User Reviews

(Some spoilers) Poor Amedeo Nazzari. He's always going to jail in movies for crimes he didn't commit and being separated from loved ones for years, with all the accompanying heartbreak. This happened to him in the 1939 "Montevergine" and in the 1950 "Tormento."

In this 1951 movie he is Pietro Vanzetti, unjustly condemned to fifteen years imprisonment, on the flimsiest of evidence, for the presumed murder of a business associate, Renato Salvi (a slimier-than-thou Vittorio Gassman.) It turns out the man wasn't dead after all but had deliberately vanished abroad to avoid a fraudulent check rap. In the meantime the wife dies, the daughter Luisa (Gianna Maria Canale) grows up not knowing her father and living in utter destitution.

Pietro gets out of jail. There is a schmaltzy but likable little scene between him and a woman he encounters when he realizes that, because of a doll that she had gotten from him years before as a child, that this is really his long-lost daughter. Lachrymose embraces follow. A chance encounter between Pietro and Renato leads the slimeball to attempt to blackmail the man. It's basically, give me money, or I tell your daughter and her fiancé' where you really were all those years. A scuffle ensues. Nazzari kills Gassman. But this time he is absolved of any crime by reason of self-defense. And it is a happy ending for all involved, except the now really dead Pietro. Good riddance, we say.

Nazzari is a convincingly noble sufferer. Canale inspires sympathy as the troubled daughter. Gassman is a skilled man-you-like-to-hiss. Riccardo Freda does a decent directorial job in this standard little genre piece that did not disappoint any of the audiences who went to see it and knew what they were getting.

Along his long popular career,Freda made melodramas: "I Miserabili" (from Victor Hugo),this movie or " Vedi Napoli E Poi Mori " are early;"Les Deux Orphelines" and "Roger La Honte" are late .

"Il Tradimento " was certainly inspired by this French melodrama Jules Mary's "Roger La Honte "(itself another variation on Dumas" "Le Comte DE Monte Cristo" );the structure is the same

-A happy wealthy man ,honest and virtuous .

-Treason and downfall;shame and scandal ;the obligatory long time in prison.

-Return of the hero ,who can avenge himself and clear his name .

Freda's screenplay walks that fine line ,deftly mixing film noir (the drive in the night,the murder mystery down by the river) with pure maudlin melodrama : the first father/adult daughter meeting,a smart trick,hardly lasts one minute;the second one is more daring: dad mistakes his dear one for a prostitute ,but fortunately a doll reverses the situation;the wedding is given a Douglas Sirk treatment.

There are many plot holes though:the reappearance of the villain (Gassmann) :why doesn't our unfortunate hero call the police then and clear his name? how,when he's just been released from jail ,can he have so much money?Why ,after despising the young governess (the Italian Ava Gardner ,Gianna Maria Canale,Freda's wife and favorite actress), do the young man's wealthy haughty parents change their mind overnight?

But it does not matter;melodrama does not have to be plausible ;its purpose is to be a tear-jerker and to make people care for the heroes 'unfair fate;it' s the name of the game ,and Freda ,par excellence the popular movie Italian director follows the rule quite well.And Amadeo Nazzaro ,who was in countless melodramas ,gives an efficient restrained performance (particularly in the first trial scene).