Anna gets thrown out of her house by her wicked stepmother, her fiancé gets tossed in jail for a murder he didn't commit, she gets pregnant, and her father has a heart attack. And that's just the beginning. Matarazzo puts the "drama" in "melodrama" and at first it's too ridiculous to handle. But then it gets so ridiculous that it's hilarious. And then it gets even more ridiculous and becomes kind of awesome. Some have compared Matarazzo to Sirk, but I see little of that subversive quality here, just pandering (his films were wildly popular in Italy, far more so than neorealism). But it's effective pandering, and you can't help getting invested it, despite -- or perhaps because of -- the absurdity of it all. Yvonne Sanson plays the martyr to the hilt, crying and fainting with all her heart. While I can't say this movie is "good," it is entertaining. I'm cautiously looking forward to the next two in the set, which are supposed to be even more over-the-top.
4 Reviews
Attention Lana: You've Got Competition!
museumofdave29 July 2020
Tormento can be purchased as part of a Criterion Eclipse Set entitled "Raffaello Matarazzo's Runaway Melodramas," and they do indeed runaway and sometimes get lost--but no matter: the camera always returns to the suffering heroine, Anna Ferrari (lushly played by Yvonne Sanson) who endures heartbreak and loss each time she turns around, and sometimes before she gets a chance to get her breath--just as she loses a job, she gets pregnant and her well-meaning hubby ends up for twenty in the slammer--for a crime we know he didn't commit. This is the sort of 50's weepy stuff churned out by the big studios in 30's and 40's Hollywood, often starring Lana Turner who always wore her grief very well and suffered spectacularly in Technicolor. Just as Lana often did, Anna loses the custody of her child, this time to a Stepmother From Hell, an unforgiving, dessicated old thing that probably eats baby turtles for breakfast. Will Carlo (perfectly played by Errol Flynn look-a-like Amedeo Nazzari) find a Get Out Of Jail Free card? Will the grandchild escape the nasty clutches of the Wicked Stepmother? Will Anna manage to convince the nuns she belongs outside in the sunshine? Your tolerance for this well-made but often risible melodrama depends a good deal on your enjoyment of the well-crafted weeper.
Marriage in prison with consequences
clanciai17 September 2020
How much torment can you endure without feeling forced by circumstances and the cruelty of others to commit suicide? That's the question that imposes itself here as you are initiated in the grossest possible injustice imposed by circumstances. The man is sentenced to 20 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, and his wife happens to have an atrociously cruel stepmother, who commands her life and forces her into a penitentiary for the sake of her child with the man, although they are married. Yet none of these victims ever enter any thought of anything like suicide. They just endure the unendurable and struggle on with no illusions of any false hopes but just accept the imposed facts as they are. Anna (Yvonne Sanson, as beautiful as Isa Miranda,) rebel heroically indeed with all possible force of a victimised woman, and there is one bright ray of hope, as a former colleague of hers from the conservatory discovers her as a dishwasher and tries to do something about the situation, but he is the only one, a wonderful musical intermission. The stepmother remains a hopeless case in her inhumantiy and is incredibly consistent about it, and the plot is questionable indeed and, as so many of Matarazzo's films, more operatically dramatic than quite realistically convincing in its affected exaggerations. But Matarazzo's direction is as always superb, and the actors are acting their hearts out without overdoing it, and you can't tire of Yvonne Sanson's beauty..
Continuous bad luck and pain
jarrodmcdonald-15 March 2024
Warning: Spoilers
I'm not sure if people enjoy these extreme Italian melodramas because they get some sort of odd pleasure seeing people suffer, and these characters do suffer a lot, or if it's just because every now and then a viewer needs a good emotional release (a good old-fashioned cry). I suppose if that's true, it's cathartic on some level.
Previously, the two leads- Amedeo Nazzari and new star Yvonne Sanson- had a smash hit with CATENE (1949), directed by Raffaello Matarazzo. The three were quickly teamed up again for this follow-up, which no surprise, became the second most successful hit at the box office during the 1949-50 season, after CATENE.
