Following up on the big success of his previous year's Tomorrow Is Too Late, Russian born writer director Moguy offers a powerful episode film about suicide that anticipates the Antonioni segment from Love In The City several years later, and deserves some of the attention that the Antonioni has received.
One is tempted from the similar sounding title and the return of young Pier Angeli in the cast to think of this as a kind of sequel and in fact the character played by Angeli is no longer a schoolgirl innocent of the facts of life but a more mature girl who has been abandoned by her boyfriend, has a baby coming, and has to deal with a cold mother who only cares about the effect a scandal will have on her classy society friends.
Veteran character actor Aldo Silvani who you may recall from several Fellini films centers the structure as the compassionate doctor who teaches the woman we first see trying to kill herself, several lessons about other women with similar problems. As does the brooding black and white cinematography by G R Aldo which emphasizes the sadness that Rome can have at night.Though somewhat expressionist in its style the film also has a neo realist angle in its being based on actual newspaper stories.
The film is optimistic in its concluding affirmation of the will to live and also in a way feminist in focusing on the suffering of women, unlike say Malle's The Fire Within, a 1960s film about a male suicide.
The copy I saw from RAI Tv eliminated the episode with the elderly lady and her dog so I hope to see a more complete version another time.
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