Dubbing Bette Davis in Italian with another woman is like watching "The Wizard of Oz" in Spanish and hearing somebody else's voice other than Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow". (Fortunately, the Spanish version of the MGM classic did not dub the songs.) But for Bette, that clipped speech which accentuated her mannerisms, that missing voice is like missing half of her performance. She's a wealthy American industrialist who, now wheelchair bound, travels the world, and when visiting Italy has regularly night card games with two local experts, poor natives learning everything they can in order to win all they can from her (whom they continuously refer to as "the old one") to improve their situation.Other than Davis, this is interesting only for a look at the lives of peasants in Italy as well as many location shoots. A great deal of the time deals with their family situation, showing the children making flowers for funerals and all the struggles the parents must go through. Joseph Cotten, appearing with Davis for the third time, plays her partner, yet is greatly wasted. The art direction of Davis's estate is lavish and colorful, and Davis seems to have intentionally made herself look like the old Mrs. Skeffington, in color and with garish blue eye shadow.This is an interesting footnote in Davis's career, coming around the time when her theatrical films were either outrageous camp ("The Anniversary"), barely released ("Bunny O'Hare"), not released in main U.S. markets ("Connecting Rooms") or not seen in the U.S. at all (this one). No wonder she turned to TV guest appearances, talk shows and movies of the week to keep herself active. Yet she's hardly a shell of herself, and her drive would keep her going for nearly another two decades. If you are interested in the subject matter of cards, this will interest you, otherwise it is pretty difficult to get into.

nice, sad, predictable. gray, salted, seductive. a great cast. an ordinary story. crumbs from Visit of Old lady. and scene for extraordinary performance. a film about laws of poverty and people as toys. about power, cruelty and different worlds. about a game as root of so many feelings, emotions, hopes. and about the cold death of dreams. it can be a parable. or slice from reality. in fact, it is itself. a picture of a place. few characters. Bette Davis , Silvana Mangano , Joseph Cotten and irresistible Alberto Sordi around a table, playing cards. so, a meeting. a rite. shadow of life ashes. and strange image about your world. because it can be, in many senses, a manifesto. not about sins or fall, but about borders of gestures. cold, nice, seductive, bitter. a source of reflection. and testimony about a way without end.

Poverty and wealth confront each other over a (not very) friendly game of cards in this often nerve-wracking black social comedy. From her luxurious Italian villa overlooking the ghettos of Rome, a rich, miserly American widow extends her annual invitation to a poor young local couple for an evening of Scopone, the regional variant of bridge. Every year it's the same story: the old widow lends them money before ruthlessly winning it back, building their anticipation and then dashing their hopes for victory and a quick fortune. But this year the desperate Italian couple has been practicing their strategy, unaware that their pragmatic young daughter has been doing likewise, with different motives and with chilling consequences. The casting of Hollywood veterans Bette Davis and Joseph Cotton is relatively meaningless since their voices have been (poorly) dubbed into Italian, but the film is both sharp and lively, and the climactic showdown at the card table generates surprising intensity, too much to be simply funny.

Horror! The DVD is released without English subtitles. I've been talking about this superb Italian blackish comedy ever since I saw it for the first time. I was puzzled by the fact that such a beautifully made film, brilliantly written and with a cast that includes Bette Davis, Alberto Sordi, Joseph Cotten and Silvana Mangano wasn't some kind of "cult" classic in the States. It isn't because nobody knows about the existence of this jewel. Now, on DVD I hurried to buy as many copies I could find. What a great present for all those folks in the good old USA that have heard me talk about it and imitate Bette Davis saying "I want to play cards" in her death bed. Imagine my shock when I opened the DVDs to find out they didn't include subtitles. I was livid! I rushed back to the shop to return them. The shop manager, in typical Italian style, shrugged his shoulders like saying "What can I do about it" I'm really disappointed by whoever perpetrated this moronic release without any, if nothing else, commercial sense.