Word: italian
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Italian film, "Tragic Hunt," is in the best tradition of recent importations from that country in its simplicity of plot, its relaxed realism, and its superior acting. It is not, however, precisely what the Kenmore management would have you believe a New York critic called it--"The best Italian film to reach this country." It can not stand up to "Open City" or "To Live in Peace," for example, as consistently successful cinema art. Still, there are some very fine moments of melodrama in "Tragic Hunt," that rate it well with the earlier films and make its director...
...think that its main fault lies in the plot. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that its main fault lies in the interpretation given its plot by this or, I believe, any non-Italian-speaking spectator. Some crucial situations in the film seemed incredible and several episodes were confusing to follow; when shown in its native country this would undoubtedly not be so. (There is a paradox in this--the half-a-dozen great Italian post-war films imported to America have had a larger audience here than in Italy. Since they have all dealt with the agonies...
...perhaps quibbling to pick at "Tragic Hunt" in the face of our Hollywood output: it is only the recent Italian standard of excellence that justifies this. At any rate, it shouldn't be missed by the connoisseur...
...There is simply no lift in it, no shock, no sis-boom-ah . . . Put the second person pronoun and the adjective old in front of it and scarcely enough bounce is left in it to shake up an archdeacon. Worse, it is frequently toned down to s.o.b. ... In Standard Italian there are no less than forty congeners of son-of-a-bitch, and each and every one of them is more opprobrious, more brilliant, more effective...
...Italy, similar intentions were flaunted last week by Palmiro Togliatti: "As to the hypothesis that the Russian army would pursue on our territory an aggressor, I think that Italian people....would have the evident duty to aid in the most efficient way the Soviet army, in order to give that aggressor the lesson he deserves" In Britain, Communist Boss Harry Pollitt threatened sabotage in case of war with the Soviet Union...