La ragazza con la valigia

Aida (Claudia Cardinale), a young single mother, gives up her job as a singer and dancer at a third-grade orchestra in Riccione because the rich Casanova Marcello promises to make a star of her. After a few days, he gets bored of the affair and leaves Aida with her luggage on a country road. She sets off on foot to the family’s upper middle-class palace, where Marcello gets his 16-year-old brother Lorenzo (Jacques Perrin) to send her away at the door. A fragile sense of affection blossoms between Aida and Lorenzo. Cardinale renders the titular character – her first major role – via an impressive blend of sensuality, vital spontaneity and melancholy to create a portrait of a woman that was unusual in the shifting Italian cinema of the early 60s. LA RAGAZZA CON LA VALIGIA is the key work by director  Valerio Zurlini, who has been largely forgotten, albeit without any good reason: a film about loneliness and the impossibility of overcoming class barriers. There is also an obvious proximity to the films of the commedia all’italiana, which were made at the same time and critically questioned the promises of the Italian economic miracle. (hjf)