The Films that Unveil the Hidden Soul of Venice

Here is a curated selection of independent films that perfectly embody the cinematic Venice that pulses beyond the postcard image. Forget sunny gondola rides and crowded squares. This is an immersion into another city: a crepuscular, often wintry Venice, shrouded in fog and silence, a labyrinth of stone and water that becomes a mirror of the soul for independent and visionary directors.

These filmmakers do not use the city as a mere backdrop but elevate it to a protagonist, a complex and contradictory entity. Its sublime beauty and inexorable decay become a powerful allegory for exploring the universal themes of desire, mortality, madness, and loss. Its canals become the arteries of a diseased body, its narrow streets the dead ends of the psyche, its lavish palaces empty shells hiding unspeakable secrets.

This guide is a journey through the arthouse and underground cinema that has captured the deepest and most unsettling essence of the Serenissima. It is an itinerary for those seeking the best films set in Venice not for their romantic veneer, but for their ability to use the city’s iconography to tell uncomfortable truths about the human condition. Prepare to discover a Venice you have never seen, a place of the soul as magnificent as it is terrifying.

Death in Venice (1971)

The composer Gustav von Aschenbach, convalescing in Venice, develops an obsession with the androgynous beauty of a young Polish boy named Tadzio. As his infatuation grows, a silent cholera epidemic begins to spread through the city, hidden by the authorities to avoid damaging tourism.

Luchino Visconti does not simply film Venice; he uses it as a baroque stage for a man’s disintegration. The opulent Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido is a gilded cage where Aschenbach’s intellectual order clashes with the chaos of passion. The city itself, with its magnificence slowly sinking into the lagoon and the sweetish smell of disease mingling with the salt air, becomes the perfect metaphor for his physical and moral decay. Pasqualino De Santis’s cinematography captures a sick city, feverish under the sirocco wind, whose deadly beauty seduces and condemns the protagonist.

Don’t Look Now (1973)

An English couple, John and Laura Baxter, move to Venice after the tragic drowning of their young daughter. While John works on restoring a church, they meet two elderly sisters, one of whom, blind, claims to be able to “see” their daughter. John, skeptical, begins to have disturbing premonitions and glimpses a mysterious childlike figure in a red coat in the city’s alleys.

Nicolas Roeg transforms Venice into a psychological labyrinth that reflects the fragmented mental state of a man devastated by grief. Far from any tourist cliché, his is a wintry, desolate Venice, enveloped in a damp fog that blurs the lines between the real and the supernatural. The canals are not romantic waterways but omens of death, mirrors of water that constantly recall the tragedy. The city, with its identical narrow streets and blind corners, becomes the very architecture of pain and premonition, a place where the past is never dead and the future is an inescapable trap.

Bread and Tulips (Pane e tulipani) (2000)

During a bus tour, Pescara housewife Rosalba is left behind at a rest stop. Instead of waiting for her husband and sons to come back for her, she impulsively decides to hitchhike and fulfill a small dream: to visit Venice. What was meant to be a brief escape turns into a new life, thanks to encounters with eccentric and kind characters who help her rediscover herself.

Silvio Soldini gives us one of the most authentic and vital representations of the city, an everyday Venice, far from the tourist flows. The camera delves into the working-class sestieri, among laundry lines, local markets, and taverns frequented by Venetians. This is not the museum-city, but a living place, a pulsating organism that welcomes Rosalba and offers her a second chance. The bright photography and wide shots mark the transition from a claustrophobic domestic life to a newfound freedom, showing how the true magic of Venice lies not in its monuments, but in its capacity to be a place of rebirth.

Atlantide (2021)

Daniele is a young man from Sant’Erasmo, an island on the edge of the Venetian lagoon. He lives on the margins of his own peer group, who are obsessed with the cult of the “barchino,” souped-up motorboats that race at insane speeds through the canals. His dream of owning the fastest boat to gain respect clashes with a reality of alienation and the social and environmental decay that corrodes his generation.

Yuri Ancarani directs a hypnotic and radical work, halfway between documentary and fiction, that reveals a marginal and unknown Venice. Far from St. Mark’s Square, the film explores the youth subculture of the lagoon, a world of engines, trap music, and desperate nihilism. The lagoon is not a landscape to be contemplated, but a psychedelic arena where a violent and doomed male initiation rite is consumed. Atlantide is a powerful portrait of contemporary Venice, a ghost city sinking not only into the water but also into neglect and a loss of identity.

