Nest of Vipers

Two neighbours — a persecuted journalist and a resigned housewife — forge a strong bond on the day of Adolf Hitler's historic 1938 visit to Rome.

In 1940s Venice, after twenty years' marriage, retired art critic Nino Rolfe and his younger wife Teresa feel their passion waning. To help her shed her inhibitions and rekindle their relationship, the professor records his sexual fantasies in a diary.

Tullio Hermil is a chauvinist aristocrat who flaunts his mistress to his wife, but when he believes she has been unfaithful he becomes enamored of her again.

Befriended by aristocrat Sebastian Flyte, Oxford student Charles Ryder finds that the power and privilege experienced by the family is seductive. On a visit to the ancestral home, Brideshead, he falls in love with his friend's sister, Julia. However, as his ties to the Flytes deepen, Ryder finds himself at odds with their strong Roman Catholicism.

12-year-old Renato experiences three significant events on the same day: the beginning of the Second World War, getting a bike, and witnessing the arrival of the gorgeous Malèna. Through his eyes, we see the curse of beauty and loneliness of Malena, whose husband is presumed dead, and, through his soul, we see his love for her.

While waiting for the brain surgery of his daughter Angela, victim of a motorcycle accident, the surgeon Timoteo recalls his torrid affair with and passion for Italia, a simple woman from slums in the periphery of the big city where he lives. The ghost of the beloved and sexual object of desire Italia chases him in his memories.

Kate is secretly betrothed to a struggling journalist, Merton Densher. But she knows her Aunt Maude will never approve of the match, since Kate's deceased mother has lost all her money in a marriage to a degenerate opium addict. When Kate meets a terminally ill American heiress named Millie traveling through Europe, she comes up with a conniving plan to have both love and wealth.

Lucy Harmon, an American teenager is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.

An Italian diplomat's son follows and seduces English lovers in Venice.

In 1950s Sicily, con artist Joe Moretti does screen tests for the big studios, accepting money or favours for his efforts. A young illiterate novitiate named Beata desperately wants to change her life and falls for him; belatedly, he realizes his feelings for her. However, their love affair is doomed when he's arrested.

A tough, street-smart kid serving a sentence in a state youth reformatory meets a beautiful, innocent girl studying at a nearby convent. When forbidden love blossoms between them, they must fight the prison authorities, their parents and the law.

Clelia, a self-made woman coming from humble means, travels back to Turin, her hometown, to scout locations for the successful Roman atelier she works for. At the hotel, she encounters some upper middle-class women and she finds herself drawn into their friendships.