The remarkable thing about this film as that it tells an outrageous story nut ,mainly by understatememts. When Lucia goes to Rome to tell her lover that she is pregnant, she never tells him that outright, and when he brings her to an abortion clinic they never utter a word about what it is all about. They just silently accept the inevitable and act accordingly. There is no right or wrong here. You must understand him, he is a promising architect with many progressive projects, the shock of her pregnancy is as unexpected to him as it was to her, they just could not help it, he tries to make the best of it and fails, while she is left an abandoned mother with a child, whom she adores and raises, but misfortune tends to always strike twice at least. The dramatic finale, like the whole film, is very reminiscent of the most glorious days of Leni Riefenstahl and her high mountain films, especially "The Blue Light", another atrocious tragedy, and like in her films, the mountain is the dominating character here. The Gran Sasso is the highest mountain in Italy, almost 3000 meters, and all the mountain scenes are shot on the mountain. In all its almost exasperating emotionalism, where you must feel the same passions as the.single mother with her adorable child, the film could be unbearably exasperating to some, but the realism is undeniable. This was at the highpoint of Italian Neo-realism, and although this film shows another side of it and perhaps another dimension, its romanticism is genuine and alive, and the drama is complete.