Giallo in Venice (Giallo a Venezia) (1979)

A couple is found brutally murdered along a canal. Inspector De Paul begins to investigate, uncovering a murky world of sexual depravity, orgies, and drug use involving the victims. As he tries to reconstruct their final hours, a mysterious killer continues to strike with unprecedented ferocity, leaving a trail of horribly mutilated bodies.

This film by Mario Landi is perhaps the most extreme example of how genre cinema has used Venice, stripping it of all romanticism to turn it into a theater of squalor and violence. The cinematography grains the city’s beauty, showing only its seediest corners, muddy canals, and claustrophobic interiors. Decadence is no longer an aesthetic metaphor but a physical and moral condition. In this cult film, the lagoon city becomes a damp and rainy hell, a perfect place for a giallo that pushes the representation of perversion and gore to the limit.

Senso (1954)

In Venice in 1866, during the final months of the Austrian occupation, Countess Livia Serpieri, a supporter of the Italian cause, falls madly in love with Franz Mahler, a charming but cynical lieutenant in the enemy army. Overwhelmed by a self-destructive passion, Livia will betray her political ideals and her own family in a whirlwind of jealousy and degradation that parallels the collapse of an entire era.

Luchino Visconti directs a sumptuous melodrama, a historical fresco in Technicolor where the decadence of a social class is mirrored in the opulence of Venetian palaces. The opening scene at the Teatro La Fenice is emblematic: the drama on stage spills over into real life, triggering the tragedy. Venice is not just the backdrop of the Risorgimento, but the symbol of a magnificent and corrupt aristocratic world destined to fall. The protagonist’s passion consumes her and her principles, just as war and time consume the city’s beauty.

The Comfort of Strangers (1990)

An English couple, Colin and Mary, are on holiday in Venice to try to rekindle their failing relationship. Lost in the labyrinth of narrow streets, they meet an enigmatic and charming local man, Robert, who invites them to his lavish home. There they meet his wife, Caroline, and are slowly drawn into a perverse and dangerous psychological game, where hospitality turns into a deadly trap.

Paul Schrader, from a screenplay by Harold Pinter, turns the Venetian romantic dream into a waking nightmare. The city, bathed in an amber and seductive light, becomes a space of psychological threat. Its alleys lead nowhere, symbolizing the couple’s emotional stalemate. The beauty of the palaces and the elegance of their hosts hide a latent violence and a deadly perversion. Schrader follows the literary tradition that sees Venice not as the cradle of love, but as the “city of death,” a place where desire leads to destruction.

Vampire in Venice (Nosferatu a Venezia) (1988)

Professor Catalano travels to Venice to investigate the possible presence of the vampire Nosferatu, whose last appearance dates back to the carnival of 1786. During a séance, the vampire is awakened from his centuries-long sleep and returns to roam the city, bringing with him a trail of death and seduction. His tormented existence seeks an end, which he believes he can find in the love of a virgin woman.

Despite its troubled production, this apocryphal sequel to Herzog’s masterpiece is a cult film that reinvents the vampire myth in a gothic and decadent key. Klaus Kinski’s feverish performance, refusing to wear prosthetic makeup, gives us a new, more human and tormented Nosferatu. The sumptuous cinematography by Antonio Nardi captures a spectral, dreamlike Venice, a perfect watery tomb for an immortal creature tired of living. The city becomes an extension of the vampire’s soul: ancient, beautiful, and in ruins.

Who Saw Her Die? (Chi l’ha vista morire?) (1972)

Sculptor Franco Serpieri is in Venice with his young daughter Roberta. One day, the girl mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned in a canal, the victim of a child serial killer. While the police are fumbling in the dark, Franco begins his own desperate personal investigation, delving into a world of secrets and perversions hidden behind the city’s respectable facade.

Aldo Lado directs one of the best Italian gialli of the 70s, turning Venice into a deadly labyrinth. The lagoon city, with its foggy canals and dark alleys, becomes a menacing character, a place where horror can hide around any corner. Ennio Morricone’s haunting score, with its choir of children’s voices, creates a chilling contrast between childhood innocence and the brutality of the murders. Lado masterfully uses the city’s architecture to generate almost unbearable suspense.

The Anonymous Venetian (Anonimo Veneziano) (1970)

A musician at the Teatro La Fenice, having discovered he is terminally ill, invites his wife, from whom he has been separated for years, to Venice. For an entire day, the two wander through the city, revisiting the places of their love and confronting memories, regrets, and unspoken words. It is their last, poignant meeting, a farewell to life and to a love that never completely ended.

