Review by manu-ska

This particular movie, one of the first works of Alberto Lattuada, represents an interesting attempt to build a great noir-story (the story of the love of Ernesto for his sister -that come back from war he found to work in a brothel- and for the beauty of Anna Magnani, the girl of a gangster) in the contest of the italian society (Torino) immediatly after the war. Similarly to the most popular work of Giuseppe De Santis (Riso Amaro), the director tried to use the classical model of american noir story on the social contest of Neorealism: but where De Santis could unify with a great style (and much more money...) the two elemens, Lattuada showed some difficulties to combinate them. In the film there is a point-break that gives up the story: in the first part we have the dramatic return of Ernesto in his Torino after the war (from a german lager, maybe), looking for his sister and his mother, in a city wasted by the allied bombs; the second part is only a nice gangster-story, where the social contest has been maybe forgotten by Lattuada. Even if, with honesty, we have to remember the difficulties that had Lattuada and his crew during the shoot of the movie, we must underline the presence of the two popular actors, Amedeo Nazzari and Anna Magnani, that maybe prevails on the poor conditions of the life in that year (1946). For a similar work see also "Caccia tragica" by G.De Santis Emanuele Scansani