Department Store

Thefts are happening in a large department store, and the personnel manager accuses a salesgirl, then turns the accusation into blackmail and demands sexual favours from her. She is innocent, and she is seeing one of the store’s drivers; the thefts are in fact the work of the man leaning on her and the small gang around him. Mario Camerini’s film was made at the Cinecittà studios and is counted among the white-telephone comedies of the period, though underneath the comedy sits something not light at all, a superior using his power at work. Vittorio De Sica plays the driver and Assia Noris the salesgirl. It competed at the seventh Venice International Film Festival. The record’s summary says only that the manager has his eye on her and never mentions the blackmail, softening the hardest thing in the film.