Thursday | July 9, 2015 7:00 pm

The White Angel
(L’angelo bianco)

Screening on Film

Directed by Raffaello Matarazzo.
With Amedeo Nazzari, Yvonne Sanson, Enrica Dyrell.
Italy, 1955, 35mm, black & white, 100 min.
Italian with English subtitles.
Print source: Cineteca di Bologna

The massive success of Matarazzo’s Nobody’s Children guaranteed a sequel. Matarazzo once again directs the star couple Yvonne Sanson and Amedeo Nazzari, whose roles here bear a complicated relation to those they played in the earlier film—one that cannot be explained here without spoiling both the tear-jerking drama of Nobody’s Children and the extraordinary turn given that material here. As the film builds to its violent climax, Matarazzo introduces hints of the supernatural and the surreal until, as so often in great melodrama, repressed knowledge and emotions burst forth with a vengeance.