Popular reviews

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  Review by teamgal ★★★★

  While De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti and Fellini were all making masterworks, Raffaello Matarazzo was just making garbage. And thank goodness!

  Only in the cinema is there no great difference between high art and trash, if either is raised to its heights, and Matarazzo, a consummate craftsman, throws everything he has at this ludicrous story of treachery, deceit, kidnap, blackmail, madness, and death by landslide. Evil is as pure as goodness and the melodrama flows fast and furious.

  1954, best of

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★★½ 4

  Torna! is peak Raffaello Matarazzo, and it's very nearly perfect. Returning to the 'evil spurned suitor' storyline that made Chains so sinfully good, here Matarazzo cranks his usual level 11 melodrama up to about 231, adding a mad woman kidnapper and multiple landslides to his reliable stew of imagined infidelity, female suffering, and a benevolent god, all to absolutely delicious effect.

  And dreadful snob Giacomo Marini (Franco Fabrizi) is the best Matarazzo villain yet, a man who hates his former love Susanna's (the always radiant Yvonne Sanson) new husband (Amedeo Nazzari as Roberto), ostensibly because he dared take her away, but also because he's a noble, hard worker who has the "courage" (a word Giacomo repeatedly spits with disgust) to…

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  Review by David Conner ★★★★

  If I were in the habit of ranking films, this would have to go near the bottom of the list of the Matarrazzo films I’ve seen so far. However, like pizza and ice cream, even when they’re not great, Matarrazzo melodramas are still pretty darn good. For the first hour, this is almost a beat-for-beat retread of Chains, including the ludricrous plot developments that rely entirely on Yvonne Sanson’s refusal to just fucking tell her husband that she’s being blackmailed. But when the film goes nuts in the third act, it really makes up for the lost time.

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  Review by Bill ★★★½

  STRAIGHT PEOPLE: if your evil cousin claims to be the father of your child, please  take a full 24 hours to cool down before kidnapping said child and putting her in imminent danger!

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  Review by mattheweg ★★★½ 1

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  Review by Leavingfilmstrk ★★★½

  This is my fourth Matarazzo film and my least favorite. The plot was a retread of the CHAINS plot in which a disreputable man with loose ties to a happily married woman blackmails her to regain her love. In both, she is thoroughly innocent, the man is very, very bad, and in what is now my least favorite aspect of these, her husband doesn't believe in her. Plus, the husband uses and abuses their children in the process of punishing his wife.

  The husband, played both times by Amedeo Nazzari, is not a bad man. He's a wronged man, at least in his mind. And I understand that at that time, '40s-'50s-era Italy, the wife, played both times by Yvonne…

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  Review by assayf ★★½

  По сути это история о наваждении и тупости. Все мелодраматические коллизии возведены в куб и доведены до уровня пошлой мыльной оперы. Здесь есть самонадеянный главный герой, который, не смотря на свою видимую крепость и силу, легко выбивается из колеи глупым и очевидно по-идиотски измышленым наветом. Есть злодей, который творит злодейство потому, что стремится добиться очевидно недостижимой цели. Есть главная героиня, которая страдает от того, что когда-то утаила от любимого совершенно невинную информацию. Есть женщина злодея, которая каким-то загадочным образом оказывается одержима своей страстью. Есть стойкое нежелание выслушивать оправдания и включать разум. Есть страдания ребёнка, становящегося жертвой жестокой тупости взрослых, казалось бы, людей. Есть даже элементы нуара для подхлёстывания напряжения. В итоге получается утомительное зрелище, которое было бы совершенно невыносимо смотреть, сохранись оригинальная цветная версия фильма. Слава богу, что хоть так...
  Пятый фильм Матараццо с Сансон и Надзари.

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  Review by Erin ★★

  If there's one thing I've learned from watching Italian movies, it's that you should never trust Franco Fabrizi.

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  Review by Jordon ★★★½

  One of the better italian melodramas I’ve seen. The conniving antagonist spins his lies every which way. Madness keeps building up. The last few scenes are pretty bananas. A fun one.

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  Review by Armando ★★★½

  More melodrama from Raffaello Matarazzo and this one is fairly predictable & very exaggerated. Wasn’t too into it as I have with the others from this era, but it’s worthy of a watch.

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  Review by Mark Edgington ★★

  I'm sorry, there's a limit, and this film pushed me past it. I've had grudging respect for some of the other Matarazzo melodramas, but this is everything bad about melodrama. They might as well have painted a handlebar mustache on the villain and tied Yvette Sanson on the train tracks. "Just imagine it was all a nightmare, and you wake up and everything is the same as it was before!" Yes, this describes the movie quite adequately, thank you very much.

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  Review by Jess McGrath ★★★½

  Love me some Raffaello Matarazzo. The man knew melodrama, and knew his audience wanted melodrama, so he delivered by the shovelful. My latest indulgence was his TORNA! (’54). Our favorite suffering couple Amedeo Nazzari and Yvonne Sanson are back for another round of joy and then misery. Fun stuff. And I assure you, there is no way you could ever predict some of this third act insanity.