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Arguably Bette Davis' last great feature part, even if she was dubbed in Italian(she despised Alberto Sordi - who spoke English fluently, yet he denied to feed his lines to her in her native tongue. Thus he was ever after dubbed "Alberto Sordid" by Miss Davis.)

Davis plays her part with bitchy authority, and serves as a catalyst for the unraveling of the plot. But the film really belongs to Sordi, who gives one of the greatest performances in Italian cinema. It is hard to sell "pathetic" in such a grand manner whilst holding on to the audience's sympathy in his seemingly effortless manner. No doubt he worked very hard to achieve that illusion. Silvana Mangano provides excellent support to his character.

A pristine Italian DVD transfer was recently struck from the original negative. Alas, it contains no English subs.

A French DVD release also saw the light of day, but it sported a poor transfer - and French subs only.

Madman's recent DVD release is equipped with English subs(naturally), and the PQ of the disc (which does NOT match the superior-looking native edition) proves sufficient to enjoy the movie's bittersweet and sometimes heartbreaking depiction of greed and poverty in Italy - reminiscent of late neo-realism - all the while as Davis gets to play The Bitch Goddess for the last time. Kudos to the poster who brought this issue to my attention a while ago. A must-have for Bette's English-speaking fans!

strangerinparadise wrote: even if she was dubbed in Italian

Uhm, according to Adriano Aprà & Sara Leggi's 2007 filmography, Davis speaks in Italian with her own voice, even if the film was surely post-synchronized. Are they right?

Saimo wrote:

strangerinparadise wrote: even if she was dubbed in Italian

Uhm, according to Adriano Aprà & Sara Leggi's 2007 filmography, Davis speaks in Italian with her own voice, even if the film was surely post-synchronized. Are they right?

Is that so? Well, I have seen the DVDs - all of them - and that is definitely NOT Miss Davis' voice - who has one of the most recognizable voices of filmdom. Hers is substituted by an actress whose voice is unfortunately much higher-pitched and which also lacks the characteristic hoarseness of Bette's. However, Davis' own voice can be heard on a couple of occasions swearing in English off-screen as her character loses control.

I don't understand Italian, so your PDF-file is incomprehensible to me, I'm afraid. She may have attempted to speak her own lines in Italian, if so - I guess the director deemed her efforts to be insufficient, and so her voice was dubbed.

strangerinparadise wrote: Is that so? Well, I have seen the DVDs - all of them - and that is definitely NOT Miss Davis' voice - who has one of the most recognizable voices of filmdom.

Thank you.