christopher-underwood

The opening is a fight in the rain and shot at unusual angles. It appears that a detective is doing well with a younger guy seemingly in crouched or squat fighting position but usually on the floor against the wall and over the wall but then suddenly he is all over the detective and he seems to enjoy thumping him to death. It seems this war photography journalist may have been traumatised. Out of the dark our anti hero is in the light and very colourful inside, it is a casino, and he carries on fighting, takes over a gun and kills all them and picks up a large amount of money. A very strange opening and this killer is surely no normal killer or robber. We find out he is not and this gets more and more bizarre and terrible and I find that this is stunning and thrilling but so scary he had seen the horrors of his war and the ending, so awful, is almost unwatchable.

Claudia Cardinale is sexy and sweet and loving but we know there is something wrong almost from the very beginning, during the open credits and we should know what is going on. There is her loveliness and her beautifulness but with her lover and his car and his younger brother only 16 and with his first love but there are those other men. It is well put together and with amazing cinematography and there are wonderful moments, like her singing by the swings, drama with a priest and it is brilliant on the beach even as it begins to get dark, well before the end.

During the opening credits we see this Sicily town, not named, although it is actually, Sciacca. Two sisters are making there way to church, there are not too many people about and it looks hot and we get some close-ups of the younger one and she is, stunning. We later find out that this is Agnese and played my the beautiful Stefania Sandrelli. She was eighteen and in our story only sixteen but after church it is siesta and something goes wrong. Something tells us it might have been a comedy but it is not, but a dark satire. I understand that in Italy, not just in Sicily, that if a woman was raped the man may avoid going to prison if he marries the victim. In law was known as Article 544 and it was only finally abolished in 1981. Pietro Germi had made Divorce Italian Style (1961) and it was loved in many countries, although not in Scilly and they were worried about their social customs and honor law. In this amazing film they were even more unhappy about with this one.