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DOV'E' LA LIBERTA' ...? |
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| CAST
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| PLOT
The barber Salvatore Lojacono has been condemned to a long punishment for having killed a man, that he thought to have tried to seduce his honorable wife. Put again in liberty after twenty-two years, he has to think to fix his domicile, since he is submitted to the surveillance of the police and his wife has died. First he finds himself in a dancing but the place is closed; he takes lodging at a landlady, but he has to go away from there too. Wandering tor the city he meets the brothers of his wife, become rich dealers: they immediately think to use him for their puposes and they welcome him cordially. Coming in contact with their world he learns many hidden background not edifying: his wife was not that holy woman that he imagined. She had had for lover the man he killed, and his relatives were informed about the intrigue. His brother-in-laws have enriched during the war appropriating of the Hebrews goods. Now they would like to push Salvatore to suppress a Hebrew survivor; then they would let marry him the joung maid Agnesina seduced by the mother-in-law’s brother. But Salvatore, still mocked by the life, discovers that the youth is pregnant just of one of his brother-in-laws. The disgust for that bleak lie, nauseated by what he has seen and understood, Salvatore chooses his liberty, that interior, mental. He decides to return at all costs in prison; returning there stealthily he is discovered and fined. Then he attacks and hurts his lawyer and gets his covered sentence. CRITIQUE “(...) Then, they are observed, in varied phases of the film, light dribbles of style; and a big stain is the last scene in court, of vulgar farcical intonation (...); but the representation is all often marked by an urgent expressive ownership. “Dov’è la libertà...?” is an original work, certain not unworthy of the strong artist that has signed it (...)”. (M. Clemente, “Filmcritica”, n. 36 of May 1954, translated by Alice Castoldi). A prickly but uneven comedy: it was initiated by Rossellini, it was ended by Monicelli and finally manipulated by the producers; a pessimist and philosophist apologue went out from there, unequal in its rhythm (too much farcical the court scene) but with not a bit acute and prickly notations. (P.Merghetti “Dizionario dei Film 1998”, translated by Alice Castoldi) NOTES Rossellini left the production and some sequences filmed the year after by Mario Monicelli, while the final shots are signed by Fellini. The film was also manipulated by the producers Ponti and De Laurentiis in the attempt to make it less bitter. |
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