Il sangue dei vinti

That's the question poised at every civil war, and the answer is not easy, since it is inextricably complicated. The American civil war for example was a war of liberation for the slaves of the south, but it cost the lives of 600,000 able-bodied men. The victors call it a war of liberation, but the losers have no say in the matter. The fact is that it is both a civil war and a war of liberation, and no one can bear going into the facts of it with families torn asunder, brothers against brothers, sons against their parents and even sisters and children becoming implicated in ruthless bloodsheds on both sides often killing their own kin without even being aware fit. This film undertakes to go into the worst facts of the liberation civil war after Mussolini's fall, which was not just a war against the Germans but a most traumatic war of Italians against Italians as well.

The frame of the story is made complicated to harbour all the complexities of the civil war. A government police officer comes across a murdered prostitute who has left a small child behind who is too shocked to be able to speak, and he promises to find the murderer at any cost. The whole film revolves around this hopeless search, since our policeman never leaves a case without going to the bottom of it. We get to know his family, and the one member of particular interest is the sister Lucia, who in July 1943 going by bus to Rome with her newly wedded husband gets bombed by a plane of the allies, she survives, but he gets killed, which marks her destiny for a fatal course to the bitter end. Her brother Ettore joins the partisans, so sister and brother become enemies in a Greek tragedy of unfathomable depth of despair. Our policeman finds the daughter he saved from her mother's death 25 years later, she has written a book about children of the war, he believes she must know more than she is willing to tell, and he actually finds her mother's murderer in the end but in a maze of mysterious circumstances, which leaves him morally incapacitated. After having found the solution to the murder he can but give up the case.

It is very much reminiscent in character of Vittorio de Sica's "La Ciociara", but this is in wide format and in colour, and it goes much deeper into the horrors of the partisan war. If you are an Italian and are somewhat familiar with this history, you will leave the film devastated but somehow enlightened by this most bitter of experiences, which in spite of all does have survivors. The one who triumphs is the child opening up to the truth.

The story's thread is based upon a policeman's search for the killer of a prostitute in 1943 Italy, but in reality it is a morality tale about war, fascism, partisans, and the other factions participating in the second world war. The policeman and his family portray what happened in Italy during that period, with families torn apart by a civil war where brother against sister was a sad reality. The acting is excellent. Michele Placido is the policeman who does not take sides in the conflict, concentrating instead on his pursuit of a murderer; one might conclude that his fixation on finding the culprit gives him an excuse to avoid choosing a cause. He gives a measured performance as a young man and as the storyteller some twenty years later. His sister Lucia (Alina Nedelea) is fiery as the vengeful fascist recruit who hates the allies responsible for her husband's death in an air raid, while his brother Ettore (Alessandro Preziosi) is well cast as the partisan. Barbara Bobulova is credible as the murdered prostitute and her twin sister

Non-Europeans may find the various personal conflicts somewhat alien, as Europeans may not always appreciate the currents that underlined the American Civil War, but at its most basic level the film does a good job of revealing what each of the characters feels. The fighting is realistic and never overdone. As one who lived in Italy during that era, I was particularly impressed by the scene where fascist snipers were shooting civilians from a church steeple on the last day of hostilities; I witnessed an almost identical scene, except that the church was a synagogue.

Michele Soavi is the talented director.