Teresa la ladra

Teresa Numa, born into a large family in Anzio, is obliged to leave home and look for work. After ten different jobs in seven years, she ends up as a kitchen maid in the house of the stationmaster, Cavalier Nardecchia, at Campo di Carne. Here she gives birth to a son, but only manages to marry Sisto, the child’s father, some years later. As her husband, an ardent Fascist, is killed in the course of the Allied landing in Sicily, Teresa moves temporarily to Rome, where she starts to live by her wits and gets mixed up with some petty thieves. Sent to prison just before Liberation, she tries her luck on her release in Livorno, Genoa and Milan, but in vain. Returning to Rome, she ends up first of all back in jail and then even in a mental asylum. She hitches up with Tonino Santità, driver of a government minister, and then the thief Ercoletto. Released from the criminal asylum, old and worn out, she goes back to Anzio to savor a bit of illusory happiness in the fields full of flowers she knew as a child.

It must have been a subject I found congenial. I’m not a writer and I’ve never presumed to come up with an original screenplay: but if I was going to make a film it had to be about something close to me, in which I could picture myself. A chance encounter with Dacia Maraini and Moravia helped me in this sense and, when it was all over, I could declare myself truly satisfied.
Carlo Di Palma

Teresa la ladra, what a beautiful film! [With] a real character (that I knew, studied, loved), a story that crossed Italy with the war and the poverty. [...] A woman who only loved, unwittingly ironic, and passionate. In short, at last a character of the people, human as I like them [...] People liked it, and I waded into my work. I made myself old and ugly, and I did it with love even though it was a very tough journey.
Monica Vitti in Laura Delli Colli, Monica Vitti, Rome: Gremese, 1987.

PRODUCTION: Euro International Film

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