Cultura
Films, cartoons, comics and books that every Italian grew up with — but the rest of the world has never heard of.
20 articles
Alberto Sordi: The Actor Who WAS Italy for 50 Years
Alberto Sordi made over 150 films between 1938 and 2003. He played every type of Italian — the coward, the opportunist, the emigrant, the soldier, the snob, the fool — and each one felt utterly real. He was not just Italy's greatest actor; he was Italy's mirror.
Amici Miei: The Greatest Italian Comedy You've Never Heard Of
Five middle-aged Florentine friends who meet regularly to play elaborate pranks (supercazzole) on unsuspecting strangers. Directed by Mario Monicelli in 1975, Amici Miei is one of the funniest and most melancholic Italian films ever made.
Belfagor: The French TV Series That Terrified Every Italian Child in the 1960s
Belfagor — Il Fantasma del Louvre was a French television series from 1965. It aired in Italy and caused mass childhood trauma. The black-and-white image of the masked phantom became one of the most frightening images in Italian collective memory.
Carosello: The Italian TV Ad Show That Every Nonno Still Quotes
From 1957 to 1977, RAI broadcast Carosello every evening at 8:50pm — a programme of short comic sketches that happened to end with an advertisement. Italian children were allowed to stay up until Carosello finished. It was the most watched television programme in Italian history.
The Italian Books Every Italian Read at School (And Actually Liked)
Every culture has the books that school forces on children — and a lucky few become genuinely loved. In Italy, certain texts transcend the school curriculum and become part of national identity. These are the books that Italians quote at dinner tables, not in lecture halls.
Il Commissario Montalbano: The Sicilian Detective Who Taught Italy to Cook
Salvo Montalbano, commissario of police in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigàta, solves murders and eats magnificently. Created by novelist Andrea Camilleri, the Montalbano books and TV series are a phenomenon — beloved across Italy and increasingly discovered by foreign readers.
Corto Maltese: The Sailor Who Made Italian Comics Into Literature
Corto Maltese is a Maltese sailor who wanders the world's ports in the early twentieth century — a romantic adventurer, a philosophical loner, a man of conscience in a world without mercy. Created by Hugo Pratt, he is the only Italian comic character to be exhibited in the Louvre.
Dylan Dog: Italy's Horror Comic That Launched a Thousand Nightmares
Dylan Dog is the 'nightmare investigator' — a handsome, claustrophobic detective in London who investigates the paranormal. Created in 1986 by Italian writer Tiziano Sclavi, it became one of the best-selling comics in Italian history and a landmark of European horror fiction.
Fantozzi: The Italian Office Worker Who Became a National Symbol
Every Italian over 30 knows Fantozzi. He is the eternal loser, the downtrodden office drone, the man crushed by bureaucracy and bad luck. Understanding Fantozzi is understanding a deep vein of Italian humour — and Italian society itself.
Goldrake: The Japanese Robot That Defined Italian Childhood in the 1980s
In Japan it was called UFO Robot Grendizer. In Italy it became Goldrake — and it was the cartoon that every Italian child of the 1980s worshipped. Understanding Goldrake means understanding why Italy fell harder for Japanese anime than almost any other Western country.
Il Nome della Rosa: From Umberto Eco's Novel to the Film Every Italian Studied
Umberto Eco's 1980 debut novel sold over 50 million copies worldwide and became a landmark of postmodern fiction. But for Italians it is something more — a national intellectual event. The 1986 film and the 2019 TV series made it part of Italian collective memory.
Il Ragazzo di Campagna: The Film Every Italian Quotes But No Foreigner Has Seen
Renato Pozzetto plays Artemio, a simple farmer from the Po Valley who arrives in Milan and is overwhelmed by modern city life. Released in 1984, Il Ragazzo di Campagna was a massive Italian hit — and it is still quoted word for word by Italians today.
Il Sorpasso (1962): The Road Movie That Defined the Italian Economic Miracle
Il Sorpasso — The Easy Life — is a 1962 film by Dino Risi about a loud, extravagant Roman playboy who drags a shy law student on a wild road trip across Tuscany. It is one of the greatest Italian films ever made, and one of the least known outside Italy.
Le Sigle dei Cartoni: How Italian Cartoon Theme Songs Became a Cultural Institution
Italy did something to Japanese anime that no other country did: it commissioned entirely original Italian theme songs, wrote new Italian lyrics, and turned them into proper pop hits. The result was a uniquely Italian musical genre — the sigla dei cartoni — that an entire generation knows by heart.
Lupin III: Why Italians Consider a Japanese Anime Completely Their Own
Lupin III is a Japanese anime based on a French character — yet Italians have claimed it as their own. The Italian dub transformed Lupin into something uniquely Mediterranean: witty, ironic, romantic, and slightly anarchic. It is one of the strangest cultural appropriations in history.
Martin Mystère: The Italian Comic That Mixed Archaeology, Mystery and the Impossible
Martin Mystère is an American archaeologist living in New York who investigates the unexplained — lost civilisations, ancient aliens, forgotten technologies, secret histories. Created by Alfredo Castelli in 1982, it is one of Italy's most beloved and intellectually ambitious comics.
Pane, Amore e Fantasia: The Film Series That Invented the Italian Love Comedy
Pane, Amore e Fantasia (1953) and its sequels launched a genre, made Gina Lollobrigida an international star, established Vittorio De Sica as a comedy icon, and defined the image of southern Italian village life for a generation.
Sandokan: How an Indian Pirate Became Italy's Greatest TV Hero
Sandokan, the Tiger of Malaysia, is a fictional Indian pirate prince who fights British colonialism in nineteenth-century Southeast Asia. Created by Italian novelist Emilio Salgari in the 1880s, Sandokan became a television sensation in 1976 when Kabir Bedi brought him to life.
Tex Willer: The Italian Western Comic That Outsells Superman in Italy
Superman, Batman and Spider-Man are dominant everywhere in the world — except Italy, where a home-grown cowboy named Tex Willer has been outselling American superheroes for decades. Tex is one of the great secrets of Italian popular culture.
Totò: The Prince of Comedy Who Invented a New Italian
Antonio de Curtis, known as Totò, made nearly 100 films between 1946 and 1967. He was literally a prince — a Neapolitan nobleman — and he used his aristocratic title to comic and satirical effect. He is the most beloved Italian comic actor in history, and almost nobody outside Italy knows him.