The Blind Woman of Sorrento (1934) Review - Dusty Melodrama With Concrete Shoes

If you have got a rainy afternoon and a soft spot for extremely dusty, tear-soaked Italian melodramas from the 1930s, The Blind Woman of Sorrento is worth a look. Otherwise, if you hate slow-moving stories where people stare intensely into the distance for minutes at a time, you will probably want to skip this one entirely. 🏛️

I stumbled onto this while looking for early Italian talkies, mostly because a very young Anna Magnani has a tiny role in it. She is barely in it, honestly, but even here you can see her eyes doing that heavy lifting she became famous for later.

The plot is pure soap opera, the kind of stuff they just don't make anymore because it's too ridiculous. A young girl goes blind because she witnesses her mother getting murdered. Yes, she literally gets so shocked her eyes just stop working. 👁️

Then, the son of the guy who got falsely executed for that murder goes to England. He becomes a fancy eye doctor and comes back to Italy to cure her. Talk about a complicated relationship dynamic.

If you want snappy pacing like 42nd Street which came out around the same time, you are in the wrong place. This movie moves like molasses in winter.

There is this one scene where the doctor, played by Mario Steni, is just looking at her with this incredibly blank expression. I think he was trying to look deeply professional, but he just looks like he forgot his next line.

The sound design is also hilariously rough. Every time someone walks across the room, it sounds like they are wearing shoes made of solid concrete. 👟

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Blind Woman of Sorrento (1934) through its definitive frames.

But there is a strange charm to it. The sets look like they were built in a hurry, and some of the painted backgrounds look so fake you can almost see the brush strokes.

The actress playing the blind woman, Dria Paola, spends most of her screen time feeling her way around furniture. She does this thing where she keeps her hands perfectly flat in front of her like a cartoon ghost. It is a bit much, but hey, it was 1934.

I actually laughed out loud during the surgery scene. The medical equipment looks like a bunch of kitchen utensils they found in the studio basement. 🥄

It is definitely not a masterpiece. It feels more like a stage play that someone decided to film because they had some leftover celluloid.

Still, if you like seeing how movies worked back when directors were still figuring out where to put the microphone, it has its moments. Just do not expect anything mind-blowing.

I should also mention that the music is incredibly loud. It swells up during the most random moments, like when someone is just opening a door. 🎵

If you have seen other early talkies like The Dummy, you know how awkward these early sound films can be. This one has that exact same clunky energy.

In the end, it is a weird little relic. I am glad I watched it, but I probably won't ever watch it again.