Without Pity

When Angela boarded the rain for a better life she never knew where it might lead her. She witnesses a GI being wounded, while chasing a criminal and helps him to a doctor. When she is picked up as a girl of loose morals and put into a convent with other such woman, all seems lost. However her luck seems to go from bad to worse when she falls for the GI and tensions spill over.

To say a film is a masterpiece is very difficult in modern times. With so much around to compete with it, you find it hard to justify the tag. This film is in my opinion, most certainly a masterpiece and deserves to be very widely seen. We have heard of Rome Open City, Rossellini and De Sica but not of this film. Think of it like this, the film is a lost master work from its writer Federico Fellini and proved that Alberto Lattuada could direct.Giulietta Masina (Fellini's future wife) makes a role that would have been empty, rounded and human. Kitzmiller is excellent in a stand out performance. He would have had to have been brave to perform it and in the way he did, very brave. Carla Del Poggio deserves the really praise, she is the films heart and without her you are empty and outside of the frame.

So to the reason the film works so well... In no uncertain terms it is due to the frankness of its content. We have at its heart a simple enough story but via this we are introduced to the horrors of racism, prostitution and post war corruption. Now this could have become difficult to tell but it is the compellingly told nature of the story that is key. Lattuada could craft a film of weight and style without having to mix explosive topics but he does it so well. Mixing styles and form but also exploring the fragile state of Italy of the time. Having a delicate tale of inter-racial love built in the core of the work has us connect with the leads and the world they inhabit. We want them to love each other and we want to know what it is that has created this space and this place. So as they are faced with ever greater suffering, we feel their hurt and link it to pathos of the surround.Some would ask why this was not seen for so long? This was due to an American cinema ban. It seemed that the film was too much for the censor then and might still pull up some very difficult things today. It is still very challenging today simply because it takes head on subjects often pushed to the side. It takes its subjects so seriously as to make you sit up and with such an unflinching eye that you are in awe.