Enrico Maria Salerno, in his directorial debut, paints a melancholic and crepuscular portrait of Venice. Far from the crowds, the autumnal city, with its muted colors and silent atmosphere, becomes the perfect sounding board for the protagonists’ drama. Every square, every bridge, every glimpse of Giudecca or lesser-known areas, is imbued with memory and nostalgia. The city, like the protagonist, is in agony, and its decadent beauty accompanies the countdown to the end with poignant poetry. The famous score by Stelvio Cipriani seals the film’s unforgettable atmosphere.

Shun Li and the Poet (Io sono Li) (2011)

Shun Li, a Chinese immigrant, is sent to work as a bartender in a tavern in Chioggia, the “little Venice.” There, in a closed, masculine world of fishermen, she forms an unexpected and poetic friendship with Bepi, an old fisherman of Slavic origin nicknamed “the Poet.” Their bond, made of silences and poems, clashes with the prejudices of both their communities.

Andrea Segre tells a story of immigration and encounter with rare sensitivity, using the Chioggia lagoon as a metaphorical space. The water and fog, which envelop everything in gray tones, reflect the isolation and melancholy of the protagonists. The lagoon is described as “female, calm, and mysterious,” a place of suspension where two solitudes can meet. The film shows a Venice of work and real life, a frontier where different cultures touch, clash, and sometimes, recognize each other.

The Canal of the Angels (Il canale degli angeli) (1934)

In a Venice undergoing industrial transformation, a worker is the victim of an accident at work. During his convalescence, his wife Anna falls in love with a ship’s captain. Their young son witnesses this budding love and, distraught, falls ill. The affair throws the fragile family balance into crisis, against the backdrop of a city that is changing its face.

The only fiction feature by Italian cinema pioneer Francesco Pasinetti, this film is a precious document. Anticipating Neorealism by almost a decade, Pasinetti shows an unprecedented, non-rhetorical Venice, lived by its inhabitants and workers. The documentary-style images of shipyards and ships digging new canals offer a glimpse of a modernization that challenges not only the landscape but also the traditional social and family structure. A fundamental work for understanding another history of Venetian cinema.

Nest of Vipers (Ritratto di borghesia in nero) (1978)

In Venice in 1938, on the eve of war, the young music student Mattia is introduced into the salons of the upper bourgeoisie. There he falls in love with his piano teacher, Carla, beginning a sordid affair that unleashes a spiral of blackmail, betrayal, and crime. Behind the facade of respectability lies a world of moral corruption, ambition, and power.

Tonino Cervi adapts a novella by Peyrefitte, moving the action from Paris to Venice, and the choice is not accidental. The tortuosity of the Venetian alleys becomes the physical counterpart to the tortuosity of the characters’ feelings. The film is shot almost entirely in lavish and suffocating interiors, representing the gilded prison of a social class in full moral decay. The external city appears only in glimpses, often at night or shrouded in the black of funerals, symbolizing how the inner rot is about to spread outside as well, with the advent of fascism and war.

The Wings of the Dove (1997)

London, early 20th century. Kate Croy, in order not to lose her social standing, convinces her penniless lover, the journalist Merton Densher, to seduce a wealthy American heiress, Milly Theale, who is terminally ill and traveling in Europe. The plan is for Merton to marry her, inherit her fortune, and finally be able to live with Kate. The trio finds themselves in Venice, where the diabolical plan clashes with unexpected feelings.

In this adaptation of Henry James’s novel, Venice becomes the final stage where manipulation and desire collide with death. The city, with its poignant beauty, amplifies the tragic dimension of the story. It is not a place of liberation, but the luxurious setting where the protagonists’ moral corruption comes to light. The romantic atmosphere of the Serenissima is poisoned by calculation and deceit, making Milly’s physical decay a reflection of Kate and Merton’s ethical bankruptcy.

Summertime (1955)

Jane Hudson, a middle-aged American secretary, arrives in Venice for the vacation she has always dreamed of. Alone and full of insecurities, she wanders the city feeling like an outside observer of life and love. Her encounter with Renato, a charming Venetian antique dealer, opens the door to a love affair as intense as it is ephemeral, forcing her to confront her loneliness.

David Lean directs a poignant love letter to Venice, capturing its magic in radiant Technicolor. But beyond the visual beauty, the film is a profound reflection on loneliness and desire. Venice is not just the backdrop for a romantic story, but the catalyst for Jane’s emotional experience. Its almost painful beauty accentuates the protagonist’s sense of melancholy, making her brief love affair a bittersweet experience that will change her forever. A classic that combines arthouse sensitivity with popular appeal.

Eva (1962)

Tyvian, a Welsh writer who achieved fame by passing off his deceased brother’s manuscript as his own, arrives in Venice for the premiere of the film based on his book. There he meets and becomes obsessed with Eva, a cynical and cruel high-class prostitute. Thus begins a masochistic relationship of submission and humiliation, which will lead Tyvian to complete economic and psychological ruin.

