Though part of Drigo [Paola Drigo, the author of the novel Maria Zef, Treves, 1936, Ed.], the element that Cottafavi draws on the most is tragedy. Of course, Maria Zef is a complex – and massive – work that includes a number of other references. Anthropological ones related to reconstructing peasant life: the burden of work, at times viewed as a curse and at others a peaceful experience (there is even an extraordinary real life shot of a cow giving birth); incest as the extreme circumstances of widespread endogamy in isolated mountain villages; the ritual manner of celebrations, dances andstory-telling; a confused and gloomy religiousness that mingles with a sense of panic and finds relief in blasphemy. Symbolic ones in imbuing the story with meaning that goes beyond historical and geographic coordinates and speaks of the universal human condition. Pictorial ones, for the director’s subtle use of the teachings of artists who approached the peasant world with sensitivity, from Millet to the Macchiaioli, but never directly quoting them. But, as we mentioned before, Maria Zef appears mostly to draw on elements of classical tragedy, of an epic muted by modesty: ahistorical, archetypal qualities and situations, “high” and in some ways exemplary drama, a relationship with a natural, silent and impassive scenery… Perhaps this is also the sense of using a dialect, which, with its striking “obscurity” functions similarly to meter in establishing a “poetic” solemnity. (…) If Drigo’s novel mixes monstrosity with mercy, the inevitability of the fate of the poor predominates in Cottafavi’s film. In both tragic consequences are triggered by jealousy, which sparks desire (the hunchback’s attention at the party at Case Rotte) and is an assertion of property.

Paolo Vecchi, La malga e i coturni. Appunti su Maria Zef, “Bianco e Nero”, n. 559, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Carocci editore, Roma, 2007