As the story begins, the main characters are not married, but they are definitely in love. Sanson plays a woman who is beholden to her father's new wife (Tina Lattanzi). When she decides to leave the family house to marry Nazzari, though the union is frowned upon, things don't go as planned. Nazzari is a struggling businessman who has just had a violent fight with his partner (shades of what happened in CATENE) and the partner dies soon afterward. Nazzari is blamed. Unlike the action in CATENE, Nazzari is innocent this time but still sent to jail.
As a result of the incarceration, Sanson cannot be with Nazzari. She must go on without him, but as fate would have it, she finds out she's pregnant. Moving on with the rest of her life won't be easy. She tries to return to her family's house, but the wicked stepmother (shades of Cinderella to be sure) forces her to give up the baby...and then Sanson must go into some sort of women's reformatory.
So now we have both lovebirds in their respective prisons, and the life of an illegitimate child at stake. Of course Sanson will try to convince a nun who oversees her at the reformatory that she is ready to return to society a short time later, in order to reclaim her child who has been sick. Meanwhile, Nazzari appeals his conviction and hopes to be released.
It occurs to me while watching TORMENTO that what Matarazzo is doing is taking a simple fairy tale, in this case the Cinderella tale, and denying the couple a happily-ever-after until much continuous bad luck and pain engulfs the characters to the point their relationship seems impossible...until some kind of miraculous reprieve and reunion near the end.
Most of the entanglements occur not through the characters' own doings, but because circumstances work against them. It makes the audience root for their ultimate redemption and triumph even more.
As I said these tear-jerking sentimental melodramas were very popular in the postwar period among the Italian public. Though Matarazzo's heightened stories were initially frowned upon by contemporary critics subsequent re-evaluation has classified them as a form of "appendix neorealism" worthy of veneration.
A key theme in these stories is about the main characters trying to improve themselves despite considerable odds. They are often torn apart by the jealousy and hypocrisy of others. The crises seem to multiply and reach a crescendo in a way that is truly operatic. Yet, somehow (amazingly) the stories are still grounded by the director's ability to add in realistic details.
Previously, the two leads- Amedeo Nazzari and new star Yvonne Sanson- had a smash hit with CATENE (1949), directed by Raffaello Matarazzo. The three were quickly teamed up again for this follow-up, which no surprise, became the second most successful hit at the box office during the 1949-50 season, after CATENE.
As the story begins, the main characters are not married, but they are definitely in love. Sanson plays a woman who is beholden to her father's new wife (Tina Lattanzi). When she decides to leave the family house to marry Nazzari, though the union is frowned upon, things don't go as planned. Nazzari is a struggling businessman who has just had a violent fight with his partner (shades of what happened in CATENE) and the partner dies soon afterward. Nazzari is blamed. Unlike the action in CATENE, Nazzari is innocent this time but still sent to jail.
As a result of the incarceration, Sanson cannot be with Nazzari. She must go on without him, but as fate would have it, she finds out she's pregnant. Moving on with the rest of her life won't be easy. She tries to return to her family's house, but the wicked stepmother (shades of Cinderella to be sure) forces her to give up the baby...and then Sanson must go into some sort of women's reformatory.
So now we have both lovebirds in their respective prisons, and the life of an illegitimate child at stake. Of course Sanson will try to convince a nun who oversees her at the reformatory that she is ready to return to society a short time later, in order to reclaim her child who has been sick. Meanwhile, Nazzari appeals his conviction and hopes to be released.
It occurs to me while watching TORMENTO that what Matarazzo is doing is taking a simple fairy tale, in this case the Cinderella tale, and denying the couple a happily-ever-after until much continuous bad luck and pain engulfs the characters to the point their relationship seems impossible...until some kind of miraculous reprieve and reunion near the end.
Most of the entanglements occur not through the characters' own doings, but because circumstances work against them. It makes the audience root for their ultimate redemption and triumph even more.
As I said these tear-jerking sentimental melodramas were very popular in the postwar period among the Italian public. Though Matarazzo's heightened stories were initially frowned upon by contemporary critics subsequent re-evaluation has classified them as a form of "appendix neorealism" worthy of veneration.
A key theme in these stories is about the main characters trying to improve themselves despite considerable odds. They are often torn apart by the jealousy and hypocrisy of others. The crises seem to multiply and reach a crescendo in a way that is truly operatic. Yet, somehow (amazingly) the stories are still grounded by the director's ability to add in realistic details.
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