The melodramas of Rafaello Matarazzo were dismissed by the critics but lapped up by the paying public. This is a real tear-jerker in true Hollywood mode featuring pneumatic former Miss Italia Silvana Pampanini in a type of role in which I never thought to see her. She plays a woman who makes sacrifices and endures hardships in order to adopt a girl who has become emotionally dependant on her. She earns her living as a 'hostess' and as someone reminds her, it will always be tougher for 'women like you'. Franco Fabrizi plays an odious pimp who is a hindrance to her and Camillo Pilotto is an understanding official who is a help. Marcello Mastroianni turns up as a former love. This actor's breakthrough roles are still a few years away and although he is far from being the finished article his natural sensibility shines through. The film belongs of course to Pampanini although I am sorry to learn that her voice was invariably dubbed. The final scene when she realises that her sacrifices have not been in vain, to the accompaniment of Renzo Rossellini's lush score, cannot fail to move.
3 Reviews
From prostitution to saintliness
dbdumonteil28 April 2010
This Italian movie faithfully follows the rules of melodrama and can be considered a minor success .So all these who love "Madame X" ,"The Old Maid" "Only yesterday" "To each his own" ,you could do worse than pick up this small gem of the genre.
Two trains collide :who said that rail was a safe mode of transport?A young Pole girl becomes an orphan and a semi-whore,and Mara (Silvanna Pampanini) would like to adopt her.Alas she lives a life of sin and she and the nuns who take care of the girlie are worlds apart.Soshe decides she would start over, leaving her pimp (Franco Fabrizi) behind and trying to get a job,which is no easy task.No sooner has she found work in a factory than her former lover (who gave her a child who died when she was young:hence her longing to have another one) turns up.He is played by Marcello Mastroianni who was supporting at the time.Of course he thinks that the new child is his own and as his wife cannot conceive...
This "slave to sin" (check the title) suffers ,suffers and suffers ;every time she seems to work it out,every time something happens .The movie is a long flashback told by an old woman who stole a medallion in the hotel where she works as a linen maid .
In the American melodrama ,the woman who reneges on her love (or on her/a child) often makes up for her painful experience with a happy one in business ("Only yesterday""Mildred Pierce" " imitation of life" "to each his own").The European melodrama (this movie,and French ones such as Ophuls's "Sans Lendemain" or Valentin's "L'Entraineuse" is rather on the "back street " side :the heroine has lead a life of sin so she must redeem her soul the hard way.
Two trains collide :who said that rail was a safe mode of transport?A young Pole girl becomes an orphan and a semi-whore,and Mara (Silvanna Pampanini) would like to adopt her.Alas she lives a life of sin and she and the nuns who take care of the girlie are worlds apart.Soshe decides she would start over, leaving her pimp (Franco Fabrizi) behind and trying to get a job,which is no easy task.No sooner has she found work in a factory than her former lover (who gave her a child who died when she was young:hence her longing to have another one) turns up.He is played by Marcello Mastroianni who was supporting at the time.Of course he thinks that the new child is his own and as his wife cannot conceive...
This "slave to sin" (check the title) suffers ,suffers and suffers ;every time she seems to work it out,every time something happens .The movie is a long flashback told by an old woman who stole a medallion in the hotel where she works as a linen maid .
In the American melodrama ,the woman who reneges on her love (or on her/a child) often makes up for her painful experience with a happy one in business ("Only yesterday""Mildred Pierce" " imitation of life" "to each his own").The European melodrama (this movie,and French ones such as Ophuls's "Sans Lendemain" or Valentin's "L'Entraineuse" is rather on the "back street " side :the heroine has lead a life of sin so she must redeem her soul the hard way.
The ordeals of adoptation for a fallen woman in the grips of cruel fortune's hand
clanciai6 January 2022
They could never make films like this in Hollywood, not even by the sentimental expert German master Douglas Sirk, as Matarazzo's films usually penetrates deep beyond all superficiality and never use artifice or cheap tricks to force out tears of his audience. He is actually bluntly and almost ruthlessly realistic and straight-forward and never builds up any towering set-ups for releasing an overwhelming epitome. He tells his story straight, and his stories are always deeply human, as complex as human life, and he never shirks at critical moments, whereas in Hollywood and European films there would be some constructed dramaturgy to reach the point. Matarazzo always hits the point directly, ignoring possible shocks. It's a great story, which is entirely told in flashbacks, and not in one sequel, but almost in fragments, one link eventually catching up with another.
In a train accident, two trains actually colliding in a tunnel, a Polish refugee family is lost, while their small daughter, three years old, just before that, has followed Silvana Pampanini to the cafeteria from pure natural affection, and they survive while the Polish parents cannot even be identified. She has lost a baby three years earlier, so she feels this baby as a gift by providence as a possible compensation. The problem is, that she is in the immoral profession, and Italian law forbids such to adopt children. Franco Fabrizi is the pimp and the villain, while Marcello Mastroianni eventually appears as the father of her lost child, and he makes a very sensitive and sympathetic appearance, in contrast to all the other scumbags around her. Renzo Rossellini provides perfect music as usual, nothing could be said against the cinematography either, while the one you will remember here is actually Marcello Mastroianni for his precarious delicacy, still early in his career, very young, but all the more convincing.
In a train accident, two trains actually colliding in a tunnel, a Polish refugee family is lost, while their small daughter, three years old, just before that, has followed Silvana Pampanini to the cafeteria from pure natural affection, and they survive while the Polish parents cannot even be identified. She has lost a baby three years earlier, so she feels this baby as a gift by providence as a possible compensation. The problem is, that she is in the immoral profession, and Italian law forbids such to adopt children. Franco Fabrizi is the pimp and the villain, while Marcello Mastroianni eventually appears as the father of her lost child, and he makes a very sensitive and sympathetic appearance, in contrast to all the other scumbags around her. Renzo Rossellini provides perfect music as usual, nothing could be said against the cinematography either, while the one you will remember here is actually Marcello Mastroianni for his precarious delicacy, still early in his career, very young, but all the more convincing.
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