La Commare Secca [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

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, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Vistavision)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Features:
  • New, restored high-definition Digital transfer
  • Exclusive new video interviews with director Bernardo Bertolucci
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • A new essay by film critic David Thompson

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• 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

• Director:

  Bernardo Bertolucci

• Producer:

  Antonio Cervi

• Screenwriter:

  Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini

• Composer (Music Score):

  Piero Piccioni, Carlo Rustichelli

• Editor:

  Nino Baragli

• Costume Designer:

  Adriana Spadaro

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, Rovi