Toth Database - Cinema

The Sbandata

Year: 1955

Duration: 78 min

Color: B/N

Gender: Dramatic

Director: Francesco Maselli

Manufacturer: C.V.C. 

Photograph: Gianni Di Venanzo

Music: Giovanni Fusco

Scene: Gianni Polidori

Interpreters and characters:

Lucia Bosè: Lucia

Jean-Pierre Mocky: Andrea

Isa Miranda : Countess Luisa

Leonardo Botta: Ferruccio

Antonio De Teffè: Carlo

Goliarda Wisdom: Aunt of Lucia

Ivy Nicholson: Isabella

Mario Girotti: Appearance

Plot

In the summer of 1943, Countess Luisa and her son Andrea left Milan to escape the bombing and retreated to their country villa, where they were home to two of Andrea's peers, his cousin Carlo, the son of a fascist hierarch who had fled to Switzerland, and his friend Ferruccio, son of an army officer engaged in war. The three young men spend time in the sweet doing nothing, sunbathing along the river, only vaguely aware of the ongoing conflict, thanks to broadcasts of Radio London. They begin to become aware of the seriousness of the situation when displaced people arrive from the city and Andrea, out of weakness and not out of solidarity, is forced to agree to host some of them in the villa, with the opposition of his mother. Among the evacuees is the young worker Lucia, whom Andrea falls in love with and thanks to which she finally leaves her golden world to face the tragic reality that surrounds them and take responsibility. In the absence of his mother, to whom he is bound by a morbid relationship and towards which he is in complete awe, he seems to mature and, when Italian soldiers arrive in the country, escaped a German convoy that was taking them to the labour camps, he finds the courage to hide them in the villa, backed by Charles and Lucia. But Ferruccio tells what is happening to the old fascist authorities of the country, informing the Germans. Discover the denouncement of the boy soldiers fugitives fleeing in trucks toward the mountains and the partisans. Lucia, Charles and Andrew should go with them, but the arrival of the Countess, accompanied by a German officer, off all the resourcefulness of the last, who agrees to stay with her and abandon the mates to their fate. Mind moves by car, safe, Andrea sees German soldiers search the villa Popi when hears gunfire understands, with despair, that Lucy was killed.

 Notes

The film was restored by the Philipp Morris Association DesignCinema with the Adriana Prolo Foundation the restoration was directed by Giuseppe Rotunno.