La Commare Secca [The Grim Reaper] **** (1962, Marisa Solinas, Allen Midgette, Giancarlo De Rosa, Alfredo Leggi, Francesco Ruiu, Vincenzo Ciccora) – Classic Movie Review 10,791

The 1962 Italian film La Commare Secca [The Grim Reaper] is written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci in his extraordinarily confident, stylish and successful directorial debut at the of age 21, with his screenplay based on a short story by his mentor Pier Paolo Pasolini.

A prostitute lies dead on the bank of the River Tiber in Rome, and then the police start a series of interrogations of six prime suspects known to have been in a nearby park at the time of the murder, seen in a series of flashbacks. There is a pair of suspects in one case: two friends and penniless Casanovas.

New talent is hard to establish. It runs on similar lines to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, though many also judged it was very much a Pasolini film. But Bertolucci manages an individual voice and style none the less.

It stars Marisa Solinas, Allen Midgette, Giancarlo De Rosa, Alfredo Leggi Francesco Ruiu, and Vincenzo Ciccora.

The screenplay is by Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergio Citti and Pier Paolo Pasolini (uncredited).

Films directed by Bernardo Bertolucci: La commare secca (1962), Before the Revolution (1964), Partner (1968), The Spider’s Stratagem (1970), The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), Novecento [1900] (1976), La Luna (1979), Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981), The Last Emperor (1987), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), Stealing Beauty (1996), Besieged (1998), The Dreamers (2003), and Me and You (2012).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,791

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