Just how much influence Alessandro Blasetti, as 'supervising director', had on this film is impossible to determine but it undoubtedly remains an auspicious directorial debut by Pietro Germi and gives note of what is to come. He is aided immeasurably by the cinematography of Aldo Tonti and the dramatic score by Enzo Masetti, this being the only occasion on which these three creative artistes were to collaborate.
Already evident here is Germi's skill with actors and his leading players here are Roldano Lupi, Marina Berti and Ernesto Almirante, none of whom were known outside Europe although Signorina Berti was merely required to look ravishing in 'Quo Vadis' and 'Ben Hur' whilst given a larger but thankless role in 'Prince of Foxes'. Her sensitivity and delicate beauty are put to good use in Germi's film as Linda, a newly-married woman whose husband Ernesto is showing increasingly irrational behaviour. Unbeknown to her he has a skeleton in the closet! Ernesto is played by Roldano Lupi whose somewhat severe and forbidding exterior denied him traditional leading man roles but enabled him to play more substantial characters as well as granting him a career lasting thirty six years. He convinces here as a man consumed with guilt and paranoia. The most taking performance is that of Ernesto Almirante in a wonderfully drawn characterisation of Marchesi, a well-intentioned elderly civil servant whose change of testimony has caused a guilty murderer to be acquitted but who eventually realises his mistake.
The dynamic and tension between these three is brilliantly handled by Germi and there are some Hitchcockian touches, notably in the use made of Marchesi's antiquated timepiece.
Although this first film is very much work in progress it has the hallmarks of an original and exciting talent whose promise was to be fulfilled.
Already evident here is Germi's skill with actors and his leading players here are Roldano Lupi, Marina Berti and Ernesto Almirante, none of whom were known outside Europe although Signorina Berti was merely required to look ravishing in 'Quo Vadis' and 'Ben Hur' whilst given a larger but thankless role in 'Prince of Foxes'. Her sensitivity and delicate beauty are put to good use in Germi's film as Linda, a newly-married woman whose husband Ernesto is showing increasingly irrational behaviour. Unbeknown to her he has a skeleton in the closet! Ernesto is played by Roldano Lupi whose somewhat severe and forbidding exterior denied him traditional leading man roles but enabled him to play more substantial characters as well as granting him a career lasting thirty six years. He convinces here as a man consumed with guilt and paranoia. The most taking performance is that of Ernesto Almirante in a wonderfully drawn characterisation of Marchesi, a well-intentioned elderly civil servant whose change of testimony has caused a guilty murderer to be acquitted but who eventually realises his mistake.
The dynamic and tension between these three is brilliantly handled by Germi and there are some Hitchcockian touches, notably in the use made of Marchesi's antiquated timepiece.
Although this first film is very much work in progress it has the hallmarks of an original and exciting talent whose promise was to be fulfilled.