anguish of creation and transforming
20:38them into a visual masterpiece.
20:41Starting from the block of a filmmaker
20:43unable to shoot his next work, the film
20:45transcends classical narrative to merge
20:47childhood memories, guilt, desires, and
20:49fears into a single stream of
20:51consciousness.
20:52Marcello Mastroianni, transformed into
20:55the director's alter ego, brings Guido
20:57Anselmi to life, a filmmaker suffocated
20:59by his producer's demands, his desire
21:01fractured between several lovers, and
21:03the shadow of his own memory.
21:05Through this, Fellini destroys the
21:07boundary between reality and
21:09imagination, creating an open-heart
21:11psychoanalysis in which the creator
21:13strips himself naked, exposing his
21:15fears, lies, and egotism. But amid the
21:18media circus and the aridity of the ego,
21:20the search for that ideal woman appears
21:23as the incorruptible flash that rescues
21:25the artist, returning him [music] to the
21:26mold of purity that lives deep within
21:28his being.
21:29The miracle of the film lies in its
21:31reconciliation with life.
21:34Fellini understands that salvation does
21:35not require deciphering the mystery of
21:37existence, but loving the imperfection
21:39of being alive.
21:41It is the integration of our shadows and
21:43the celebration with which we embrace
21:45the abyss,
21:46healing that fractured desire so we can
21:48hold the woman who shares our soul.
21:53>> [music]
21:54>> If you've made it this far, do your soul
21:56a favor and seek out these films.
21:59To bypass the limits of your country's
22:01catalog and access auteur cinema from
22:03around the world without restrictions,
22:05you have the NordVPN link below in the
22:07description with the channel's discount.
22:09It's the tool I use to watch these
22:11masterpieces in international catalogs,
22:13and at the same time, you directly
22:15support this project. Subscribe if you
22:17want this place to be your refuge.

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