Chains

Rosa is married to Guglielmo, who runs a garage, and they have two children. One day a man out of her past turns up: Emilio, her former lover. He is mixed up in crime and will not leave her alone. She cannot tell her husband and she cannot get rid of him. A small lie turns into something that will bring the whole family down. Raffaello Matarazzo's film became one of the most widely seen examples of postwar Italian melodrama. Amedeo Nazzari and Yvonne Sanson went on to play together in a run of further melodramas after this one. Critics, set beside the realist current of the period, found these films slight; audiences did the opposite and filled the cinemas.