Film Forum

Italy, 1954
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Starring Totò, Vera Molnar, Nyta Dover
Approx. 93 min.

Incarcerated for twenty-two years after committing a crime of passion, Salvatore Lojacono (Totò) wins parole and returns to a Rome that he scarcely recognizes—and ultimately decides that prison is preferable. Salvatore learns the hard way that business, romance, and family are all elaborate rackets; even the most sympathetic victim he encounters is just on the hunt for a tax swap. His disenchantment is recounted in flashback, as he begs a judge to lock him back up. (The courtroom scenes were, in fact, shot later by Mario Monicelli, after Rossellini abandoned the project in mid-production, and effectively bridged the patchwork of episodes left behind.) The popular Neapolitan comedian Totò gets plenty of opportunities to mug, but also flexes his dramatic muscles as a man who trusts too tenderly. The scenario was inspired by Chaplin’s MODERN TIMES, but the moral vision is closer to MONSIEUR VERDOUX, another comedy born of the recognition that post-war society has been stripped of sentimental illusions and re-organized under principles of ruthless capitalism indistinguishable from the barbarism it displaced. “It stupefied me with its cruelty and bitterness,” wrote Pierre Kast in Cahiers du Cinema, long a bastion of Rossellini apologetics. “It’s a parable of the purest Swiftian type, unpitying and almost intolerable.”

Courtesy Rialto Pictures.