“(…) I know all about films like Torna!. They only appear in first- run cinemas as a formality; they are created for the suburbs and provinces, where they move and thrill the naive crowds, making heaps of money. Comics? No no, comics are laconic and motionless, so their readers have room to dream. Comics do have some influence on the imagination. On the other hand films like Torna! stun and gag the poor audience, they beat them with “facts”, they torment them, they pull out their nails and burn the soles of their feet, they torture their simple, awk- ward feelings like weathered executioners. It’s a stoning, a lynching, a rough justice in which every bludgeoning club, every stone of the most mundane narrative, is savagely put to use. A normal person, after witnessing such violence and thinking of the miserable intellect being lost, will feel as if he’s witnessed the brutal beating of a newborn. He reflects on its complete immorality, it is vile and sordid, like offering mirrors to the Zulu in exchange for gold and pure gems. The tears and compassion of the weak of spirit are in fact genuine, precious. Beware you hypocritical scribes and pharisees of cinema, you who deliberately exploit the general public’s innnocence because you cannot and do not want to educate (…)”.

Giuseppe Marotta, Questo buffo cinema, Bompiani, Milano, 1956