La Commare Secca [Criterion Collection]

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci Bernardo Bertolucci

Overview

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.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/01/2005
UPC:	0037429202425
Original Release:	1962
Source:	Criterion Collection
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:33:00
Sales rank:	24,938

Special 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

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Francesco Ruiu	Canticchia
Giancarlo de Rosa	Nino
Vincenzo Ciccora	Mayor
Gabriella Giorgetti	Esperia
Alvaro D'Ercola	Francolicchio
Romano Labate	Pipito
Lorenza Benedetti	Milly
Silvio Laurenzi	Homosexual
Allen Midgette	Teodoro, the soldier
Francesco Rulu	Actor
Francesco Rula	Actor
Marisa Solinas	Actor
Piero Piccioni	Composer
Carlo Rustichelli	Composer

Technical Credits

Bernardo Bertolucci

Pier Pasolini

Bernardo Bertolucci	Director,Screenwriter
Tonino Cervi	Producer,Producer
Pier Pasolini	Screenwriter

Scene Index

Side #1 --
1. Opening Credits/Bank of the River [3:49]
2. Luciano Maialetti [6:52]
3. Thieves [8:21]
4. Bustelli [12:07]
5. "Listen, I Do As I Please" [4:17]
6. Teodoro Cosentino [9:23]
7. Park Bench [4:43]
8. A New Suspect [1:49]
9. A Lead? [3:45]
10. Pipito and Francolicchio [11:43]
11. Gnocchi and Potatoes [6:14]
12. "It's All Because of That Lighter" [4:58]
13. Witness [7:40]
14. "She Was a Whore!" [5:01]
15. Epilogue/Closing Credits [2:16]
16. Color Bars [:01]

Menu

Side #1 --
   Play the Movie
   Chapters
   Bertolucci Interview
      Play
   Subtitles
      On
      Off

Editorial Reviews

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.

All Movie Guide - Tom Wiener