There have been numerous versions of the Giovanni Verga story and play as well as the Pietro Mascagni opera based on the work. This film is an amalgam of the opera and a straight dramatic version, with acceptable results. The well-known plot of Sicilian love, jealousy and revenge is directed here by Carmine Gallone, who specialized in, among other things, the transferring of operatic texts to the screen and films about classical composers. Turiddu (Ettore Manni) has returned from military service, gotten his fiancée Santuzza pregnant, abandons her for Lola, the wife of the town's cart-driver and wine-hauler. Alfio challenges him to a duel and kills him
to the horror of the townspeople. Swedish actress May Britt as the wronged Santuzza looks angelic; Tunisian-born actress Kerima is excellent as the slatternly object of Turiddu's passion (that same year she was the 'she-wolf' in Lattuada's "La lupa.") But the strongest impression is made by Anthony Quinn as the avenging Alfio, suggesting in this early role some of the qualities that would make him famous in his later performance as Zorba the Greek. He is dubbed in Italian, as he would be in Fellini's "La strada." The film itself has been almost impossible to see , but can be glimpsed in its entirety on YouTube. Unfortunately the movie , which was shot in Ferraniacolor (and 3-D!) , now seems to exist only in black-and-white copies. In fact when it played the U.S. in 1963 as "Fatal Desire," dubbed in English, it was shown in black-and-white prints only. The ad read "There is a special kind of payment for 'borrowing' another man's wife." I remember a local drive-in program, with this at the bottom of a double bill with Elsa Martinelli in "Rice Girl", another Italian film, as the main feature. I'd love to see "Cavalleria Rusticana" restored and made available in better copies, but I'd like to see a lot of impossible things.
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ItalianGerry24 May 2014
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trimmerb123424 June 2016I watched a dreadful black and white print of this little known film on an obscure satellite TV channel yet found it riveting and the final 10 minutes unforgettable, made so by Anthony Quinn's performance.
It is not a story of a revenge - said to be best enjoyed cold - but, at its end, a life or death fight between two men who were once friends over a woman. Not a tussle in hot blood. Not melodramatic but a grim ashen-faced older man (Quinn), determined, for mixture of reasons-personal pride and honour as a husband, punishment for the younger man's betrayal and, finally, to eliminate a rival for his very desirable beautiful young wife-to fight to the death. The Quinn character accepts his own death as a probability and calls briefly at the home of his aged mother to say a final goodbye. The younger man too, knows that he may die but he too feels aggrieved. Both believe death is a price worth paying. Neither wants to live after losing. For each it is life and the woman-or death. It is completely raw and elemental, and, it hardly needs adding, tragic.
The film's original title "Cavalleria Rusticana" comes from a novel by Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga who specialised in "realist" stories set in rural Sicily. It was later made into an opera parts of which accompany the realistically filmed action-something which works well.
Rather more pertinently in terms of other roles, the beautiful object of these two men's desire, the magnetic Algerian actress Kerima, played a very similar role with Trevor Howard as the besotted male in "Outcast of the Islands" (1951).
Most go through life never having even met let alone been involved with a woman who can inspire such terrible cravings and reckless jealousy, never imagining that extreme beauty may not be benign and pleasurable but dangerous and very possibly life-threatening. In "Lady from Shanghai" Rita Hayworth plays such a character with Orson Wells as the worldly sailor who rebukes himself for not having recognised the danger signals.
Where are they now? Kerima was the wife and is now the widow (since April 2016) of famed British film director, Guy Hamilton