American director Joseph Losey, in exile in Europe, directs a ruthless and glacial work. His Venice is cold, almost hostile, devoid of any warmth. The canals and palaces become the indifferent setting for a descent into hell. The film, shot in expressionistic black and white by Gianni Di Venanzo, denies any romanticism to the city, using it as an emotional desert where a man’s destruction is consumed. A radical work that anticipates the themes Losey would develop in his later masterpieces.

The Bloodstained Shadow (Solamente nero) (1978)

Stefano, a university professor, returns for a period of rest to the island in the Venetian lagoon where he was born and where his brother, a priest, lives. His arrival coincides with a series of brutal crimes that shatter the tranquility of the small community. Investigating, Stefano discovers a web of secrets, hypocrisy, and madness hidden behind the island’s respectable facade.

Antonio Bido, after The Cat with the Jade Eyes, directs another tense and atmospheric giallo. Although the setting is an island in the lagoon (recognizable as Murano), the film perfectly captures the unease of the Venetian landscape. The gloomy and foggy atmospheres, the silent canals, and the secrets the community tries to bury create a strong sense of anguish. Many critics consider it indebted to Pupi Avati’s The House with Laughing Windows, transferring the horror of the Po Valley province to the equally isolated and mysterious environment of the lagoon.

Damned in Venice (Nero veneziano) (1978)

The young orphaned siblings Mark and Christine move to Venice to their aunt and uncle’s boarding house on the island of Giudecca. Mark, who is blind, is tormented by frightening visions in which a mysterious man commits diabolical acts. When a series of unexplained deaths begins to strike his family, his nightmares seem to become reality, suggesting a satanic conspiracy.

Ugo Liberatore directs a gothic and surreal horror film, imbued with a morbidly decadent atmosphere. The setting on Giudecca, separate from the tourist heart of Venice, creates a world apart, an isolated microcosm where evil can take root. Alfio Contini’s cinematography envelops the city in a “mortuary veil,” enhancing its spectral beauty. The lagoon becomes a barrier that separates not only the mainland but also good from evil, light from darkness, in a film that makes ambiguity and unease its stylistic signature.

The Forbidden Room (Anima persa) (1977)

The young Tino moves to Venice to study, staying in an ancient and decadent palace belonging to his aunt and uncle. He soon notices strange and disturbing noises coming from the attic. He discovers that another uncle, his host’s brother, has been living there in seclusion for years, considered mad. Tino begins to investigate the family’s secrets, bringing a shocking and monstrous truth to light.

Dino Risi changes the setting of Giovanni Arpino’s original novel from Turin to Venice, and the choice is perfect. The city becomes spectral, “restlessly gloomy,” and the noble palace a diseased organism that hides madness. More than a thriller, it is a ghost story, where the past haunts the present. The livid cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli makes Venice a funereal place, transforming the psychological drama into a true gothic horror tale.

The Terrorist (Il terrorista) (1963)

Venice, winter 1943. A group of partisans, led by an idealistic and uncompromising engineer, tries to organize armed resistance against the Nazi-Fascists. However, their actions clash with internal divisions within the National Liberation Committee, the fears of the population, and moral doubts about violence. The protagonist will find himself increasingly isolated in his struggle.

Gianfranco De Bosio creates an anomalous and courageous film about the Resistance, devoid of any celebratory rhetoric. His wintry, gray, foggy, and repellent Venice is the exact opposite of the city’s iconography and perfectly reflects the atmosphere of clandestinity, suspicion, and moral drama of the protagonists. The deserted alleys and empty squares become the scene of shadowing and secret meetings, in a claustrophobic universe that expresses the harshness and loneliness of the partisan struggle. A fundamental work, with a great Gian Maria Volonté.

Yuppi du (1975)

Felice is a poor man living in Venice with his daughter, in memory of his wife Silvia, whom he believes committed suicide. His life is turned upside down when Silvia, who had actually fled to Milan to marry a rich man, returns. Felice finds himself having to choose between his past love and his present happiness, in a world that contrasts the simplicity of popular life with the emptiness of bourgeois society.

An anomalous and unclassifiable work, Yuppi du is an environmentalist and anti-capitalist musical directed by and starring an Adriano Celentano in a state of grace. His Venice has nothing realistic about it: it is a surreal and fairytale-like stage, a place of the soul where characters communicate by singing and dancing. The film is a free and vital creative experiment, which uses the city in a totally personal and unconventional way, transforming it into a theater for his very personal social allegory. An absolute cult classic.

