The Testimony

Pietro Germi's first feature. A man on trial for murder committed during a robbery is facing the death penalty. The testimony of an elderly civil servant could change the verdict, but the verdict is not really what the film is interested in: it is the weight carried by the man who testifies, who weighs whether to testify at all, and who waits for what follows. Germi shot it almost entirely in real locations, close to the neorealist current of the moment, while keeping the forward pull of a crime picture. Roldano Lupi plays the accused and Ernesto Almirante the civil servant. A theme Germi would return to begins here: justice being served and a conscience being eased are not the same thing.