La traite des blanches

LA TRATTA DELLE BIANCHE (WHITE SLAVE TRADE) is a sensationalized and semi-tawdry melodrama about a prostitution ring. The women in the cast are a who's-who? of sexy Italian actresses of the period: Eleonora Rossi-Drago, Silvana Pampanini, Tamara Lees, and Sophia Loren (Sofia Lazzaro). Marc Lawrence plays white-slaver Marquedi, a kind of two-bit Jimmy Cagney from American 30's gangster films, a genre which this movie attempts to emulate. He recruits trade by sponsoring marathon dance contests. Rival gang warfare over prostitutes, with the girls stuck in the middle of the fray, forms the nucleus of the film. Vittorio Gassman is Michele, a sleazy hanger-on for the vice syndicate. He and Lawrence both vie for Silvana Pampanini's affections. It's a film that is quite watchable and entertaining but which contains very little depth. There are several very lurid episodes including the brutal beating of Eleonora Rossi-Drago. In both Britain and the U.S. the picture was cut by 30 minutes to a 67 minute running time, atrociously dubbed, retitled to GIRLS MARKED DANGER and dumped in the U.S. by distributor I.F.E. into the grind houses and drive-ins. It was not reviewed by any of the major newspapers although Variety documents it twice. Its director, Luigi Comencini, has made quite a few good films in his career including the legendary BREAD LOVE AND DREAMS and BREAD LOVE AND JEALOUSY (FRISKY) with Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian "Boys' Town" film PROIBITO RUBARE, and an excellent adaptation of Elsa Morante's novel LA STORIA. This must qualify as an interesting guilty pleasure and although it is a distinctly lesser effort of his, it bears reviving and re-evaluating just to see this cast of actresses together in one film.

WHITE SLAVE TRADE is a "major motion picture" (Ponti-De Laurentiis co- production) with an all-star cast (Vittorio Gassman, Silvana Pampanini, Eleanora Rossi Drago, Sophia Loren, etc) and the heart of a lurid exploitation cheapie where poverty gives the denizens of an Italian barrio little option except petty crime for men and prostitution for women.

Character actor Marc Lawrence, Hollywood's stereotypical gangster, plays (what else) a sleazy racketeer and pimp who organizes a seaside dance marathon right out of THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY? which goes on for days and days with almost the same rules except that, instead of a sprint race, the exhausted contestants have to do a mean mambo. It's all there -the communal dressing rooms (where one dancer admonishes another, "Lay off the amphetamines"), the "quickies" with partners other than your own, the break-downs (Sophia Loren can't take it anymore and collapses), a mid-dance miscarriage, and, of course, an ironically awful pay-off where the lucky contestants supposedly win a "contract" to perform in America but are actually shipped off to foreign brothels. Some of the gals are in it to get their men out of prison but they needn't have bothered since there's a jailbreak and some vigilante "barrio justice" amid all the love and loss before the end credits roll.

A half-hour was cut for its U.S. release (as GIRLS MARKED DANGER) and no wonder, what with all the premarital sex and living together without benefit of marriage. The morality may be shaky (Vittorio Gassman's a real weasel and former Miss Italy Silvana Pampanini -gorgeous, as always- plays a girl who knows what she has to do to get ahead) but no matter -it's an action-packed potboiler and highly recommended!

As the title 'White Slave Trade' suggests this is a film in which women are depicted as victims and men as ignoble beasts. Director Luigi Comencini would turn up trumps the following year with ' Bread, Love and Dreams' but he would surely put this dismal opus down to experience. The same might be said of Sophia Loren, still billed as Sofia Lazzaro and still 'dubbed', slowly moving up the ranks under the guidance of Carlo Ponti. Needless to say, working with director Vittorio de Sica two years later would be the making of her and give us the actress we all know and love. She has a brief scene with pneumatic Silvana Pampanini, who is 'dubbed' as usual. This scene is of interest as it features the reigning Queen and the Pretender to her throne!

Fascinating performance by Tamara Lees as Clara, whose sexual predilections are decidedly Sapphic but the film really belongs to stalwart Hollywood 'baddie' Marc Lawrence, always good value, who takes sleaze to a new level as Machedi. He has no doubt been cast with a view to the North American market but to no avail as the film was renamed 'Girls marked for Danger', drastically snipped and consigned to cinematic oblivion.

Whichever way you look at it this film is pretty awful but somehow horribly fascinating!