Dangerous Beauty (1998)

In 16th-century Venice, the young Veronica Franco, unable to marry the man she loves due to her low social status, is pushed by her mother to become a courtesan. Thanks to her intelligence, culture, and beauty, she becomes one of the most powerful and influential women in the city, an acclaimed poet and advisor to statesmen, until the plague and the Inquisition threaten her position.

Although an American production, the film tells a profoundly Venetian story, that of the courtesan and poet Veronica Franco. Renaissance Venice is represented as a magnificent and contradictory stage: a center of culture, art, and freedom of thought, but also a patriarchal society where the only path to a woman’s intellectual affirmation was linked to the sale of her body. The film explores this paradox, showing a city as splendid as it is ruthless.

The Venetian Woman (La venexiana) (1986)

Venice, 16th century. Two noblewomen, the widow Angela and the young bride Valeria, are consumed by unfulfilled desire. Both set their sights on Jules, a young and handsome foreigner who has just arrived in the city. Using their maids as intermediaries, the two women engage in a subtle but ruthless competition to lure the young man into their beds for a night of passion.

Based on an anonymous 16th-century play, Mauro Bolognini’s film is a refined and erotically charged work. The Venice of the film is an almost entirely female place, a labyrinth of lavish interiors, alcoves, and secret gardens where the protagonists’ desires are consumed. The cinematography by Giuseppe Lanci and the music by Ennio Morricone create a suspended and sensual atmosphere, in which the city becomes a theater of seduction, a place where sentimental frustration fuels an almost predatory desire.

The Stranger’s Hand (1954)

Little Roger arrives in Venice to meet his father, a major in the British secret service, but the man mysteriously disappears. Convinced he has been kidnapped, the boy begins to search for him alone, venturing into a city he does not know. With the help of a governess and a hotel clerk, he finds himself involved in an international espionage intrigue against the backdrop of the Cold War.

Based on a story by Graham Greene and directed by Mario Soldati, this Italian-British thriller recalls the atmosphere of The Third Man, but transfers it to the unique context of Venice. The city, with its foggy canals and dark corners, becomes a place of mystery and danger, seen through the frightened but determined eyes of a child. It is an unusual Venice, a crossroads of spies and secret agents where the beauty of the locations contrasts with a plot full of tension.

The Executioner of Venice (Il boia di Venezia) (1963)

In 17th-century Venice, the cruel inquisitor Guarnieri rules over the city. His greatest enemy is Sandrigo, the Doge’s son, who opposes his tyranny. To get rid of him, Guarnieri has him unjustly accused of a crime and sentences him to death. The execution is entrusted to the executioner, a masked man who is actually Sandrigo’s real father, unaware of the condemned man’s identity.

This costume adventure film, or swashbuckler, is a classic example of Italian genre cinema that drew heavily on the historical imagery of the Serenissima. Although without great authorial pretensions, The Executioner of Venice effectively uses the iconography of Venetian power – the Council of Ten, the Inquisition, the palaces of power – to build a popular narrative of intrigue, duels, and plot twists. A dive into the most romantic and adventurous Venice.

Paganini Horror (1989)

An all-female rock band, to relaunch their career, buys an unpublished score by the violinist Niccolò Paganini from a mysterious individual. They decide to record it and shoot a music video in the composer’s former villa, an old house in Venice. But the music awakens Paganini’s demonic spirit, who begins to exterminate the band members and their crew one by one.

Luigi Cozzi directs a bizarre and fascinating horror film, a cult classic of late 80s Italian genre cinema. Although much of the action takes place inside the cursed villa, sacrificing the Venetian landscape, the city serves as the perfect gothic frame for this Faustian story. The mix of the diabolical musician’s iconography, horror atmospheres, and 80s rock aesthetics makes the film a unique work of its kind, a small gem of underground creativity.

The Go-Between (1971)

In the summer of 1900, young Leo is invited to spend the holidays at the country estate of a wealthy schoolmate. There, he finds himself acting as an unwitting messenger for his friend’s older sister, Marian, and a local tenant farmer, Ted, who are having a clandestine and forbidden affair. The experience will forever mark his perception of love and the adult world.

This masterpiece by Joseph Losey, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, although not set in Venice, is a fundamental piece for understanding the work of two authors who have thoroughly explored twisted psychologies and oppressive atmospheres in the lagoon city as well (Eva for Losey, The Comfort of Strangers for Pinter). The film analyzes the themes of class division, forbidden desire, and the loss of innocence with a mastery that illuminates their narrative approach, making it a perfect thematic counterpoint to their Venetian works.