Il rossetto

Silvana, a twelve-years-old girl, is in love with an older man, Gino. In order to get his attention, she tells him that she saw him leaving the house where a young prostitute was killed.
From that moment, Gino goes along with every single innocent request from Silvana, with the promise she would never tell what she saw. But Silvana’s behaviour gets intolerable, especially after she finds out about Gino’s girlfriend, a rich heiress that he is supposed to marry soon. Tired of all the scenes and stakeouts, Gino goes to the police asking to keep her away from him. Police commissioner Fioresi questions Silvana and even if at first he believes her, he ends up listening to one of his colleagues, who points out the frivolous and unscrupulous behaviour of the girl. Her mother sends her to an institute, where she tries to kill herself. Fioresi questions her again and after that, he is completely sure about Gino’s guilt. He finds him at his girlfriend’s house, the day before the wedding, and he forces him to confess that he was the murderer of the prostitute.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

I owe Il rossetto, my debut film, to Venturini, the producer for whom I wrote a few scripts, and to Zavattini, who I had met in Milan, when I was a young boy and he was shooting Miracolo a Milano with De Sica. I later sent some works to Zavattini and he encouraged me and basically invited me to move to Rome, helping me with my first works. I started as an illustrator of comic books and then I became screenwriter and director of photostories, in Milan. In Rome, I made documentaries, screenplays and finally my first film based on one of my stories and I also wrote the script together with Zavattini. It’s not so weird that the mark of the film is still a little neorealist, with great attention to the characters of the ensemble, to the environment. There were two “keys”: the “police” one, used as an excuse, especially here, and the psychological one, applied to the character of a young girl.
Starting from there, there has been way less eroticism in my girls compared with Lattuada, or maybe a more restrained kind of eroticism. (...)
I made a film which wanted to be a speech against the conformism that used to make a girl feel guilty for showing her sexuality. At the time (along with a sort of morality that I never shared, real moral decay it’s way different) a thirteen-years-old girl wearing lipstick or hiding what she was doing had to be corrupt. That was the meaning behind Il Rossetto... The protagonist was an innocent girl, who fell in love with a man who was fifteen years older.
The male protagonist was, apart from Pierre Brice, Pietro Germi. I really admired Germi. He had been one of my mentors, together with Zavattini. I liked him as a person as well, he was an unusual Italian, with ideas that I didn’t completely share, but an authentic man. He was not a braggart, he didn’t have the gift of the gab and he didn’t say white while thinking black. He didn’t deserve the label of glib they gave him.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Director and plot: Damiano Damiani.
Screenplay: Damiano Damiani, Cesare Zavattini.
Director of photography: Pier Luigi Pavoni.
Art director: Sergio Baldacchini.
Editor: Fernando Cerchio.
Music: Giovanni Fusco.
Cast and characters: Pietro Germi (commissario Fioresi), Laura Vivaldi (Silvana), Pierre Brice (Gino), Georgia Moll (la fidanzata), Bella Darvi, Ivano Staccioli, Nino Marchetti, Renato Mambor, Lia Angeleri, Fiorella Florentino, Stefania Re, Edy Nogara, Bruna Cealti, Armando Guarneri, Nino Nini, Renato Malavasi, Franco Cobianchi, Sara Simoni, Nazzareno D'Aquino.
Production company: Europa cinematografica, Explorer Film, C.F.P.C..
Italian distribution: Cino Del Duca.