Ultimo incontro (1951) User Reviews

The Fate of Women in Early 1950's Italian Cinema

[jromanbaker · 5/10 · 15 June 2021]

I have watched three Italian films from the early 1950's and despite certain merits they deal with ' bad ' women in a way that is deeply depressing. In one ' Three Forbidden Stories ' a woman ' addicted ' to drugs and parties has to die; in ' La Lupa ( The Vixen ) she burns horribly to death for her ' sins ' and in ' Last Meeting ' Alida Valli suffers a similar fate. As far as film itself is concerned ' Last Meeting ' is cast well, and interesting to watch, but committing adultery, being blackmailed for it and consequently searching for money through prostitution has to be punished. I am not sure I want to investigate more, but I came to the conclusion that the producers enjoyed this sort of ' execution ' punishment, and wondered why. The influence of the church ? A ' natural ' masculine response to the supposed social ' evils ' of Post-War society ? Cinematically these films are mainly based on an Operatic view of life and are all highly wrought. In ' Last Meeting ' Alida Valli ( a great actor ) is woefully cast as a reluctant call-girl, and Jean-Pierre Aumont has few scenes and an untimely demise and for those who like racing cars of the period there is a certain excitement in seeing them as they are an intrinsic part of this melodrama. For what it is worth it deserves a 5 for Valli alone. But the film is heavy, and like the other two I have mentioned doom laden.

How to get out of a jam without hurting others and thereby hurting them the more.

[clanciai · 10/10 · 21 July 2021]

This is another of those Alida Valli films presenting an absolutely hopeless case of a fallen woman desperately trying to extricate herself out of her difficulties, and thereby only involuntarily exacerbating her predicament. However, there is no villain here, except in two brief scenes, making himself solely responsible for unsurveyable dire consequences, but is it possible to blame her for getting into trouble? Her lover is after all Jean-Pierre Aumont, and who can resist an ardent lover like that? You cannot blame Amedeo Nazzari either, his last words, the last words of the film, make a perfectly reasonable seal on the entire film and tragedy, for this is definitely like a Greek tragedy, inevitable, irrevocable in its destiny, and ultimately resolving itself by the strange mechanisms of nemesis. Alida Valli is always worth watching, her female characters are always hopelessly complicated beyond repair, a singular characteristic that Hitchcock used to extreme advantage in "The Paradine Cae", and she is a great actress. That fact and its excellent script and thorough psychology makes this film one of the foremost of Italian moral-psychological films of the 50s, and it is all mainly sustained by Alida Valli.

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