Alberto Moravia
Colpa del sole

This is the only cinematic proof, albeit later partially disowned, by Mr. Pincherle, who nonetheless profitably roamed cinema far and wide during his long life; a work that, among other things produced by a certain Marco Ferreri, was part of an interesting project, later aborted due to censorship, called Documento mensile, a sort of new cinematic genre that, like a cultural magazine, gathered in each issue notes of criticism, documentation, short stories, poetic notations; the most renowned directors, and distinguished personalities of Italian and foreign culture of the time, were called to collaborate, expressing themselves through the cinematic medium in an entirely exceptional way. Only four shorts have any witness: Ambienti e personaggi by Vittorio De Sica; Appunti su un fatto di cronaca by Luchino Visconti; La funivia del Faloria by Michelangelo Antonioni and indeed, Colpa del sole by Alberto Moravia.

Here, everything unfolds in a mere six minutes with accurate and highly detailed shots and an intense string quartet as a co-star soundtrack; in a bourgeois interior, on a sofa sit a woman, beautiful and dominant, and a man, younger and submissive. We are at the end of a couple’s relationship, her gestures harsh, icy, and impassive, his words gentle and evasive. Everything is about to fall apart and thus definitively sink when a sudden, external event will prolong their agony with a sudden twist, aided by a tender hand and an infinite, prolonged, reparative kiss. Will it be true glory? Given the types, I’d have my serious doubts, but the truth about what happened is in the last lines of this short story by the author-director, which I report below and from which the short was later readapted. Read it and watch it, if you can; the theme and even the derivations connected to it are certainly not trivial matters.

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Colpa del sole

After breakfast, my friend and I went to sit on a sort of covered terrace or veranda overlooking the slope of the hill on which the villa stood. We sat to have coffee. At that hour, the veranda was flooded with the autumnal sun, shimmering and precious like an old liqueur; It made one close their eyes and doze off in that filtered warmth. In front of us, beyond the glass, the hill stretched its green ascending meadows; up to the ancient boundary wall, of brown bricks with certain eyeglass windows framed in white stone. Through the windows, you occasionally saw the few passers-by of that suburban district. The wall, my host explained, had originally enclosed the orchards of a hunting lodge; and those windows had had iron bars.

The sight of the lush green meadows, dotted with sparse trees and the old boundary wall towering against the empty backdrop of the blue sky, singularly pleased me. I have always loved uncultivated lands within cities, barren and dreamy, suspended between abandonment and expectation. I began to contemplate the meadows with exaggerated attention while the sun, flowing abundantly through the glass, made the silver coffee pot, crystal glasses, and the half-full amber cognac bottle shine preciously. This sun was warm without being scorching, already I felt overcome by a kind of drowsiness and was half-closing my eyes when I saw a woman and a man climb over one of the eyeglass windows and enter the enclosure. The man was a young fellow in a jersey and cyclist cap, the woman, poorly dressed, was bareheaded, and her long, wavy hair hid her face; but there was an affectionate sense in them like in the dangling ears of certain dogs. After climbing over the window, the two looked around for a moment, then went toward a secluded spot of the enclosure, where the wall bent at a right angle. A tree stood there, with a thin black trunk, all yellow leaves like gold. The two began to talk standing, the girl somewhat apart from her companion and he leaning against the wall with one hand.

“Who knows what they have to say to each other so importantly to hide like that,” said my friend. And almost immediately, as if to answer this question, the man moved away from the wall and put a hand in his pocket. The woman waved goodbye and turning her back to the young man made her way to the window through which they had entered. The man did not follow her but took his hand out of his pocket, I saw he was holding a dark object, and then a shot echoed, with a sharp and sonorous crash, somewhere in the empty blue sky. Numerous crows, frightened by the shot, soared above the hill. The girl stopped, hesitated, then fell to the ground, supine, one leg outstretched and the other awkwardly folded. She made a movement to lift her head, as if held to the ground by her shoulders, and then her head fell back. The man ran to the window and the last thing I saw was his leg climbing over the opening while he clung to the top of the wall with one hand.

The scene had been so rapid and unexpected that I didn’t have time to change my participation as an idle spectator into something more active. But as soon as the murderer disappeared, I turned suddenly excited toward my friend: I wanted to call him, urge him to run with me to help the woman. The first glance I gave him made me change my mind.

He was sitting in the sun, legs crossed, head thrown back on the chair's backrest. He held in one hand a glass half-full of liqueur and between two fingers of the other a lit cigarette from which a thin blue smoke thread lazily exhaled into the bright air. He couldn’t have failed to see the crime: and this was confirmed by the look with which he answered mine. That look seemed to say: “Don’t move.” He emptied the small glass without taking his eyes off the glass wall; and put it back on the table. Astonished, I sank back, and the wave of sun I had previously been basking in wrapped around me again.

Then, for a moment that seemed interminable, we remained silent, looking at the ascending meadow, at the woman overturned on the grass. The meadow was deserted, the woman’s figure immobile with that bent and spread leg that so well conveyed the sense of the slaughter. A breeze detached a few yellow leaves from the tree rising against the wall, and they fell near the dying woman. This immobility and this solitude lasted only a few seconds during which I entered a murky and complacent state of mind.

I thought about the woman’s blood which had to be flowing softly and wetting the earth beneath her shoulders: I thought about what she was experiencing if she was still alive, seeing herself so abandoned, eyes fixed on the serene sky, lying on the ground, in that corner of uncultivated land; I thought with a bitter delight that she was dying and we weren’t helping her. Between us and her was the glass wall of the veranda and that sweet sun. And almost envying the solitude, the abandonment of the forsaken. In truth, I participated in her agony much more profoundly than if at that moment I had bent over her to lift her in my arms.

A few seconds: then I shouted with painful effort: “We must run… we must help her.” But at the same moment, I saw that it was already too late. One, two, three people were already appearing at the window of the wall: already one of them was climbing over the windowsill, was near the woman, bending over her, a second was following, a third was running away, as it seemed, to call for help. Here were a pair of guards climbing over the window in turn, without haste. Behind them, a group of six or seven passers-by. Suddenly the entire corner under the tree with yellow leaves was full of people. A guard had positioned himself in front of the window and was pushing back the many who wanted to enter. Two or three panting and curious children's heads popped above the wall.

But everything that happened afterward, the arrival of the ambulance, the woman’s transport, the onlookers’ pause at the crime scene, seemed infinitely less important to me than those ten seconds during which, nailed by a sense of bitter and astonished helplessness, I had stood still watching the woman die and envied her fate. "Colpa del sole” my friend told me when I confided this feeling to him. The well-being, like a reversed telescope, makes others’ misfortunes distant and almost pleasant. And the more terrible they are, the stronger the grip on us by the well-being, which receives from this contrast a new flavor and meaning.