La Commare Secca 1962

The film opens with a stark, arresting image: a prostitute’s corpse lying on the riverbank of the Tiber in Rome. From there, the story unfolds through a sequence of police interrogations, as investigators question suspects who were known to be in a nearby park at the time of the murder. Each suspect offers a personal, day-in-the-life recounting, and every narrative functions as a self-contained slice of urban existence rather than a single, linear truth.

• A young man recounts his quest for a job recommendation from priests, yet the footage reveals that he and his friends spent the day and evening scheming to rob lovers in the park.

• A gigolo is shown treating his girlfriends badly, exposing a pattern of careless cruelty beneath smooth charm.

• A soldier struggles to connect with women, ultimately failing in his advances and collapsing onto a park bench in exhaustion.

• Two teenage boys share a pleasant afternoon with two teenage girls, only to end up stealing from a homosexual man they meet in the park.

The final flashback centers on the moment of the prostitute’s murder, carried out by a man in clogs who had already been interrogated and who is later apprehended at a dance. Each narrative is punctuated by a sudden thunderstorm, and whenever the storm breaks, the story retreats to the prostitute’s apartment as she prepares for her evening, creating a rhythmic interruption that links the various perspectives.

The film’s structure draws a clear line to Rashomon in its collage of viewpoints, even as director Bernardo Bertolucci later denied having seen Kurosawa’s classic at the time. Rather than presenting a single, authoritative account, it weaves together conflicting memories and subjective truths, inviting viewers to weigh how each character’s mood, bias, and personal desire color what they claim to have experienced. The result is a moody, textured portrait of a city and a crime, where the boundaries between truth and perception blur as the rain-soaked narrative cycles back to the apartment where the evening begins. Through these interwoven testimonies, the film paints a broad, if fragmented, portrait of human behavior—desire, envy, fear, and the unpredictable twists of fate that can accompany a single, tragic act.