When a good-natured factory supervisor living in Milan with his Northern wife returns to his native Sicily, a decades' old oath forces him to fulfill a nightmarish obligation.
Acting
Sordi's face: comedy mask sliding into tragedy.
Direction
Lattuada's tonal whiplash, pure sadistic craft.
Cinematography
Sicily as beautiful death trap, sun-drenched doom.
Director
Alberto Lattuada
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released during Italy's economic miracle, it exposes the cost of southern 'backwardness' northern prosperity ignored. The north-south divide is the real antagonist.
Lattuada and Fellini co-directed Variety Lights—this shares that circus DNA, but the clown can't leave the tent. The ending's frozen smile haunted Italian cinema for decades.
IT
