I took this class my first quarter at UCLA and it was one of my favorites. The class was very interesting and consisted of watching films every week, super short pop quiz's, a midterm, one essay and a final. The films for the first half of the quarter were all in Italian with English subtitles and those of the last half of the quarter were american films about Italian Americans. Most were pretty entertaining.
There were also weekly reading assignments directly related to the film of the week. Professor Pirolini focused a lot on film aesthetics and the overall portrayal of Italians in film. He gave about five different prompts to choose from for the essay. The midterm and final were on the films and lecture slides. Overall a good experience.