A French teenager is killed in a park. Within the first half hour of the movie, there's a man on trial for her murder, and the evidence is seemingly pretty good.
There are frequent flashbacks throughout the movie, depicting witnesses' recollections, or what the police think happened. This is not Rashomon territory, however, since the events shown are apparently as they indeed happened.
Incredibly, the man on trial for the murder is kept in a cage in the courtroom! Was this standard procedure in Italy? The jury would be predisposed to think of a person on trial being kept in a cell as guilty, I think.
I had some trouble following who some of the characters were. Also, the copy I saw was dubbed in English, but a quote in Italian in the opening credits, and Italian newspaper headlines and signs were not translated. Even a couple lines of dialog were left in Italian and not dubbed, for some reason. Additionally, while in widescreen, I had to use the zoom out function on my DVD player, because the extreme right and left were cut off. Some more of the picture could be seen this way, but the DVD itself did cut off the picture; e.g. during the opening credits, actor Helmut Berger's name appeared as "Helm Berg." This was on Luminous' DVD.
The ending was a bit disappointing. It also ends pretty abruptly, though I don't think this was a matter of anything having been cut.
There are frequent flashbacks throughout the movie, depicting witnesses' recollections, or what the police think happened. This is not Rashomon territory, however, since the events shown are apparently as they indeed happened.
Incredibly, the man on trial for the murder is kept in a cage in the courtroom! Was this standard procedure in Italy? The jury would be predisposed to think of a person on trial being kept in a cell as guilty, I think.
I had some trouble following who some of the characters were. Also, the copy I saw was dubbed in English, but a quote in Italian in the opening credits, and Italian newspaper headlines and signs were not translated. Even a couple lines of dialog were left in Italian and not dubbed, for some reason. Additionally, while in widescreen, I had to use the zoom out function on my DVD player, because the extreme right and left were cut off. Some more of the picture could be seen this way, but the DVD itself did cut off the picture; e.g. during the opening credits, actor Helmut Berger's name appeared as "Helm Berg." This was on Luminous' DVD.
The ending was a bit disappointing. It also ends pretty abruptly, though I don't think this was a matter of anything having been cut.