Lost in the Dark

Sperduti Nel Buio offers De Sica,who collaborated on the screenplay, a role of pathos rather different from the charming romancers or confident con artists he was often associated with.As a remake of a now lost 1914 Neapolitan melodrama that was celebrated for its then unusual realism,it gives us some idea of what the original might have been like. (Curiously during this same post WWII era Italy also remade another similar 1914 classic of Naples realism, Assunta Spina.) Director Camillo Mastrocinque makes the old fashioned tearjerker story vivid and compelling: Blind street violinist Nunzio (De Sica) is comforted when a girl caught up in a blackmail scheme by a crook finds shelter with him. Nunzio will later lose her when she goes away with a handsome sailor and her chance at being taken in by a Duke who is really her father is thwarted when the Duke, who at first tried to suppress the scandal of an illegitimate child, dies before he is able to retrieve her. The film deserves to be more well known.