First Prize Golden Lion Award/Venice Film Festival: Tortured by complexes and frustrations which make her volatile and unstable, Sandra Dawson returns. with her American husband Andrew, to her native Volterra, in Italy, to the family home which she had fled as a young girl. Her younger brother Gianni also returns. The house is to be given to the city as a memorial to their father, a prominent Jewish scientist who was killed in a Nazi concentration camp. They also reunite with their aged and ill mother and her second husband Gilardini, the administrator of the estate. Sandra's real reason for returning is the suspicion that her mother and Gilardini plotted to arrange her father's deportation and death. Unable to understand Sandra's obsession, Andrew leaves her, and she turns to Gianni for help--and realizes that his interest is incestuous.
—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>