The film cycle relating to “Ferrara: ciak sul territorial”, which takes place in the summer at the Internal Court of Palazzo Roverella, this year features the films “La donna del cielo”, “Un ettaro di cielo” and Torquato Tasso”. The cycle opens with Mario Soldati’s legendary film “The Woman of the River” which will be screened on Wednesday 19 June at 9.00 pm.
Before the screening of the film there will be an institutional greeting from Paolo Orsatti, President of the Circolo dei Negozianti who together with CDS Cultura OdV promoted the Ferrarese Cinema Studies and Research Documentation Center directed by the film critic and historian Paolo Micalizzi, who will then present this film which features Sophia Loren. Filmed in July 1954, the film was released at the end of the same year and marks the debut of the famous Neapolitan actress in a significant role.
In the film which tells a dramatic story, she is Nives, a beautiful girl who works at marinating eels in a company in Comacchio. During a dance party Gino (Rik Battaglia), a smuggler who has been courting her for some time, manages to make her and Nives becomes her lover. Gino, not intending to have stable relationships with her, leaves her even if she tells him that she is pregnant with her: he even rejects her with cynicism. She then takes revenge by reporting him, for which he is arrested.
Having given birth to a child, Nives goes to work at the mouth of the Po Delta cutting reeds, entrusting her son to a girl. The child manages to escape and drowns in the Po. Gino, warned about her, shows up again and promises Nives to marry her once he is released from prison. A work that earned Sophia Loren an international launch, as wanted by the producer Carlo Ponti who had a relationship with her. A photo-novel work in which Comacchio and the Delta are the protagonists: you can see the canals and alleys of the city, large areas of the valleys with huts, workers, marsh reeds and significant scenes of the marinating of eels.
And this, according to the critic Vittorio Bonicelli, makes the film beautiful in the neorealist type of times gone by. He also adds his own appreciation for the interpretation of the locals. Mario Soldati in admitting that the film was born from a series of compromises (Carlo Ponti said: you have to put the motorcycle in it, the search for the dying child, everything has to end badly, but it has to end well, she has to be a mother, she has to be an actress , she has to ride a bicycle, she has to…) for her part, she stated that in the real film there was the landscape and the environment.
And in the opinion of some critics, the film was a story that could only have been made in the Po Delta environment. It should be noted that Florestano Vancini (who was also assistant director of the film) also appears as an actor in the film: he the role of the priest who celebrates the child’s funeral. Over time this film by Mario Soldati has been re-evaluated and today “The Woman of the River” is a cult film.
