Bernardo Bertolucci
La Commare Secca

In a Rome still ravaged by the aftermath of the last world conflict, the body of a woman is discovered along the banks of the Tiber, a prostitute. The police launch investigations regarding the case and take as their starting point the statements of several individuals who were at the crime scene approximately during the time it was committed. The first is "Il Canticchia," a young boy who claims to have walked through the area where the woman was murdered because he had an appointment with a priest who wanted to offer him a job, but the images show that he was actually roaming the surroundings to engage in petty theft to put food on his table. The second is "Il Califfo," a man burdened by two madams. He states he was at the crime scene during a moonlit stroll with his girlfriend, but like the first, he lies: he was arguing with her for reasons related to sly interests. The third character is a soldier named Teodoro who eventually admits he wandered around all day and fell asleep on a bench. It's Natalino's turn, a Friulian with strange behaviors who accuses two teenagers of the crime: Francolicchio and Pipito. The police chase after the duo, and the first, while fleeing, throws himself into the Tiber, drowning. Through Pipito's testimony, the investigators manage to close the case with a predictable culprit with a troubled mind.

"This film was made against me," said Pier Paolo Pasolini in the distant 1962, certainly not with derogatory intentions. The Bolognese intellectual hands over the subject for "La commare secca" to his pupil Bertolucci, which hits the cinemas just a year after that masterpiece called "Accattone." The film is warmly received, garnering critical support and the honor of Elsa Morante's applause, mainly because it manages to surprise. Bertolucci is only twenty-one years old when he directs his debut feature film (it is the youngest directorial debut in the history of Italian cinema, and not only did the film stand out at the Venice International Film Festival in 1962 but also at the London Film Festival and the New York Film Festival.) but he already has a solid personality behind him that allows him to betray the master. There's little Pasolini in "La commare secca." Those expecting the lingering gaze on the vicissitudes of the working and proletarian class of the Roman suburbs that Pier Paolo loved to illustrate will indeed be disappointed.

The setting of a degraded capital city where the tragicomic figures of the small people stand out remains an unchanged constant, but the purpose is different. Bertolucci traces the psychological profile of all the protagonists successfully providing the viewer with a gallery of human portraits among failures and frustrated individuals, pimps, and lost souls. Just the opening sequences of the film would be enough to get in touch with a technical style and a wealth of meanings that, in Pasolini's cinema, remain sketches if they are not entirely absent. The camera scrutinizes the lifeless body of the prostitute: a bundle wrapped in worthless rags devoid of any defining element, it's a dead body. The director seems almost to assume a cold detachment from the subject matter, as if wanting to engage the viewer on the side of the investigators. The suspects who succeed each other in the interrogations are literally subjected to the audience's scrutiny, thereby overturning the perspective under which his master framed the characters, connecting them to the audience through a bond of close empathy.

Therefore, the subliminal social analysis of an "Accattone" also fades away: the witnesses lie to the police about the real course of events despite not having committed the murder, simply to hide other illicit activities they engaged in (shoplifting, prostitution exploitation, etc...), an aspect that for Pasolini would have been a reason for reflection on the socio-economic condition of the humble Italian population but which in Bertolucci charges the film with suggestive grotesque connotations. The direction maximizes the potential of the subject and the screenplay. The narrative is indeed set according to flashbacks that cleverly interweave the depositions of the witnesses throughout the film to the point of losing sight of the centrality of the murder. Unfortunately, it can't avoid some flourishes of overtly aesthetic nature, especially during moments of heightened pathos and emphasis or when it focuses on the decaying architectures of the more disreputable neighborhoods in stark contrast with Baroque Rome. From this point of view, however, one must exclude the concluding scene where the police arrest the murderer in a public venue while he is dancing (a recurring theme in Bertolucci) with a girl, a scene of marked gravity but not boring.