The Italian of the Roses

The beginning may remind Hathaway’s fans of his impressive “fourteen hours” (1951) : a man (Richard Bohringer ,in one of his first parts )threatens to jump off the ledge of a building.There the comparison ends ;for in Hathaway ‘s work,they tried by showing his parents ,fiancée and others ,to understand the suicidal man ‘s behavior.No psychological explanation in this movie by Charles Matton(a painter) ;the screenplay may put off many a viewer for it’s not what you call an accessible effort ;flashback shows the young man lying on his bed with his lover in the nude,then a grotesque talent show where the desperate lad is to sing a song.The present mixes scenes of the man about to commit suicide with the crowd increasing at the top of the building,and those of a wedding : this wedding meal sometimes look like an update of Zola’s banquet in “L’Assommoir”: the guests are rude and seem to be fond of barrack-room jokes ,a grandpa being the most vicious of them all.Perhaps the desire of taking his own life by the hero has a sociological explanation :when the (often drunk) guests arrive to the place where a man is about to die ,the relish, waiting for something to happen (in a lugubrious urban background).