Movies like Bellissima (1952)
The best movies like Bellissima (1952) are Mamma Roma (1962), Two Women (1960) and Il Posto (1961). If Bellissima hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedBicycle Thieves (1948)8.2/10 from 2,800 votes
- NewestParthenope (2024)Released 2024
- In ItalianMamma Roma (1962)Also in Italian
Mamma Roma (1962)
After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTwo Women (1960)
A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIl Posto (1961)
With his family mired in financial troubles, Domenico moves to Milan, Italy, from his small town to get a job in lieu of furthering his education. A lack of options forces him to take a position as a messenger at a big company, where he hopes to receive a promotion soon. There, Domenico meets Antonietta, a young woman in a similar situation as himself. The two form a tentative relationship, but the soulless nature of their jobs threatens to keep them apart.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLa Strada (1954)
When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Hawks and the Sparrows (1966)
A man and his son take an allegorical stroll through life with a talking bird that spouts social and political philosophy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUmberto D. (1952)
When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Leopard (1963)
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisI Knew Her Well (1965)
A young woman from the Italian countryside experiences the dark side of the business after she moves to Rome to become a star.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLove in the City (1953)
Six vignettes explore love and desire in Rome, from prostitution and heartache to unwed motherhood and the male gaze.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Great Beauty (2013)
Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShoeshine (1946)
Two shoeshine boys in postwar Rome, Italy save up to buy a horse, but their involvement as dupes in a burglary lands them in juvenile prison; the experience take a devastating toll on their friendship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEuropa '51 (1952)
A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIl Grido (1957)
A sugar-refinery worker flees his Northern Italy town after a woman refuses his marriage proposal.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLa Dolce Vita (1960)
Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBicycle Thieves (1948)
Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHands Over the City (1963)
Prior to a city council election, the collapse of a building leaves a land developer and his political backers defending themselves against a scandal.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLe Amiche (1955)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Witches (1967)
Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Roof (1956)
Under provincial Italian law at the time, once a roof is erected, the occupants cannot be evicted from a building. This film follows the efforts of a family to erect the roof on a house overnight so that a newlywed couple can have their own home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Conformist (1971)
A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisI Vitelloni (1953)
Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMarriage Italian Style (1964)
During the bombing of Naples in World War II, a cynical businessman helps a naive prostitute, who spends the next two decades desperate to have him reciprocate her feelings.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Swindle (1955)
Aging small-time conman Augusto works with two younger men: Roberto, who desires to become the Italian Johnny Ray, and Carlo, nicknamed Picasso. Through a series of mishaps and personal entanglements, things go badly for Augusto.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this8½ (1963)
Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisStromboli (1950)
After the end of WWII, a young Lithuanian woman and a young Italian man from Stromboli impulsively marry, but married life on the island is more demanding than she can accept.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisParthenope (2024)
Parthenope, born in the sea near Naples in 1950, is beautiful, enigmatic, and intelligent. She is shamelessly courted by many. However, beauty comes at a cost.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Children Are Watching Us (1943)
In his first collaboration with renowned screenwriter and longtime partner Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica examines the cataclysmic consequences of adult folly on an innocent child. Heralding the pair’s subsequent work on some of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family’s disintegration.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisZorba the Greek (1964)
An uptight English writer traveling to Crete on a matter of business finds his life changed forever when he meets the gregarious Alexis Zorba.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMiracle in Milan (1951)
Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Organizer (1963)
In the late 19th century, a former high school teacher turned unionist tries to organize workers laboring with inhuman conditions at a textile factory in Turin, Italy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Bellissima?
The closest matches to Bellissima are Mamma Roma (1962), Two Women (1960) and Il Posto (1961). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Bellissima?
People who watched Bellissima most often go on to Mamma Roma (1962), Two Women (1960) and Il Posto (1961).
What is the highest-rated movie like Bellissima?
Bicycle Thieves (1948), rated 8.2/10 by 2,800 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Bellissima?
Parthenope (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Italian movies like Bellissima?
Yes: Mamma Roma (1962), Two Women (1960) and Il Posto (1961).
How are movies similar to Bellissima chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Bellissima, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.