The Girl from Parma

After the gossip that follows her first love affair, Dora has to leave her town and comes to Parma looking for work and shelter. She goes through a run of brief involvements and finally falls for Nino, a small-time criminal. A policeman courts her, but her mind stays on Nino. Antonio Pietrangeli’s film looks like a love story and is in fact a bitter comedy of displacement: a woman unable to find where she belongs in an Italy urbanising fast through the boom years of the fifties and sixties. The screenplay is by Pietrangeli with Bruna Piatti, Ruggero Maccari, Ettore Scola and Stefano Strucchi. Catherine Spaak plays Dora and Nino Manfredi plays Nino, with Salvo Randone in the cast. The record gives the running time as 111 minutes where sources say 95.