Claudia Cardinale stars as Mara, a young woman in post-WW2 Italy who tries to stay true to her love, an on-the-run partisan (George Chakiris) who killed a Fascist policeman after the war had already ended. The pair had first met when Chakiris had traveled to Cardinale’s small village to tell her parents of the death of her brother. With her lover’s upcoming trial and a 14-year-jail-term in the cards, Cardinale finds herself attracted to a new acquaintance (Marc Michel), an idealistic young leftist active in printing and disseminating leaflets. She must come to terms with a looming decision that becomes more problematic as she struggles to keep her loyalty and romantic dreams alive, protecting them from being crushed by the omnipresent harshness of reality.
“A tenderly sweet and poignant film… Mr. Comencini has used the real locations of Italian towns and countryside that remind one of the hard and gritty settings of the great neorealist films.” – Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
Chris D. discusses Bebo’s Girl on the New Beverly blog.
