Antonio Pietrangeli (whose accidental death in 1968 cut short an important career) took a rare interest in the position of women in his films; certainly his almost melancholy compassion for his female protagonists in both La Visita and Io la Conoscevo Bene (I Knew Her Well) is unmatched in any of the comedies. La Visita is a gently painful portrait of small-town loneliness and big-city braggodocio in two lonelyhearts sizing each other up as marriage potential. Sandro Milo, memorable for her caricatures in Fellini's 8-1/2 and Juliet of the Spirits, here gives a subtle performance, comic and pathetic, as Pina, a homespun and not terribly attractive spinster who tries to pass herself off as the grande dame of the Po Valley to Adolfo (François Perier) of the pencil mustache, who answers her lonelyhearts ad with a visit from Rome. Behind his mask, Adolfo, for his part, is a scared little man with innumerable dreary vices that emerge during the course of this introductory weekend. "Pietrangeli carefully weighs the cinematic value of the gestures of unheroic lives in this touching, unfussy and very polished film" (Charles Affron).