Director Raffaelo Matarazzo typically churned out films full of melodrama, pathos, vagaries of fortune often precipitated by the hands of ill-intentioned relations, and human endurance to the hilt. In CHI É SENZA PECCATO you also need to add the injustice of the Italian legal system. As the saying goes, the law has to be blind, and in Maria's case it is certainly blind to the difficulties of her situation.
Basically, beautiful Maria (Yvette Sanson) is having the fairy tale of a life, with a suitor (Stefano) who genuinely loves her and moves to Canada to earn some dough for their future life as a married couple when her sister Lisetta decides to open herself to a not so honorable suitor (Dario) who leaves her pregnant under grandmother Comtessa Lamieri's stern order to discontinue the affair and ignore the existence of the child. This seemingly evil Comtessa convinces Maria to keep the Dario-Lisetta tryst under wraps. Meawnhile, Lisetta falls very ill and dies upon birth, whereupon Lamieri orders one of her female servants to drop Nino, the baby, by a Catholic convent.
Maria, having married Stefamo by proxy, now looks for the baby but the Comtessa keeps manipulating her into keeping everything quiet not to disgrace the already deceased Lisetta. Maria, obviously not the sharpest of knives, goes right along with the Comtessa's suggestion and it is hardly surprising that she is suspected of having abandoned the baby. She duly goes to jail for 18 months and has great difficulty regaining order in her life, now that her name is blackballed by her undeserved stay in the pen.
It is at this point that one male priest speaks the film's title: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone." If memory serves me right, he does not say anything else in the entire film. The church takes the child under its wing and suddenly a veritable miracle occurs: the comtessa grasps the extent of her evil actions and cries. So does Maria, who reclaims the child as soon as she leaves jail and becomes virgin Maria with child via her deceased sister. A true miracle of conception by proxy!
Poor Maria goes through sordid, painful times, becomes ill herself - but, guess what? Good old Stefano has become rich, visits Italy from Canada just in time to catch the bits and pieces of the whole story, realizes that Maria is still virginal, and kind soul that he not only wants to stay married, he is even keen to become stepdad to Nino. How romantic!
This concoction of romantic drama can be quite heady but it does not have much to do with reality. I suppose that in postwar Italy this was the type of film that both reflected hardship and hope when all chips were stacked against one. I am not Italian and I am not of that time, so forgive me for not believing any of it, and remaining mostly interested in the ambiguous angle on the mystery of conception under Catholic faith.
Re the film's merits: competent direction; typical weepy script in Matarazzo's work; good photography enhancing the physical beauty of leads; great performance by Rpsay as the also rather ambiguous comtessa; sentimental performances by Sanson and Nazzari.
Worth watching despite above mentioned shortcomings.
