Main Cast: Gabriella Giorgetti, Giancarlo de Rosa, Vincenzo Ciccora, Alvaro D'Ercola, Romano Labate
Release Year: 1962
Country: IT
Run Time: 100 minutes
Plot
A very young Bernardo Bertolucci already shows his talent in this bleak, 94-minute murder mystery, told in an interesting series of flashbacks. A Roman prostitute has been brutally murdered in a park near the Tiber River and in order to forward their investigation, the police corner a handful of people who were in the park at the time. As they separately tell their versions of why they were there and what they did, their narrations do not necessarily match the images on the screen that do reflect the truth. By the time all the flashbacks have been completed, a real picture of the crime emerges, revealing that one of those in custody is the killer. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
Review
Though it has the trappings of a mystery, Bernardo Bertolucci's debut feature, based on a story by his one-time neighbor Pier Paolo Pasolini, is really a probe of the reliability of narrative. Told in a series of interconnected flashbacks by "persons of interest" in the murder of a prostitute, the crime is easily resolved and the identity of the murder is almost irrelevant, because Bertolucci is much more interested in exploring how each suspect frames his own alibi. Intercut among the various narratives are shots of the victim beginning her day by rising from her bed and staring out onto the morning rain, oblivious to her fate. For a 21-year-old filmmaker, this is a remarkably pessimistic work; the film's opening image, of a sheaf of paper tossed from a car on highway overpass and eventually floating down to the corpse of the prostitute on the grass, to the murderer's cries as he's arrested -- "She was only a whore!" -- we get a sense that life, at least in some quarters of society, is easily disposable. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Cast
Gabriella Giorgetti - Esperia
Giancarlo de Rosa - Nino
Vincenzo Ciccora - Mayor
Alvaro D'Ercola - Francolicchio
Romano Labate - Pipito
Lorenza Benedetti - Milly; Silvio Laurenzi - Homosexual; Allen Midgette - Teodoro, the soldier; Francesco Rulu
The story is very similar to Akira Kurosawa's influential Rashomon, though in an interview Bertolucci denied having seen that film at the time.
The film begins with the brutal image of a prostitute's corpse on the bank of the Tiber in Rome. We then see a series of interrogations of suspects by the police, all of whom are known to have been in a nearby park at the time of the murder. Each suspect recounts his activities during the day and evening, and each narrative serves as a slice of life story. A young man tells the police that he was meeting with priests in order to get a job recommendation, though we see that he and his friends spent the time trying to rob lovers in the park. A gigolo treats both his girlfriends badly. A soldier fails in his attempts at picking up a number of women and falls asleep on a park bench. Two teenage boys share a pleasant afternoon in the company of two teenage girls but end up stealing from a homosexual man in the park. The final flashback depicts the prostitute's murder by a man in clogs who had been interrogated previously and who is finally apprehended at a dance. Each narrative is interrupted by a sudden thunderstorm, which in each case leads to an interlude at the prostitute's apartment as she prepares for her evening.
Critical reception
The film was hailed by international critics as a success by a major new talent. Many Italian critics thought it was very much a Pasolini film, although Bertolucci made a conscious effort to create a distinct individual style.
