[Pietro] Germi’s first colour film… brought together several directors, each contributing an episode: Glauco Pellegrini, Antonio Pietrangeli, Mario Chiari – who was also the film’s set designer – and Roberto Rossellini. This film represents the only instance of Germi’s participation in a collective project. The episode directed by Germi appears to borrow its setting from minor neorealism works (such as Bread, Love and Dreams), featuring two young lovers, uneducated peasants, against the backdrop of a small town in Abruzzo during the final years of World War I… The most striking moment of Germi’s episode is probably the appearance of a Zeppelin sailing through the night sky, captivating and terrifying the community as if it were a biblical monster. This scene, with its fantastical lighting, evokes the imagery typical of Fellini. […] Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this episode is the direct comparison with Rossellini. [For Rossellini] life is a delicate, shapeless spectacle, becoming more exciting the more it is broken down by blind, devastating randomness. For [Germi] life is primarily a conflict between a legitimate, often moving aspiration and its denial by reality, between an obsessive sense of its dignity and its irreversible annihilation by the world.

Mario Sesti, Tutto il cinema di Pietro Germi, Baldini&Castoldi, Milan 1997