La Città si Difende

Four men steal the takings from a football stadium. They split up, and homegrown neo-realism is crossed with Hollywood-style noir, as one by one they try and fail to break out of the big, unforgiving city. Germi is so determined to forge ahead from one set-piece to the next that his gallery of femmes fatales, predatory underworld figures and grim-faced police barely register as characters, except via little cameos (a cop's look of distaste as he picks up a discarded bra). Visually exciting, but superficial; few will be able to resist mentally replacing the cast with more familiar Hollywood analogues - the Burt Lancaster dumb ox, the Sal Mineo weakling, etc.