00:09welcome to tcm imports your ticket to the wider world of cinema i'm alicia malone and tonight
00:15we are going to see two melodramas made by the italian director raffaello materazzo who has been
00:22called italy's answer to douglas sirk soon we'll watch tormento from 1950 but up first
00:28it's chains from 1949 this was raffaello materazzo's first melodrama though he'd been directing film
00:36since the early 1930s he'd made comedies and literary adaptations before this but
00:42chains signaled a new path for the filmmaker and brought him a lot of success materazzo's
00:48melodramas featured the same actors playing different characters and here ameto nazari
00:53and yvonne sanson are a married couple he's a mechanic she's his devoted wife rosa and they
01:00live a happy life with their two children and his mother but things become complicated with the
01:06arrival of a mysterious man who recognizes rosa from his past chains was released during the italian
01:13neorealism cinematic movement around the same time as vittorio desica's bicycle thieves neorealism
01:20explored the post-war trials and tribulations of everyday italians but by the end of the 1940s
01:26audiences were ready to move on from the past and seemed to be craving fantasy materazzo delivered
01:32with almost the exact opposite of neorealism featuring an emotional story and glamorous stars
01:39filmed on sets and much like douglas sirk after him his movies specifically focused on the plight of
01:45women from 1949 enjoy chains
