Anna Magnani provides the box-office luster for this pedestrian wartime melodrama. Filmed on location in Milan, the story revolves around a jackbooted Nazi officer. A textbook study in sadism, the officer regains his humanity when he is nursed through a raging illness by peasant woman Magnani. The screenplay is by neorealism maven Cesar Zavattini, who'd certainly done better work than this. Filmed in 1946, Lo Sconosluto di San Marino (The Unknown of San Marino) was released in the U.S. in 1948, where it suffered in comparison to the onslaught of superior Italian productions of the era. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi