Manolo Bolognini has written the story and the script and as usual with his productions it is a very interesting intrigue and drama. Nilla Pizzi (Lucia Spinelli) is a famous international singer under the name of Lucy Clair, she gives performances in all the great cities of Europe including Paris, London and Spain and sings equally well in Spanish and French as in Italian. After a performance in Rome she leaves the stage without receiving further applause to follow a girl who has been at the theatre with an elderly man. They are going away apparently in an elopement, and Nilla Pizzi tries to stop her, arguing he is her (Pizzi's) lover. When it doesn't help she shoots down the lover at the station. Both she and the girl are held by the police, and they have to tell their stories, the girl being the only witness without knowing the murderess is her own mother.
The story that unfolds is told in different versions, the father is also interrogated and is requested to tell his part of the tale, and we finally have a complex web of infected relationships, in which both the girl and the mother appear as victims while both the lover/seducer and the father appear as scoundrels. The father's sister, the girl's aunt, is also involved as another vicious figure.
It's a great psychological drama of human and mental cruelty, of relationships going wrong, prying also into the dark side of show business and above all charting a very tragic relationship between a mother and her daughter, while they at least finally reach some atonement. Nilla Pizzi makes a great performance, she is the backbone of the film, and the music saves the film from black tragedy. It is of no special genre, neither noir nor criminal thriller but rather a very social study in relationships in the shadows of the fame of a great singer.
