Torna!

When Criterion first announced an Eclipse set of titles from Raffaello Matarazzo, they described him as the Douglas Sirk of Italy. They know how to push product, and I picked up the set. I’d say Matarazzo is less Sirk and more Days of Our Lives. I only ever got around to watching one of them, Chains (1949), and, while it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t any good, either. Torna! isn’t included in that set, but it’s on Hulu. It’s easy to see why. This is a pretty awful little film, just a completely uninteresting melodrama. It requires its lead character (played by Matarazzo regular Amedeo Nazzari) to be a complete idiot. He straight up believes it when a disreputable character (Franco Fabrizi), whom he knows burns a candle for his wife (Yvonne Sanson), claims they had an affair. There is one interesting element that is introduced late into the film that almost makes it worth watching (the couple’s daughter is kidnapped by a crazy woman after she’s almost killed in a landslide), but the rest of it’s so dull it’s mostly a waste of time.