Review of Due lettere anonime

This is inferior to "Roma - città aperta" by Rossellini but actually precedes it and perhaps gives the queue to Rossellini's masterpiece: the circumstances and environment are the same, but the action is the opposite: no martyrs here, but instead passionate retaliation. Gina is Bruno's beloved, but he is gone for the war and returns after two years to find that his beloved has been taken over by his best friend Tullio at their common working place, a printing office, used also by the Germans for printing propaganda. Bruno is informed of her relationship by an anonymous letter, actually written by Tullio his rival, which he never suspects, but we and Gina are aware of it. Gina and Tullio starts a comfortable life together, but gradually Gina starts to discover Tullio's double life: he is a collaborator with the Germans and even acts as a spy for them to control the resistance, and when the second anonymous letter arrives things break loose. It's a great drama although inferior to Rossellini's masterpiece and of tremendous interest to Italians, especially to those who lived in those critical days of the liberation.