Claudia Cardinale	Carla Ardengo
Paulette Goddard	Maria Grazia
Tomas Milian	her brother Michele
Rod Steiger	Leo Merumeci
Shelley Winters	Lisa
Consalvo Dell'Arti	the bailiff
Adriana Facchetti	Anna, the servant
Aurelio Marconi	Bruno Scipioni

It is the story fo the failure of a Roman middle class family, the Ardengo, once rich but by now in disarrangement. On their patrimony Leo Merumeci has progressively laied the hands, an unscrupulous man who, tired of the relationship with the mature widow Ardengo, becomes the lover of her daughter, Carla, a girl restless to escape from the narrowness in which she lives by now. The intrigue is discovered by Michele, Carla’s brother, which would like to be outraged of it and to defend the family’s honor, but without succeeding. Leo is stronger and stronger and Michele, at the end, nothing can do but to submit his own indecision and the fundamental indifference for what it’s happening around him. The probable marriage between Carla and Leo will allow this one to appropriate of the last wealth of the Ardengo. The widow will be somehow silenced, while Michele will be satisfied of a good job provided him by Leo.

PRIZES

Silver ribbon for the best scenography (1964).

CRITIQUE

It’s the story of a conformist world that let absorb itself by a new aggressive middle class. But the description of the wrong values of the Italian society is realized with too minute elegance and too participated enchantment to be really effective. (P. Mereghetti “Dizionario dei film 1998”, translated by Alice Castoldi)

NOTES

Screen adaptation : Suso Cecchi D’Amico
Dialogues: Francesco Maselli
Customs: Marcel Escoffier
General organization: Oscar Brazzi
Production manager: Sergio Merolle
Music directed by Carlo Savina