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I wonder why there's no review of this film up to now, not only because it's a very good movie. Beside of that, it features one of the biggest female movie-stars of the 20th century, Gina Lollobrigida, in an early leading role, in the prime of her beauty. To my taste, she appears here much more impressive than in later and better-known roles. The underlying story ('La Romana')was a big success in the USA in the year 1947, and millions of it were sold worldwide, was written by one of the most famous 20th-century-Italian writers, Alberto Moravia. The film itself is a late example of the equally famous Italian neorealistic style, with a depressing finale, regarding its heroine.

The story is set in the Italian fascist era (1935), full of tension, and very atmospheric. The streets, cars and people of the later post-war-Rome (1954, when the film was made)are shown in gritty black-and-white. In a sequence playing within a Cinema, film within film, one sees marching fascist Italian troops on the screen, giving a feeling as if you were a cinema-visitor yourself, and then the propaganda is suddenly cut short by an action of anti-fascists. In spite of a scene like this, the film centers on the individual aspects of the protagonists, rather than on the underlying political aspects.