The 1950s were the decade of economic consolidation ending in the economic miracle, the ‘boom’ from 1958 on. In cinema it was the decade of comedy, the subgenre of the commedia all’italiana which went on—highly successfully at the box-office—until the 1970s. Its specific characteristic consisted of a permanent connection to social reality—underneath the comical effects—that permitted an ironical and often satirical look at customs and behavior of Italian society in a period of major structural changes and contradictions. The main directors were Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, and Luigi Comencini, the subgenre was characterized by male actors like Totò, Aldo Fabrizi, Alberto Sordi, Ugo Tognazzi, Nino Manfredi, or Vittorio Gassmann and even Marcello Mastroianni, but it was also the starting point for the stardom of Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, and Claudia Cardinale. Parallel to the comic sector, the great neorealists, Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica, continued their work and newcomers like Antonioni and Fellini entered the field. Thus, a new aesthetic horizon of Italian cinema started about 1959/1960 with these three lines of development.