The Long Silence

Carla, a middle-aged gynaecologist, lives in constant fear of her husband Marco being murdered. Marco, who is a judge in Rome, investigates suspicious arms deals where bribery scandals and corruption have already been exposed. Carla's fears come true. Her husband is murdered and she is left alone. But Carla manages to break free of her grief and begins to search for the truth.

COMMENTARY
The Long Silence is full of noises, it describes the silent noise that arises when the state meets with ethics in the explosive Italy of today. A middle-aged woman lives like a princess in a tower together with a prince, the judge and investigator of political corruption, a man who knows that Giovanni Falcone (the investigator of ''Cosa Nostra'') was right when he claimed that it is the duty of a state servant to be well protected. No less than the tearing apart of a freeway together with a lot of people was needed to get to him. No modern hero is more realistic than Falcone.
Margaretha von Trotta's princess knows all this, she thinks about it as she goes about her work as a gynaecologist and herself childless, gives the highly symbolical advice to women to reconsider their abortions. ''There is no hurry.''
In the beginning Morricone's music moves like a dramatic testimony through
Carla's heavily saturated life of walks and waiting in suspence, but it stops and is replaced by the sound of breathing, the clinking of coffee cups, the sound of a quilt thrown aside. Anxiety is the heritage of the dark blue apartment where the shutters keep the light out. The backyard is a theme of von Trotta's, the psychological and the nationalized ones. Where there is no state, there is soon no personal freedom either, only those heros who die, and their love. The women are forced to entomb themselves already in their domestic life: ''I'm your weakness'' says Carla, whose life is emptied of fear.
Margaretha von Trotta's movie balances between the personal fate and today's political epicentre, it mixes urban civilization with ancient Sicilian ways. The two destinies clash. The roaring sea at the beginning of the film makes Carla a daughter of the coast, a ''French lieutenant's woman'', but with a power that is doomed by the time she is released from being someone else's weakness. The sea roars. Margaretha von Trotta's achievement is a testament. ':'
Ulrika Milles

Orig. titel
Il Lungo silenzio: Medverkande
Carla Gravina, Jacques Perrin: Producent
Felice Laudadio: Manus
Felice Laudadio: Foto
Marco Sperduti: Musik
Ennio Morricone: Talat språk
Italian