"Grattacieli" ("Skyscrapers") is a pedestrian Italian giallo, a whodunnit set in a New York high rise apartment. Made in 1943, during the war, it seems to be set in the year 1933, judging by the stock shots we get of two different movie theatre marquees, one of the Strand where the 1933 "Havana Widows" with Joan Blondell is playing and a second one of a B.F. Keith's theatre where the 1933 film "Only Yesterday" is displayed. The rest is confined to an apartment and a terrace overlooking the city. At a party a drunken guest falls from the terrace and is killed. That is he falls or is pushed to his death. The victim is an obnoxious lecher type played by the fine Paolo Stoppa, who is the only good thing about the film before he is written out of the story. Most of it involves the investigations of a police inspector(Luigi Pavese)to ascertain who the murderer was. By the end the murderer is uncovered and is killed too. The whole thing moves along so mechanically one can hardly care much. The original play this was based on, written by Guglielmo Giannini, who also directed this film adaptation, had some popular success at the time.
Review of Grattacieli
