Name: Carmela
Genre: Drama
Released: 1949-05-13
Duration: 1 h 24 min
Rating: 5.5
Cast: Doris Duranti, Pál Jávor, Aldo Silvani

When love as a passion derails into apparent madness but still remains love

Doris Duranti makes an even more.crushing impression of beauty here than in her previous film "The Countess of Castiglione" of the same year, as the village girl who falls in love with a dashing officer, while he hardly even pays any attention to her, which drives her to a serious nervous breakdown and almost mad. Because of her alarming liability, he decides to take her on after all, and the story has some interesting parallels with Stefan Zweig's "Beware of Pity" ("Das Ungeduld des Herzens"), filmed with Lilli Palmer in 1946, but here Doris Duranti is not handicapped and crippled, except perhaps mentally, as most people think; but as he takes her on she seems to recover, it all develops into an overwhelming final act of very romantic and impressing sequences of intimacy and human compassion, and the end comes as a surprise. Like in "The Countess of Castiglione", the music plays a vital part and is exquisitely beautiful and apt all the way, and any heart could melt to this story. The cinematography is also wondrous throughout, but it's the acting by Doris Duranti that makes the film She reminds a little of. Linda Darnell but is even more beautiful.

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Carmela

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