L'île des passions

This is a passion drama on an island among fishermen outside Naples. Yvonne Sanson is the star here, a generous society lady giving lush parties with a very jealous lover, whom she finds it necessary to escape from, taking the train to Naples and ending up on this island, where she finds peace; but being as beautiful and irresistible as she is, a young handsome fisherman is hooked by her, and they have a love affair. The problem is that he is already betrothed with a young local girl, whose father will not let her marry Gianni since he has no money. For Yvonne Sanson, Gianni is just a casual affair, and when the girl Mariella looks her up to tell her Gianni is already taken, Yvonne resigns and magnanimously breaks up the adventure with Gianni. That same evening Yvonne is murdered, and Gianni is arrested for the murder on overwhelming suspicions. That is the beginning of the drama.

As a romantic drama of stormy feelings it is typical of the period, there were many such films with Yvonne Sanson, and this is just another pearl in the necklace but all the same worth watching, mainly for its local charm among the lives of the fishermen. The locations are more than beautiful, all the actors are good and engaging, and the drama reaches some considerable heights. The fact that the star Yvonne Sanson rather soon leaves the film, like Anna Magnani in "Rome, open city", does not reduce the quality of the film, which in fact begins to become really dramatic at that point.