Paul Elliott’s review published on Letterboxd:
There's an unrelenting rawness in this first feature film from legendary Italian Luchino Visconti as it communicates its story of unfaithfulness, murder, betrayal and sweeping world-weariness. Visconti's co-written screenplay exploits naturalness and illustrations of poverty as the primary driving forces of the narrative, and in following its consequences, it additionally comes to be an intensified bleak portrait of sexual passion.
It features an early performance from Clara Calamai, who went on to star in Dario Argento's Deep Red, as archetypal femme fatale Giovana. She comes to ensnare youthful vagabond Gino (Massimo Girotti) into assisting in murdering her aged and obese husband after growing demoralised by contending with having to cope with labouring in a humdrum diner. It's the definitive adaptation of James M. Cain's masterly novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, despite being unauthorised, and it enraged Mussolini when it was initially released and became banned by the fascist government.
Visconti submerges the story into the fundamentals of existence in an Italian village primarily using natural lighting, and its impelling causes of deprivation and disenfranchisement sees the film often credited with foreshadowing the Italian neo-realism style of filmmaking. It often sees him lumped, fairly erroneously, together with Italian Neo-Realist filmmakers like Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. However, it's beautiful, straightforward direction balances an inevitable type of prototypical neo-realism together with the realm of film noir, and Girotti's portrayal as the harmonica-playing, devil-may-care vagrant is particularly memorable.