Context

This line is sung by Stephanie (played by Kate Hudson) in the song "Cinema Italiano" from the film Nine, directed by Rob Marshall (2009).

Nine is a lavish movie musical set in the 1960s. It's about a legendary director named Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), who has writer's block and is putting together a film with beautiful actresses, magnificent costumes, and fabulous sets called Italia. The problem? He has no script, not even a plot.

Only a little problem, right? However, he does have the women in his life, both past and present, to inspire him. One of them is Vogue fashion journalist Stephanie (Kate Hudson), who has a decidedly shallow view of Contini. She cares more about how the suits look on the men in his movie than their content or symbolism.

"Cinema Italiano" is an energetic, cabaret-style dance number Stephanie performs as she tries to seduce Contini. She gets a lot of the film terminology wrong, but pulls off some incredible dance moves. It's definitely a victory of style over substance.

Contini ends up rejecting Stephanie because he still loves his wife Luisa (played by the lovely Marion Cotillard), but at least we got a fun dance number out of Stephanie's efforts.

Where you've heard it

You've probably heard this after one of your friends saw their first Federico Fellini film, and they wanted to sound super sophisticated.

Cinema Italiano doesn't really mean anything fancy, by the way. It's just Italian for "Italian film", like in this 2015 Variety article about how the Italian film industry is trying to get their films in more international theatres.

Additional Notable References:

• Check out this nice marching band cover of "Cinema Italiano."
• And here is the trailer for 8 1/2, the seminal 1963 Federico Fellini film that inspired Nine . It's also about a director with writer's block and has many black-and-white fantasy sequences.

Pretentious Factor

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.

This is a pretty darn pretentious line. You would be better off saying, "I like Italian art films." See? Wasn't that easier?