A prostitute is robbed and murdered. A fourteen-year-old girl (Laura Vivaldi) sees a suave gigolo come out of the hotel where the murder occurred. She has a schoolgirl crush on the handsome man though, so instead of reporting the crime she befriends him. Only after he takes her out for a drive, kisses her, and the nearly brains her with a glass bottle, does she go to the police. But they don't believe her because among other things she wears lipstick.
This is an early neo-realist social drama by criminally underrated Italian director Damiano Damiani. It is somewhat similar to the British film "Tiger Bay" and the William Castle film "I Saw What You Did", but it has far more social commentary. The gigolo has a high society girlfriend who refuses to believe he could be guilty. The girl's mother is much more concerned about her crumbling relationship with a married man than she is about her daughter. The cops, meanwhile, are much less worried that the girl might have witnessed a murder than that her virginity might have been compromised (they even insist that a doctor inspect her!). Ironically, next to the girl, the most sympathetic character might be the alleged killer (who the viewer doesn't know FOR SURE is guilty). There's also a quite touching scene where the other prostitutes rally around their fallen comrade and protest the police inaction. Clearly, Damiani identifies with the people on the margins of society, whoever they may be.
This movie no doubt influenced Bernardo Bertolucci's film "The Grim Reaper" (which is also centered around a murdered prostitute) a few years later. But of course Bertolucci would become a respected art director while Damiani is most famous internationally for "Amityville Horror 2". Damiani's most successful social drama, meanwhile, (only very recently re-released) was "The Most Beautiful Wife", which launched the international career of Ornella Muti. Vivaldi is easily as in good in this as Muti is in "The Most Beautiful Wife", but whereas Muti was an extraordinarily beautiful fourteen-year-old girl when she made that movie, Vivaldi was a more ordinary looking one, which may be one of the reasons she didn't have nearly the same kind of career. It's really funny how the cinema works sometimes.
This movie is VERY hard to find and the version I saw had half the English subtitles cropped out, but I would certainly recommend seeing it if you get a chance.
