seglora Review of The Materassi Sisters

The Materassi Sisters (1944)

entertaining gentle comedy from golden age of Italian films

[22 April 2016]

This is a gentle comedy based upon a famous Italian novel written a decade earlier by Aldo Palazzeschi. It tells the story of three elderly sisters in Florence who out of compassion invite a young nephew, Remo, to stay in their house and give him everything he wishes for, which is a problem as the young man turns out to be a charming rascal who will ruin them. Two of the duped aunts are played by two acting sisters of certain fame in Italy. However, the actress from this film most known to international audiences is probably Clara Calamai, who played the leading role in a much more famous Italian film from around the same time — "Ossessione" by Visconti. Here she plays a quite different role as a sophisticated South American woman who arrives in Italy from Argentina and takes up with Remo. This is a short film, well acted and with swift tempi. It is amazing that films such as this and "Ossessione" could be produced in an Italy engulfed in the later stages of the war. There is on YouTube a long Italian television version of the novel from 1972, though without subtitles. This older and shorter version on you tube with English hardsubs deserves to be more widely known to an international public.