Tormento

How much torment can you endure without feeling forced by circumstances and the cruelty of others to commit suicide? That's the question that imposes itself here as you are initiated in the grossest possible injustice imposed by circumstances. The man is sentenced to 20 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, and his wife happens to have an atrociously cruel stepmother, who commands her life and forces her into a penitentiary for the sake of her child with the man, although they are married. Yet none of these victims ever enter any thought of anything like suicide. They just endure the unendurable and struggle on with no illusions of any false hopes but just accept the imposed facts as they are. Anna (Yvonne Sanson, as beautiful as Isa Miranda,) rebel heroically indeed with all possible force of a victimised woman, and there is one bright ray of hope, as a former colleague of hers from the conservatory discovers her as a dishwasher and tries to do something about the situation, but he is the only one, a wonderful musical intermission. The stepmother remains a hopeless case in her inhumantiy and is incredibly consistent about it, and the plot is questionable indeed and, as so many of Matarazzo's films, more operatically dramatic than quite realistically convincing in its affected exaggerations. But Matarazzo's direction is as always superb, and the actors are acting their hearts out without overdoing it, and you can't tire of Yvonne Sanson's beauty..