Milan on Film: A DVD Selection
Seeing a city through somebody else's eyes may be the freshest and most fascinating way to visit it. Italian filmmakers have flocked to Milan, thus producing two masterpieces of World Cinema as well as innumerable genre films (its police thrillers called "polizieschi" and its killer-thrillers known as "gialli̶ 
which flourished between 1965 and 1985.
Here listed is the celluloid Milano, the city of extremes --- the wealth and the squalor, the elegance and the violence, the black and the white. Happily, a current cult craze (perhaps inspired by the popularity of Quentin Tarantino) has now given these films international DVD releases!
1. Miracle in Milan, directed by Vittorio DeSica, 1951. With its bittersweet optimism and its flights of fancy, it's something of The Wizard of Oz--Italian style. The renowned "neo-realist" of Italian cinema, famed for his documentary-style (The Bicycle Thief, Shoeshine), carries his post-war street people over the rainbow and far beyond Milan's fantastic castle-balloon of a cathedral. Simply put, one of cinema's greatest fantasies.
2. Rocco and His Brothers, directed by Luchino Visconti, 1960. A sprawling family saga bringing a poor mother and her sons up from the sunny south to a frostbitten, black-and-white Milan. A great human epic about ready to knock on Bette Davis's backdoor. This is soap opera art, the brothers are boxers, which, of course, is metaphoric -- with Simone Signoret doing Bette Davis.
3. Almost Human (Milano Odio: La Polizia Non Può Sparare), directed by Umberto Lenzi, 1974. Perhaps the most vicious police thriller ever made with the over-the-top Tomas Milian doing the sleaziest sadist in cinema history (he's a whiner as well). Lenzi's direction is razor sharp --- the film seems sliced in fast motion.
4. Milano Violenta (Bloody Payroll or Commando Terror), directed by Mario Caiano, 1976. A company robbery goes bad and a good-guy-turned-bad (Claudio Cassinelli) suffers for the rest of his life. Cassinelli, usually cast as the good-looking good guy, gives a measured, seething, commanding performance, and the direction by Caiano captures Milan at the change of season --- cool, wet, gray, blurred edges to match the blurring of morality.
5. Death Walks at Midnight, directed by Luciano Ercoli, 1972. One of the loopiest of all the gialli --- and that's saying something. The Spanish spitfire, Susan Scott, witnesses a hallucinogenic murder because she's under the influence of a hallucinogen. And that's just the beginning. And just try guessing who the killer is.... Fast-paced, colorful kitsch that seems to make love to its loopiness.
As for these genre films, there are so many to choose from, you can also forget about Milan and simply enjoy the excesses of filmmakers like Sergio Martino and Fernando DiLeo (many of whose films are also set in Milan!).
