# What is the best Italian movie of all time?

> From neorealist masterpieces and spaghetti westerns to giallo horror and Cannes-winning art films, Italy's cinema spans a century of bold, genre-defying work. Which is the greatest?

*By YPB Team · Published June 3, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-italian-movie-of-all-time*

---

## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Battle of Algiers** — score 1000/1000
   Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 quasi-documentary recreation of the Algerian independence struggle, shot with newsreel-like immediacy and still the definitive film on urban guerrilla warfare.
2. **Suspiria** — score 880/1000
   Dario Argento's 1977 Technicolor horror fantasia about an American ballet student who discovers the dark supernatural secret behind a prestigious Munich dance academy.
3. **8½** — score 789/1000
   Federico Fellini's 1963 metafictional masterpiece about a film director's creative block and memories, a dazzling meditation on art, desire, and the unconscious mind.
4. **Rome, Open City** — score 789/1000
   Roberto Rossellini's 1945 Neorealist landmark filmed in the streets of liberated Rome, depicting the real brutality of Nazi occupation — a founding document of world cinema.
5. **Bicycle Thieves** — score 710/1000
   Vittorio De Sica's 1948 Neorealist heartbreaker about a poor Roman worker and his son searching the city for the stolen bicycle he needs to keep his job — a film of unbearable humanity.
6. **Salvatore Giuliano** — score 609/1000
   Francesco Rosi's 1962 elliptical political docudrama reconstructing the life and death of the Sicilian bandit Giuliano through fragmented testimonies and official corruption.
7. **La Dolce Vita** — score 474/1000
   Fellini's 1960 kaleidoscopic odyssey through Rome's jet-set demimonde with Marcello Mastroianni as a gossip journalist, giving the world the Trevi Fountain scene and the word 'paparazzi'.
8. **Umberto D.** — score 284/1000
   Vittorio De Sica's 1952 Neorealist tearjerker following an elderly pensioner and his dog struggling to survive on the streets of Rome on a meagre government pension.
9. **Amarcord** — score 284/1000
   Fellini's affectionate yet barbed 1973 memory-collage of life in a small Adriatic town under Fascism, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
10. **The Good, the Bad and the Ugly** — score 1/1000
   Sergio Leone's 1966 epic Spaghetti Western pitting three gunslingers against each other in a deadly hunt for buried Confederate gold, with Ennio Morricone's iconic score.
11. **Once Upon a Time in America** — score 1/1000
   Leone's operatic 1984 gangster elegy tracing the rise and tragic betrayal of Jewish New York gangsters across five decades, Morricone's most devastating score accompanying every frame.
12. **Cinema Paradiso** — score 1/1000
   Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 nostalgic love letter to cinema and to childhood, following the friendship between a boy and the local projectionist in a Sicilian village.
13. **The Leopard** — score 1/1000
   Luchino Visconti's magnificent 1963 adaptation of Lampedusa's novel about an aristocratic Sicilian family navigating Italy's Risorgimento unification, a sumptuous meditation on decline.
14. **Il Sorpasso** — score 1/1000
   Dino Risi's 1962 road-movie satire following a blowhard extrovert and a shy law student tearing down the sun-drenched Via Aurelia, a bittersweet study of Italian postwar euphoria.
15. **Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion** — score 1/1000
   Elio Petri's 1970 Kafkaesque thriller about a powerful police chief who murders his mistress and dares the law to catch him, a razor-sharp indictment of authoritarian impunity.

Tags: movies, italy, classics, all-time