Watching Two Women is like being at the burial of two friends. From neo-realism to neo-decadence, the Zavattini-De Sica life cycle has been spent. That is, providing De Sica wants us to take this work seriously and not, as has often had to be the case in the past, as one of his money-making chores with which to finance such works of distinguished genius as Umberto-D. The re-union with Za, the overall obsession with attacks of fascism and the church, the distinguished original of [an Alberto] Moravia novel … I can only believe it is intended as more than a routine chore.

What, then, has gone wrong?

The story line is simple and direct…. Superficially it is dreadful novelette; but Zavattini has pressed it to serve him almost as De Sade with Justine, as a skeleton on which to hang the philosophy of fatalism, that there is no escaping...