A mixture of elements – both very traditional and very modern, linked together by a clever combination – ensures the commercial success of this important film in the history of Italian cinema, even if it is devoid of genius. On the traditional side: a melodramatic and violent plot, worthy of a bad photo-novel. On the modern side: an ambiguous affiliation to the neorealist movement. To give the whole thing a sense of unity, Giuseppe De Santis resorts to torrid eroticism, making use of the unusual gathering of women at work and the personal seductiveness of Silvana Mangano. The depiction of the misery of a precarious social milieu adds a sociological dimension to the film, reinforced by the tendency toward unanimity ever-present in De Santis’s films. Indeed, it is the most personal aspect to his work and can also be found in Rome 11:00 (1952). The mediocrity of the police element of the plot does not prevent the filmmaker from showing the small universe he describes from a wide variety of angles and, at the same time, from making its collective spirit felt, capturing its enthusiasm and disappointments as the manifestations of a homogeneous group. To achieve this, he astutely uses long shots, crane shots in outdoor scenes and choruses sung by women in the rice fields. The main characters (with the exception of the “villain” incarnated by Vittorio Gassman – a conventional and histrionic figure completely out of place in a neorealist context) express the ambivalence of the postwar generation. On one hand, there are their temptations, their frustrations and their tragic consequences; on the other, there are efforts to break out of the rut and recreate a new world. This duality is even more evident through the film’s most notable originality: the clear intention to give priority, through its narrative, to the perspectives of the women. This leads to entirely atypical fight scenes, where the two men remain motionless and passive, while the two women, armed and ready, take action.

Jacques Lourcelles, Dictionnaire du cinéma. Les films, Éditions Robert Laffont, Parigi 1992