UNWANTED WOMEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 713, 13 March 1953, Page 19

UNWANTED WOMEN

(Navona- London Films) T has been difficult this Set to get away from women-luck-less women, dedicated women, or just plain womanly women (if Miss Lana Turner doesn’t. mind being placed in the last category). But I cannot complain-such being the nature of things; and .of womeh-that there has been any Jack of' diversity. I have been offered \ the Technicolored Escape that Hollywood imagines we so frequently desire; there has also been (from the same quarter) an invitation to gentle melancholy, and a Hungarian director named Geza Radvanyi has kicked me savagely in fhe. spiritual solar plexus. Unwanted Women (or "Women Without Names," as it was originally titled) is one of the ranker growths of the postwar Italian cinema. Open City, Vivere in Pace, Bicycle Thieves set high stand-ards-indeed, these and other films of the same vintage gave the Italian film industry an "unchallenged ‘Téad in the immediate post-war years. Latély, however, thére have "been indications that Italian producers (perhaps with their eyes on the inhibited Anglo-Saxon world and their ears-tuned to the soft whisper of hard currency) are prepared to lace their realism with a strong infusion of sex. Filmgoers may have noticed this tendency in Bitter Rice, and they will find it again in Unwanted Women. Indeed, if they read the advertisements, they will. expect to. find it.. Yet Unwanted Women. (like Bitter Rice) needs no.such adventitious assistance to stir olf emotions or command our attentién. It puts a finger on one of the crumbling ‘places in our civilisation and its theme, drawn, from the almost hopeless world of a‘ DP detention camp for women, strikes directly at the human conscience. "There is little hope in it, and lessshappiness, but it,is not in the sexy. posturings of some ‘of the cast that the dramatic relief is to be found. These occasional ‘passages’ jarred "on me, as I imagine they will jar on anyone whose sympathies have been engaged by the plight of these unfortunates. What relief there. is comes from the realisation that even : the rejected and the hopeless there is Still comradeship and kindpe gente saving graces, are underlined ge and tenderly" by Radvanyi in numerous- ‘moving passages, but elsewhere the’ film suffers from the sins of over-emphasis-the _Tows are rowdier than they need to be, the rain wetter, the soundtrack more cacophonic. One is bludgeoned rather than knifed. And, yet, on balance the good preponderates. For this much of the credit goes to the cast. I did not greatly enjoy Simone Simon’s gamine part, but Valentina Cortesa’s portrayal of the young Yugoslav who tries desperately (and unsuccessfully) to break out of camp so that her baby may not be born in a prison, was tender and touching. Francoise Rosay, as a worldly-wise countess whom the war has. also left without means of identification or livelihood, contributes the best-sustained of the supporting roles, but the most engaging character in the story was, I thought, the camp commandant (Mario Ferrari). His brusque sympathy for his charges-

which seems to spring from the knowledge that he, being a man under authority, is as much a prisoner of circumstances as they are-is generally much more interesting to observe than are the more. uncomplicated emotions of the’ women themselves,