La Califfa (1970) - film review

The workforce of a factory owned by the patriarchal boss Doberdo are on strike.  During a police raid to break the strike, one of the workers is killed.  The dead man’s wife, La Califfa, confronts Doberdo several times.  On each occasion, the factory owner and the widow feel strangely drawn to one another...

Journalist and screenwriter Alberto Bevilacqua made his directorial debut with this curious mix of romance and social drama, adapted from a novel he wrote ten years earlier.  It’s a strange film – stylistically it feels like a mix of thriller and spaghetti western, which seems to be totally at variance with its content.   Despite the alluring performances from Romy Schneider and Ugo Tognazzi, it’s a very difficult film to engage with.  It seems to want to embrace some big social themes – industrial strife in Italy in the early 1970s and feminism, to name just two – but there’s no clear message and, ultimately, it feels rather empty, an exercise in style over substance.

© James Travers 2007

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