This is a typical Douglas Sirk melodrama but in Italian style, all in Italian and with no slow action. It's a story of intricate relationships and how they are complicated beyond repair, resulting in crime passionel, and traumas to last for a lifetime endangering a promising career among other things. Amedeo Nazzari returns home after eight years lost in the war and in Russia, while his wife and daughter long since have given him up as dead. Naturally the supposed widow gets a lover, and then the husband comes home after eight years and discovers them, of course, and takes the consequences. He ends up in prison, while his daughter, Antonella Lualdi in an outstanding performance, a very promising pianist in the beginning of her career, is deeply traumatised and blames it all on her mother, who in her turn is traumatised by the alienation from her daughter. A brilliant violinist takes charge of her career and commits the mistake of insisting on becoming her lover, while he is already married, which of course he doesn't tell her. That's the mess. Sort that out.
A major advantage of the film is the bittersweet music of endearing beauty by Carlo Rustichelli. It's miraculous, how his music always seems to turn any film to a major advantage of beauty. It's not a masterpiece, but it is well worth watching, especially if you enjoy crying for pity and compassion.
