Three Forbidden Stories (1952) User Reviews

Makes Disappointing Comparison with Rome Eleven O'Clock

[lchadbou-326-26592 · 5/10 · 29 December 2020]

Veteran director Genina and co writer Brancati teamed up for this episodic and rather drawn out melodrama portmanteau about three women in a hospital. The narratives are pegged to a contemporary news story about a 100 or so women job seekers who were trapped on a collapsing staircase in a Rome office building.That same incident was used by director Giuseppe De Santis and his co writer Cesare Zavattini for a neo realism style investigation into the social conditions behind the catastrophe (Rome Eleven O'Clock).Here it is an arbitrary device to explain why the women are hospitalized and while the viewer is returned to the incident in a surprising way toward the very end, the main focus seems to be on having the women narrate their respective unhappy lives up to this point. Why are these stories considered prohibited or suppressed or neglected? The first deals with the scandal that follows a young girl throughout her life after she has been raped by an older man, a family friend.The third deals with the daughter of a respected intellectual who gets involved with a disreputable stalker (the use of drugs among early 50s Italian youth is hinted at) The least scandalous of the episodes in the middle involves a blonde with a rich young husband who keeps her captive at home, plays sadistic pranks and otherwise neglects her. These plots are interwoven in a sometimes confusing way and the lead up is tedious and verbose. The best aspect of the film is the way a kind of companionship is allowed to develop between the women as they share the way they have been abused by their men, one woman actually gives blood in a transfusion to help the one who is near death.Here it anticipates say Bergman's Brink of Life (Waiting Women) with its portrait of a group of women in pregnancy.

Tragic for its social implications

[jromanbaker · 6/10 · 13 June 2021]

The reasons why a staircase in an unsafe building in Rome, killing and maiming many young women in search of just one job is not examined here, and instead focuses on the lives of three of its survivors. Visually the film is mostly static, giving full rein to too much dialogue instead of conveying the three stories with more action. It caused a bit of a controversy back in the early 1950's and this is because it deals with the terrible, enduring pain of child abuse, drug addiction and a shallow marriage. There is one party scene which predated many European films to come, and there is little else to raise the eyebrows of even the most sedate viewers of today. The opening scene of bustling Rome promises more visually, but as I have said on that level it mostly fails. Eleanora Rossi Drago, an elegant actor of the period is for me the most capable of the cast, and the film ( no English subtitles ) can be seen on YouTube. For those fascinated by Italian films of the 1950's as I am it is well worth a look, as it has been a lost film for decades.

Collapsing stairs, girls in turmoil.

[ItalianGerry · 16 May 2004]

(Some spoilers) Augusto Genina's THREE FORBIDDEN STORIES was based on the same real-life incident portrayed in Giuseppe De Santis's ROME – 11 O'CLOCK, made around the same time. Two hundred female applicants appeared at an old office building in Rome to be interviewed for one position as secretary. All of a sudden, the staircase on which they were lined up collapsed, sending many of the girls to their death and others to the hospital because of serious injuries. This movie examines the lives of three of the girls.

Renata (Lia Amanda) recalls being raped by the friend of her father when she was just a schoolgirl, and the antipathy toward all men that resulted afterwards. She cannot establish any kind of personal relationship in later years and even flees the man she loves. The second girl is Anna Maria (Antonella Lualdi) a poor typist who marries a wealthy but nutty practical joker, whose only interest is ham radio, and who refuses to let his spouse go anywhere and keeps her practically imprisoned. This dingleberry of a husband, with all his bizarre quirks, is effectively portrayed by Enrico Luzi. The final story (actually all the stories are interwoven, rather than sequential) is the most dramatic and shows us the travails of Giulia (Eleonora Rossi-Drago), daughter of a prominent professor (Gino Cervi). She is a drug addict, and her attempts to reform end in tragedy. Hers is the only death among the three girls whose stories we are given.

While never less than engaging, the movie never really soars to any great heights, and the tone set by the director suggests a banal kind of throw-away journalism rather than polished drama. The film was widely shown in the United States in art cinemas in a subtitled version as well as in exploitation houses and drive-ins with English-dubbed dialog. It's hard to understand why this film received a "condemned" rating by the Catholic Legion of Decency at the time, unless it was triggered by the very understated, but very clear, portrayal of the rape of a teenage girl.