A multi national cast of female stars (Silvana Mangano, Jeanne Moreau, Carla Gravina, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Vera Miles) leads the cast of this somewhat depressing war drama that shows what happens when a small Yugoslavian town exiles them for alleged affairs with one Nazi soldier. They are red to the town border in shame and must find a way of surviving out in the cold with nowhere really to go, stealing food, killing German supporters who attempt to rape them and in one girl's case, attempting suicide, claiming that she never made love with the soldier in question.
The atrocities are not just the germans, but the way these women are mistreated even by their own people. Eventually, they join an underground organization, working to destroy the Nazis and eventually ending up back in their own village. the women really gets so deep into their roles that it took a while for me to even recognize Miles or Bel Geddes, the two American actresses among the cast.
There's also Van Heflin as the brother of one of the women who brutally has her haircut in shame, a predicament that all the other women go through to further humiliate them. Richard Basehart is also very good as one of the men that one of the girls falls in love with while working in the underground. Solid direction by Martin Ritt goes out of its way to show the despair of what occupied countries on the European mainland had to go through under Nazi control, and it certainly is emotionally wrenching at times. But well worth seeing as just one of a billion stories that war creates and the humans it destroys even while they live.
The atrocities are not just the germans, but the way these women are mistreated even by their own people. Eventually, they join an underground organization, working to destroy the Nazis and eventually ending up back in their own village. the women really gets so deep into their roles that it took a while for me to even recognize Miles or Bel Geddes, the two American actresses among the cast.
There's also Van Heflin as the brother of one of the women who brutally has her haircut in shame, a predicament that all the other women go through to further humiliate them. Richard Basehart is also very good as one of the men that one of the girls falls in love with while working in the underground. Solid direction by Martin Ritt goes out of its way to show the despair of what occupied countries on the European mainland had to go through under Nazi control, and it certainly is emotionally wrenching at times. But well worth seeing as just one of a billion stories that war creates and the humans it destroys even while they live.