Girl With a Suitcase (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Sep 03, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Valerio ZurliniRelease Date(s)
1961 (April 29, 2025)Studio(s)
Titanus/Société Générale de Cinématographie (Radiance Films)- Film/Program Grade: A
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
Re-appraised after many decades, Valerio Zurlini’s Girl With a Suitcase (La ragazza con la valigia, 1961) is now regarded as essential postwar Italian cinema, and with good reason. An Italian-French romantic drama, the film is uncommonly honest about male-female relationships and its myriad complexities and heartaches. Though both stars, Claudia Cardinale and Jacques Perrin, are dubbed by others, their outstanding performances shine through regardless.
The film opens with Aida (Cardinale) and current boyfriend Marcello (Corrado Pani) stopping his sportscar along the road because she has to pee. He’s obviously irritated by this minor inconvenience and considers driving off without her, but instead soon after feigns engine trouble and pulls into a garage, speeding off when she leaves for a few minutes to buy something nearby.
He returns home to the cavernous mansion where he lives, though apparently not often, with his 16-year-old kid brother Lorenzo (Perrin), and their aunt (Luciana Angiolillo) since the death of their mother, their father forever away on work. Aida tracks Marcello down that night, he urging Lorenzo to lie and claim he does not live there. Taking pity on the beautiful but helpless young woman, he finds her a pensione for the night.
Though privately tutored by a local priest (Romolo Valli), Lorenzo instead spends all his time looking after Aida, buying her clothes, sneaking her into his mansion so that she can bathe, and all too clearly falls in love with her. She realizes this, but doesn’t so much take advantage of his feelings as she is drawn by his innocent, nonjudgmental kindness.
Nevertheless, she’s still determined to track down Marcello—Lorenzo claiming not to know the man—and later her abusive ex-boyfriend, Piero (Gian Maria Volonté), also turns up, wanting her back. So does a horny, rich, middle-aged tourist who wines and dines her, as Lorenzo seethes jealously from a nearby patio. When she refuses to return to Piero, a cousin of his, Romolo (Riccardo Garrone), gets her drunk and assaults her on a beach in Rimini.
Remarkably subtle and truthful, Girl With a Suitcase is rich with fully-fleshed main characters, superbly played by Cardinale and Perrin. Synopses I’d read before seeing the film suggested Aida as the kind of woman who takes advantage of men who desire her sexually, she blissfully moving from man to man after they treat her to luxurious meals, accommodations and the like. That’s not the case at all—rather, she’s jerked around by male characters taking advantage of her, who lust and disdain her with equal measure, their crude, sometimes abusive treatment invariably making her even more unhappy.
Only the adoring Lorenzo, having put Aida on a pedestal from the moment they met, is unfailingly kind and generous, though also clearly in love with her. Perrin, 20 years at the time, is so boyishly innocent-looking he’s completely acceptable as a 16-year-old student, a slightly younger version of his sailor character from The Young Girls of Rochefort, searching for his idealized soulmate. Cardinale, meanwhile, is perfectly cast and delivers an outstanding performance. Twenty-three at the time, she could not be impossibly beautiful if she tried, yet the film cleverly treats her mesmerizing looks almost as a disadvantage, with men pulling at her from all directions, and Lorenzo unclear about his place among Aida’s former and would-be suitors.
The actress dubbing Cardinale’s voice doesn’t sound much like her, but the movie is so good that it’s easy to ignore this. (Ironically, Cardinale dubbed her own voice for the French version, and presumably Perrin did as well, but that’s not included here.) There are innumerable fine scenes—one standing out particularly is a gentle but firm confrontation between the priest and Aida, where he explains All in a manner that is brutally honest but empathetic, while she’s honest enough with herself to own her own mistakes, even though the last thing she wants is to listen to are the hard truths of the last few days. All of the scenes with Aida and Lorenzo are sweet and/or heartbreaking; the combination of their shared intimacy and insurmountable barriers standing between them is riveting, the two performances enhanced by the sensitive direction and complementary cinematography (by Tino Santoni).
Noteworthy also is the film’s sound design. Very unusual anywhere in the world for a film from this period, there’s an enormous amount of pop music emanating from record albums, jukeboxes, etc., a mix of Italian and American pop hits, classical and opera, including Tequila and Fever. The music is smartly chosen to comment on the scene it accompanies, some years before movies like The Graduate and Easy Rider revolutionized movie soundtracks.
Radiance’s Blu-ray of Girl With a Suitcase presents the film in its original black-and-white and 1.85:1 screen shape, the flawless 4K restoration among the best I’ve ever seen for a film with those specs. Deep blacks, flawless contrast, etc. make this a real feast for the eyes. The LPCM mono is Italian only, supported by optional English subtitles, and the disc itself is Region-Free.
Supplements consist of interviews with assistant director Piero Schivazappa and screenwriter Piero de Bernardi; an interview with film critic Bruno Torri on the director career and rediscovery; a visual essay by Kat Ellinger; and a booklet featuring essays by Giuliana Minghelli and Cullen Gallagher.
A limited edition of 3,000 copies, Girl With a Suitcase is one of the year’s best Blu-ray releases.
- Stuart Galbraith IV