‘Slave of Sin’ or — ‘Stella Dallas’ on Steroids?
It opens with the theft of a pendant at a swanky hotel. The culprit is a member of staff, a little old lady, who, when threatened with police action, tearfully pleads with the manager that she can explain her reasons, but it will involve a flashback to many years ago when she was a young woman.
What follows is a sort of Italian spin on King Vidor’s ‘Stella Dallas’ (1937) as we witness a mother working herself to the bone in order to provide a better life for her daughter, only in Raffaello Matarazzo’s ‘Slave of Sin’ (1954) there’s one big difference — the daughter isn’t hers!
I won’t tell you quite how glamorous “nightclub entertainer” Mara (a wonderful Silvana Pampanini) ends up lumbered with an orphaned child because it’s done in Matarazzo’s typical side-swiping style where you’re happily watching the movie then suddenly — BLAM! — bet you didn’t see THAT horrific event coming!
Obviously Mara can’t keep a child that isn’t hers, something the authorities keep making perfectly clear, so the little girl is deposited at an orphanage. But wait! Maybe Mara can adopt the poor thing herself. Alas, that’s impossible as Mara’s sinful life means she doesn’t qualify as a “good citizen”. Only three years rehabilitation of honest, hard work can change that and, even then, nothing is guaranteed.
It’s only at this point that Matarazzo reveals Mara’s “sinful lifestyle” by cutting to the glitzy nightclub where she works and we can immediately tell she’s an expert at what she does. And the implication of exactly what she does is clear but it’s the way Pampanini effortlessly, and with minimum dialogue, deftly convinces the men to keep spending, keep drinking and keep buying cigarettes at the establishment that really impresses. It’s an incredibly economical and effective way of demonstrating this is a world Mara has inhabited for years and can navigate with skill, and Pampanini’s performance of finely-honed control is sublime.
When Mara finally decides to quit this world of “filth” in order to better herself her boyfriend/pimp mercilessly mocks her. She doesn’t have what it takes to live a decent life! She’s too good at what she does. Besides, he’s got a wealthy client lined-up for her tonight and if she treats him right she’ll be set for life.
Disgusted, Mara walks away from everything she’s known and into the world of honest, hard work and, hopefully, a daughter. Unfortunately, that “honest” world can be just as exploitative as the one she’s left behind.
A friendly, yet pragmatic, police inspector frequently pops-up to give Mara a reality check. Life is brutal, he keeps reminding her without sugar-coating a thing. He, like we, admire her efforts but, let’s face it, it ain’t looking likely she’s going to get what she wants.
A glimmer of hope suddenly ignites when an old lover, a young Marcello Mastroianni, re-enters Mara’s life and a viable chance for the little orphan to finally have a family presents itself. It’s then we get hit with another melodramatic gut-punch — the cost will be Mara’s own personal happiness.
What keeps all the above from being unbearably bleak is just how god-damning entertaining and compelling Matarazzo makes it all, that and his skill for tight pacing and visual panache. There’s an excellent moment when Mara suddenly takes decisive action to start a new, morally upright existence only for her past of “filth” to suddenly re-intrude by a seemingly disembodied hand holding a smoking cigarette to glide into view from off camera. The film is packed with moments like this, along with several audacious camera moves than would put either Kubrick or Argento to shame.
‘Slave to Sin’ is one of those melodramas where a poor woman undergoes absolute hell in order for the audience to be reminded that life is tough but if you succumb to the temptations of easy immorality then the chains of sin are almost impossible to break. The other response, and it’s the one I had, is to sit back and declare loudly to no-one in particular — “How deliciously entertaining!”
