Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #113953 in DVD
• Released on: 1997-08-29
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
A true diamond in the rough. Pay no attention to the glossy romance cover for this film--inside is a great little movie. Based on an 1885 novel by Gaetano Carlo Chelli, it stars Dominique Sanda (who also appeared in The Conformist and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis). She plays a scheming gold-digger who has her eyes on the prize of the Fiormonti fortune. The money was made by Papa Fiormonti (played by Anthony Quinn), a lousy SOB who in the first scene disowns his three adult children. Sanda marries the most loutish child but is soon having an affair with the rakish one. It's a great, evil (and oddly sympathetic) performance, and for her role Sanda won the Best Actress award at Cannes in 1976. Even the DVD quality can't mask a poor transfer, however, as this film still has a grainy quality, but the luster of this Machiavellian tale still shines through. --Keith Simanton

Customer Reviews

Good Movie, Really Bad Transfer
Four stars for the movie, zero for the transfer. There is a good story in there, coupled with good performances. Overall a good movie. The DVD transfer is really, really bad. Pan and scan with a disturbingly ugly result. Grain, bad color. Watching it on a large screen is outright unpleasant. Did I say the sound is bad too (dubbed). Looks like Simitar Video copied a VHS tape to DVD. Simitar Video should not be in the DVD transfer business. Hope someone else brings this otherwise fine movie to DVD - properly!

artistic
main actors and actress (D>S>) were terrific; story gives a lesson about greed (recall the subprime mess); setting and photography is also highly rated.