User Reviews

Amedeo Nazzari plays once again an innocent man victimized by false acaccusations,here forced to leave his country and later to spend 10 years in prison.The tension in this atmospheric melodrama is between his justifiable desire to avenge himself and his simple piety,the great light of the title (such as shown in an early scene where, escaping from a fight, he gives money to a procession of religious villagers marching against the night sky) This is a good role for the actor and the production was well received as an example of a national achievement not depending on an imitation of popular Hollywood imports.

There are three great scenes in this film. The first is the tavern brawl which launches the crisis, as a very drunk guest gets a bottle in his head and accidentally dies. There was no intention to kill him, the host of the tavern simply wanted to calm him down, which became too much. But Rocco is accused of homicide and has exile himself to South America to avoid being prosecuted for a crime he did not commit. The second scene is the great dancing sequence also with music and singing in South America, which is the top scene of the film, also leading to the most extensive bar fight of the film, which is simply gorgeous. The third is the final redemption scene in the cathedral of the sanctuary. There is something of the count of Monte Christo over this film, will Rocco take revenge when he returns to Italy, he enters the cathedral full of praying and singing people armed with a knife, but what will he do with it? Amedeo Nazzari is very young here and makes an interesting performance, giving impressions both of menace, charm, tenderness and piety, making his character extremely complicated, a simple blacksmith who becomes the target of gross injustice and grim deceit, suffering ten years in a South American prison for nothing, and then returning home to all that he was forced away from, his enemy there still active. It is not a simple case.