markmuhl

I picked this movie because I wanted to see Giulietta Masina outside a Fellini film. It was a good choice, even though the role of Giulietta is not a major one, but the movie convinces as a film noir with elements of neorealismo.

Should not there be an antihero in a film noir, you may want to ask. Well, what about the main protagonist, the lawyer Roberto Marini, who may not be the classical cynical antihero, but his motives to take over the case are not really noble ones and on top he starts from being convinced of the poor being guilty and untruthful just because of their living conditions.

Unlike Masina's flawless performance Massimo Girotti's acting as Roberte Marini often appeared a bit stiff to me but being a former sport star he was often casted primarily because of his good looks. The lovely Marina Berti as his assistant, however, makes up ground in the acting respect.

I also liked the good illustration of the suburbia lifes of the poor, which is the neorealismo part of the movie. Especially the scenes next to the river with the 3 homeless men (one of them being a suspect) are quite memorable.

Overall, I do recommend the movie, but it should be obvious that a film from the 50's is in black and white and that the quality of picture and sound are not today's state of the art.

The movie already grabbed me when I first saw it on tv many years ago. It stayed on my mind, but I could not find it on streaming portals and then, just recently, I stumbled over it without looking for it.

This time it still managed to meet my high expectations almost completely. It has a dense, captivating atmosphere and succeeds somehow in making an odd, improbable love affair seem plausible by having two lonesome people meet each other on a prison's dentist chair. Moreover, it is also quite good in creating an erotic tension which is difficult to escape.

Tim Roth gives quite an ambivalent character. After all, Philip Chaney is a pretty violent guy next to being a heartbreaker, or did only prison turn him this violent? On the other hand, Julia Ormond is a rather willing victim out of the disappointment of having been cheated on by her husband quite recently.

I am not so sure, however, whether in reality a young attractive female dentist would really be sent to a prison with male inmates, since this is likely to create some unnecessary uneasiness.

I was not fully convinced by the ending but somehow, such a story is doomed to a bad ending and the movie definitely succeeds to meet this expectation. That much can be revealed.

Overall, an underestimated movie with two celeb actors in top performances.