Watch Bicycle Thieves

A pensioner and his dog on the edge of eviction in Rome; De Sica's bleakest neorealism.

A Jewish aristocratic family in Ferrara plays tennis while the racial laws close in.

A Roman prostitute keeps hoping; the ending smile is one of the great last shots.

Rossellini shot on the streets months after the Germans left; neorealism begins here.

Petronius as a hallucination: Nero's Rome with no moral centre at all.

Loren and Mastroianni in three stories, three cities, and the striptease.

A Roman socialite turns 65 and looks past the parties; Sorrentino's La Dolce Vita.

Two legionaries through the fall of the Republic; HBO and the BBC's expensive Caesar.