A group of rich young intellectuals hiding from the war in rural Italy play at being partisans when some disbanded soldiers and some refugees ask them for shelter in their villa. The young and aristocratic Andrea strikes up a friendship with a peasant girl, Lucia. Then the Germans suddenly appear, looking for the real partisans, and the time comes for serious decisions.
Cinematography
Gorgeous rural Italy makes doom look like a vacation.
Acting
Lucia Bosè's guarded warmth vs. Mocky's aristocratic fragility.
Direction
Maselli's slow-burn tension: paradise rotting from within.
Director
Francesco Maselli
Lucia Bosè
Lucia
Isa Miranda
Contessa Luisa
Jean-Pierre Mocky
Andrea
Anthony Steffen
Carlo
Leonardo Botta
Ferruccio
Marco Guglielmi
Scattered Soldier's Office
Giuliano Montaldo
Scattered Soldier from Tuscany
Ivy Nicholson
Andrea's Girlfriend
Fernando Birri
Scattered Soldiers' Lieutenant
Franco Lantieri
Scattered Soldier from Veneto
Giulio Paradisi
Terence Hill
Wounded Estray
Manfred Freyberger
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during Italy's postwar neorealist hangover, this bridges poetic glamour and political guilt. Maselli was only 26.
The title 'Abandoned' refers to both the refugees and the intellectuals' abandonment of their own class performance—too late.
IT
