Raf Vallone	Francesco Dominici
Lucia Bosé	Lucia Silvestri
Folco Lulli	Agostino Bonfiglio
Maria Grazia Francia	Maria Grazia Dominici
Dante Maggio	Salvatore Capuano
Michele Rinaldini	the marshal
Vincenzo Talarico	Dominici's counsel for defence
Piero Tordi	don Gaetano Bertarelli
Attilio Torelli
Giacomo Sticca
Maddalena Di Trocchio
Giuseppina Corona
Angelina Chiusano	Bofiglio's mother
Tommaso Di Gregorio
Giovanni Paparella
Vincenzo Jannone
Vincenzo Vaticone
the shepherds of the region “Quercie” of Fondi

Returned from the war, a shepherd (Vallone) disocvers that his family has been reduced in poverty by an usurer (Lulli) and he decides to take the law into his own hands. Portrait of an archaic world, but marked by the history, with a staging in the Brecht way, absolutely original in the Italian cinema of the period. The wise use of the depth of field, the use of the voice off in first person and its actors’ estranging acting make of it a stylistically refined work, without neverthless suffocate the emotional aspects of the story. It has been played near Fondi, De Santis’s native country. De Santis has collaborated to the screen-play, with Libero De Libero and the future directors Gianni Puccini and Carlo Lizzani. (P. Mereghetti “Dizionario dei film 1998”, translated by Alice Castoldi)