One of the best film of Italian movie history since its foundation and therefore one of the best movies ever made. Astonishig debut by movie director Florestano Vancini, who was unfortunately never able to go even near this gifted artwork for the rest of his career. Working on a powerful story by Italian novelist Giorgio Bassani (The Garden of The Finzi-Continis, The Golden Glasses). For the impressive effort of the cast, all of them taking their respective role characters to epic proportion (while being extremely real and human), and for the black and white photography of night and day war-time Ferrara which reminds sometimes the Vienna of the Third Man by Carol Reed, it is much superior to Rossellini's Open City and General Della Rovere. It is certainly not strange but still remarkable that the terrible WWII Italian experience has inspired such cogent insight of the human condition. For its immediate impact the movie can be compared to "Two Women", for its complexity it is certainly superior. To be listed among the hall of world's masterpieces.