I due sergenti: A dusty, dramatic relic

Is it worth the watch?

If you love vintage Italian dramas from the thirties, you might find something to sink your teeth into here. Everyone else? You’ll probably find the pacing glacial and the melodrama a bit much. It is not exactly a fun Friday night watch, but it’s interesting as a historical artifact.

The whole thing feels like it’s dripping in old stage play energy. Every room they walk into looks like a set that might collapse if you breathed on it too hard. Honestly, there is a weird satisfaction in that.

The heavy lifting

Umberto Casilini puts in a performance that is just… well, it is a lot of sighing and looking into the middle distance. He’s trying to be noble, I get it. But sometimes the tension feels so manufactured it’s like watching a high school play with a bigger budget.

Then you’ve got Alida Valli. She shows up and suddenly the screen has a bit of life in it, which is nice. It is a shame she isn't given more to do, but that is how these things go.

• The uniforms look surprisingly sharp for such an old print.
• The dialogue is so formal it sounds like they are reading from a manual.
• That one scene in the tent—why is it so dark? I think I missed half the expressions.

It is definitely not as tight as Shanghai Madness, which at least knows how to keep things moving. This movie likes to stop and linger on a single look for about five seconds too long. You start counting the seconds and wondering if the projector skipped a frame.

Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it worth checking out if you’ve exhausted your list of better films? Sure. Just maybe don't expect a revelation. It feels a bit like digging through an attic—you find some cool stuff, but mostly it is just dust and old memories.

Maybe it reminds me a bit of the heavy, overly dramatic vibes in Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, where the weight of the situation is constantly pressed into your face. You get it, okay? The situation is dire. We get it.

There is this one moment where an officer looks at a letter, and the camera just sits there. And sits there. It’s almost funny. It’s like the movie is daring you to look away. I didn’t, but I wanted to.