The Bandit

The war ends and Ernesto comes back to Turin from a prison camp in Germany. He finds his house destroyed and his family gone. He tries to set up honest work, but there is no work in the city, no money, and nobody looks out for anybody. He goes looking for his sister, and where he finds her changes everything. Ernesto falls outside the law. Alberto Lattuada's film belongs to the first years of Italian neorealism. Amedeo Nazzari takes the lead, with Anna Magnani opposite him. The telling shows crime not as a personal wickedness but as a consequence of postwar deprivation. The streets are real and the crowds are real. The film carries the tension of a noir at the same time.