What to expect
Visconti relocates James M. Cain’s plot to roads, kitchens, fields, and working bodies in Fascist Italy. Sensual fatalism meets a material world whose poverty and social restrictions cannot be wished away.
How to ease in
The attraction is immediate; the consequences are not. Notice how each possible route away—the road, money, another companion—changes what freedom means to Gino and Giovanna.
Heads-up
A drifter begins an affair with an innkeeper’s wife, and their desire turns escape into a crime neither can leave behind.
I see the road open whenever Gino is walking alone. The moment desire asks for a permanent life, every landscape becomes another room with a locked door.
Open the note ↓
I see the road open whenever Gino is walking alone. The moment desire asks for a permanent life, every landscape becomes another room with a locked door.
— Momo
Credits & versions
- Screenplay
- Luchino Visconti · Mario Alicata · Giuseppe De Santis · Rosario Assunto · Sergio Grieco
Version map
Where to go next
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