The Grim Reaper (La commare secca)

Bernardo Bertolucci's first feature (he had previously been assistant director for Pasolini on Accattone), La commare secca was screened at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, and was never released in the U.S. The script, whose title translates literally as “The Dry Housewife,” a Roman slang expression for death, was passed on by Pasolini to Bertolucci, who revised it considerably and shot the film on location in Rome.
The story of a police investigation following the murder of a prostitute, La commare secca, like Bertolucci's later thriller, The Spider's Stratagem (1970), is held together by a surface web of suspense built from “a maze of intersecting movements which (was) to become characteristic of the Bertoluccian style” (Andrew Sarris).
“...La commare secca is a film about adolescence and its confrontation with the exigencies of life. It recalls Rashomon with its series of flashbacks - some true, some false - describing the movements of the various suspects at the time of the murder. There are moments of persuasive observation - the three bald youths who oppose their victim in the opening sequence give off a grim, determined menace like Magnani's former friends in (The Spider's Stratagem). The tone of the film is sombre, with the grey Roman skies and the black-clad prostitute in her room emphasizing Bertolucci's obsession with the flow of time....” --Peter Cowie

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