This odd little Italian melodrama packs everything but the kitchen sink into its 100 minutes!
There's a nun, a count, an explosion, a dead child, family secrets and deception, divorce, deaths at sea, a doppelganger, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, fever-induced delusions, counterfeiters, women in prison, an out-of-wedlock child, a prison wedding (complete with nuns singing Avé Maria!), a prison break, a fire, a death-bed admission of love, a baby in peril...All accompanied by the swell of amazingly dramatic music!
If you watch this film don't do what I did and not pay attention to the screen for the first 15 seconds after the opening credits when nobody's speaking. If you do, you'll miss the (voiceover-less) titles that give some exposition on one of the characters and be wondering (like I was) why the start of this film seems oddly like the start of part 2 of something. It is, in fact, a sequel to a 1951 film called "I Figli di Nessuno" or "Nobody's Children."
I'd seen a couple of other '50s melodramas by director/writer Raffaello Matarazzo ("Tormento" and "Chi è Senza Peccato") a while back and they all seem to follow the same basic pattern. Every other tragedy that could possibly befall a human being is thrown at the protagonist who suffers, suffers, and suffers some more, until they are finally allowed a happy or semi-happy ending (often in the last 60 seconds). In this film the misery is shared by two characters.
The aforementioned ultra-dramatic music is actually quite good. There's some nice cinematography here as well. The emotive abilities of the two principal actors rival those of some silent film stars.
Così drammatico!
There's a nun, a count, an explosion, a dead child, family secrets and deception, divorce, deaths at sea, a doppelganger, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, fever-induced delusions, counterfeiters, women in prison, an out-of-wedlock child, a prison wedding (complete with nuns singing Avé Maria!), a prison break, a fire, a death-bed admission of love, a baby in peril...All accompanied by the swell of amazingly dramatic music!
If you watch this film don't do what I did and not pay attention to the screen for the first 15 seconds after the opening credits when nobody's speaking. If you do, you'll miss the (voiceover-less) titles that give some exposition on one of the characters and be wondering (like I was) why the start of this film seems oddly like the start of part 2 of something. It is, in fact, a sequel to a 1951 film called "I Figli di Nessuno" or "Nobody's Children."
I'd seen a couple of other '50s melodramas by director/writer Raffaello Matarazzo ("Tormento" and "Chi è Senza Peccato") a while back and they all seem to follow the same basic pattern. Every other tragedy that could possibly befall a human being is thrown at the protagonist who suffers, suffers, and suffers some more, until they are finally allowed a happy or semi-happy ending (often in the last 60 seconds). In this film the misery is shared by two characters.
The aforementioned ultra-dramatic music is actually quite good. There's some nice cinematography here as well. The emotive abilities of the two principal actors rival those of some silent film stars.
Così drammatico!