La Commare Secca (1962)

When a woman is killed in a park, the police bring in everyone suspected of being there when the incident occurred and question them. One of them is the killer.

Director:

Bernardo Bertolucci

Writers:

Pier Paolo Pasolini (story), Pier Paolo Pasolini (screenplay)

Stars:

Francesco Ruiu, Giancarlo De Rosa, Vincenzo Ciccora

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Francesco Ruiu	...	Canticchia
Giancarlo De Rosa	...	Nino
Vincenzo Ciccora	...	Mayor
Alfredo Leggi	...	Bostelli
Gabriella Giorgelli	...	Esperia
Santina Lisio	...	Esperia's mother
Carlotta Barilli	...	Serenella
Ada Peragostini	...	Maria
Clorinda Celani	...	Soraya
Allen Midgette	...	Teodoro, the soldier
Renato Troiani	...	Natalino
Wanda Rocci	...	Prostitute
Marisa Solinas	...	Bruna
Alvaro D'Ercole	...	Francolicchio
Romano Labate	...	Pipito

Storyline

Near the Tiber river, in a Roman park, a prostitute was killed. The police tracks down people that were inside the park during that night. They are questioned and have to explain why they were there. One of them is the killer.

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Plot Keywords:

petty criminal | park | stolen handbag | dancing | directorial debut | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Release Date:

6 May 1982 (USA)

Also Known As:

La Commare Secca

Filming Locations:

Parco Paolino now Schuster, Ostiense, Roma, Italy

Company Credits

Production Co:

Cinematografica Cervi, Cineriz

Technical Specs

Runtime:

88 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #272.

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Connections

Referenced in In the Shade of the Conformist (2011)

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Soundtracks

Addio addio
Written by Franco Migliacci and Domenico Modugno
Performed by Claudio Villa

User Reviews

The Grim Reaper

Bertolucci's director debut has a quite distinctive Neo-Italian modus operandi, utilizing a multi- narrative structure of portraying different groups of people's idle life, who have been involved into a prostitute murder case. The raw-texture of the film is magnificently preserved and the primitive settings are bold enough to impose an intimate analysis upon various Italian people's mind-state at that particular time. At the age of 22, it was a great opportunity for Bertolucci to be granted the permission to work on his master Pasolini's script for his own career inception. Also it's a gutsy manoeuvre for Pasolini to trust his young disciple to fully excavate his talent, which is regretfully a rare case now in the cinema business.

During the park scenes, the film has a distinctively poignant tableaux scenery, but elsewhere the nonchalant idleness of each segmental piece is astonishingly fragmentary and unable to relate it to the core murder case in any rate, the film sacrifices its more audience arresting detective fodder to pursue a random characterization of Bertolucci's own mark although may at odds with his later more prestigious work.

The film's semblance of Akira Kurosawa's Rasho-Mon (1950) is just a bluff, apart from structure-wise design, the film seldom emits a certain commitment of story-telling, nevertheless it has its own charm once it suits to some specific cinema devotees' appetites, but with a horizontal parallel comparison with other 1960s elite peers, Bertolucci is still in his rookie mode and no one should demand too much for a 22-year-old novice to create a groundbreaking director debut, so after all, it is a thin-on-the-ground treasure and deserves a great thumb-up.