(Some spoilers) Mauro Bolognini's film is a very forceful work about an idealistic son's rejection of his father's materialistic values. The son is Stefano, played by the then young-and-angelic French actor Jacques Perrin, who was Mastroianni's younger brother in Zurlini's moving FAMILY DIARY. Decades later he would be very widely known as the adult Toto' in Giuseppe Tornatore's (NUOVO) CINEMA PARADISO. The father is a pragmatic and ruthless industrialist, Leonardo, (played by Alain Cuny). The son wants to become a priest. The lad's decision is not accepted by the father, who uses every means at his disposal to get the boy to change his mind and follow in his footsteps in business. This includes an arranged sexual assignation with his own lover, the sensual Adriana, (played by the magnificent Rosanna Schiaffino) and his innocent son. The thesis of the film is that the pressure brought to bear upon the son are too much to withstand, that "corruption" will take hold, given time and persistence. The last scene of the movie shows the boy weakening, succumbing to those values he had so strenuously rejected
a cherub in the clutches of Satan. One of the more moving bits in the movie revolves around an accountant employee of Leonardo whose job is threatened when the books are short, through no culpability of his own. He winds up committing suicide by jumping out of an office window, an event the Leonardo covers up, although the son, compassionate by nature, reacts to it with complete repugnance, because of his father's utter callousness and cruelty to the man. I found the film fascinating and quite effective, although a bit too choreographed as a morality play at times. Isa Miranda does a nice turn as the hospital confined mother, who had rejected her husband years before, no doubt for the best of reasons. Many of Bolognini's films ought to be re-discovered today. This is one of them.
Review of La corruzione
