The Forbidden Christ

The only film by Curzio Malaparte—Italian novelist, war correspondent, diplomat, and political prisoner—explores the war’s bitter aftertaste in a Tuscan village. Returning from a Russian prison camp to a parched land now filled with crosses, Bruno (Raf Vallone) is intent on avenging his brother’s betrayal and death at the hands of the Germans. But the town is closed to him; shutters come down like scabs over a wound. Justice, guilt, innocence—these ideas are best forgotten until the next cataclysm promises freedom. A stunning entry in the neorealist genre, steeped in the pity of the postwar era in which it was made.