Trahison

A family man (Amadeo Nazzari) gets framed for murder and while he spends the next fourteen years in prison, his wife dies and his young daughter disappears. When he gets out he accidentally runs into his now-grownup girl (mistaking her for a prostitute) but their chances of living happily ever after are jeopardized by the girl's (Gianna Maria Canale) romantic problems and the self-serving heel (Vittorio Gassman) who framed him...

It's a great big pile of improbable hokum filmed in the then-popular "noir style" by genre director Riccardo Freda and another one "inspired by a true story". Luscious Gianna Maria Canale, a former "Miss Italy 1947" runner-up who lost to Lucia Bose, would go on to marry the director and become the reigning queen of Cinecetta peplum splendor. Gassman plays the same type of sleazeball he did in WHITE SLAVE TRADE and gets the same special billing ("with the participation of"). He actually makes a very hissable villain, an opportunity denied most Hollywood heartthrobs back then, the reason being that when they did play "against type" (like Tyrone Power in NIGHTMARE ALLEY), the public didn't care for it. Europe was different, however, and Vittorio's movies are a gas, man!

As usual with the Italian 'noir' films, it's the story that is of the greatest interest, here in a web of human destinies intertwisted and brought together again by the force of circumstances. Amedeo Nazzari for once is in great trouble here and even serves almost 15 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and the one weak spot of the story is perhaps that he is sentenced while the police never finds the dead body, and so there is never any actual evidence of any crime. The 'victim' simply got away, scheming his own faked death in disappointment and revenge on the family whose wife he didn't succeed in seducing, and she is the one who pays the price here. The villain is a young and outrageous Vittorio Gassman, and in all his villainy he is simply outrageously impressing - the best performance of the film. A doll plays an important part in this heart-breaking story, Nazzari spending most of his years in prison by making dolls, and his daughter clinging to the one doll he gave her on her fifth birthday, just before Vittorio Gassman ruined their lives. The cinematography is also at moments impressing, and above all the music is wonderful throughout. This is one of many Italian films in the shadow of the great neo-realistic wave that deserves atention and discovery.