Item: La straniera
Rating: 7
Author: Archivist John

Should you watch La straniera tonight? Only if you have already finished everything else on your watchlist and you have a very specific craving for 1930s Italian melodrama. 🕰️

It is definitely for the people who enjoy seeing how cinema was trying to figure out its own voice during the transition to sound. If you want something that moves faster than a tired turtle, you will probably hate this.

The whole thing is based on a play by Alexandre Dumas fils. You can really tell because everyone talks in these very long, very heavy chunks of dialogue that feel like they were written for a stage in the back of a theater.

Ruggero Lupi plays the lead male role and I swear he must have had a very stiff neck during filming. He holds himself so straight it looks like he is trying to balance an invisible book on his head the whole time.

The plot is basically about this "foreign woman" who shows up and makes all the local fancy people feel very uncomfortable. It is one of those stories where everyone is obsessed with reputation and who is talking to who.

I noticed one scene where they are all sitting around for tea and the sound of the spoons hitting the cups is so loud it actually made me jump. ☕ Early sound movies have these weird audio quirks where certain noises are way too boosted.

It is like the microphone was hidden inside the teapot and everyone had to lean in to be heard. It makes the whole thing feel a bit claustrophobic, but maybe that was on purpose?

Carla Martinelli is the "stranger" here. She has these huge, expressive eyes that do about 90% of the heavy lifting in her performance.

Sometimes the camera just stays on her face while she looks at a wall, and you are supposed to feel her entire tragic history in that one look. It works, but the shots go on about ten seconds too long every single time.

The sets are actually pretty nice, though. They feel like real houses, not just wooden boards painted to look like rooms. It gives the movie a grounded feeling that the acting sometimes lacks.

But the way characters move through those rooms is so deliberate. It reminded me of the stiff atmosphere in The Testing of Mildred Vane, where social pressure is basically a physical weight on everyone's shoulders.

I kept thinking about Your Wife and Mine during the big dinner scene. There is that same feeling of "we all clearly hate each other but we have to use the right forks or society will collapse."

One thing that really bugged me was the lighting in the hallways. It is so dark in some shots that you can barely tell who is talking. 💡

I think it was meant to be moody and mysterious. To me, it just looked like they were trying to save money on the electric bill or forgot to bring the lamps into the shot.

The script by Amleto Palermi is a bit of a mess. It jumps from one big confrontation to another without giving the audience any time to breathe or understand why these people are so angry.

If you have seen Vidocq, you know how these old European dramas can sometimes feel like they are trapped in a museum. This one is definitely sitting behind thick glass.

There is this one moment toward the end where a character reads a letter. The camera stays on the piece of paper for what feels like five whole minutes. I actually started trying to read the handwriting before I remembered I don't speak Italian well enough to catch it all.

The music is also very... present. It swells up at the weirdest moments.

Like, a character will just walk into a room to grab their hat and the orchestra goes full tragic. It is kind of funny if you aren't in the mood for that much intensity. 🎻

Speaking of hats, they are the best part of the movie. 🎩 The costume work is very specific to that era of transition where everything had to look expensive and grand.

They have these massive brims that must have made it impossible to see anything. It is a very specific kind of 1930s glamour that feels totally alien today.

In some ways, the movie reminded me of the raw intensity you see in The Flame of Life. That same sense that every conversation is a life-or-death struggle even when they are just talking about the weather.

Is it a masterpiece? No way. It is a bit of a slog if I am being honest.

It is the kind of movie you watch when you want to feel cultured but you end up checking your phone halfway through to see how much time is left. I didn't hate it, but I don't think I will ever watch it again.

The ending is very abrupt. It is like they just ran out of film and decided "okay, that is enough drama for today, everyone go home."

I would give it a pass unless you are a completionist. Ruggero Lupi is okay, but he can't carry the whole thing on his very stiff shoulders.