Fear

Pretty much passed over at the time, Rossellini's Bergman films are now being touted, not always too convincingly, as supremely personal masterpieces. This one, the last in the series, has a fine central idea: a woman, driven to infidelity and then suicidal angst by her husband's hostility, is viewed as yet another victim of his vivisectional experiments. But the sense of moral preachment that so often marred Rossellini's work remains inescapable.