Thanks to Criterion and Hulu, I am only now discovering the crazy work of Raffaello Matarazzo, whose sudsy romances were all the rage in postwar Italy. It's not hard to see why. They're outrageously contrived romances full of round-the-clock emoting, and they move at lightning speed. You may sit there laughing, or saying "This is crazy," but you're not going to be bored. Rosa (Yvette Sanson) is a happily married woman, living in Naples with her mechanic husband Guglielmo (Amedeo Nazzari) and their two children, the boy Tonino and the daughter Angelina. A ghost from the past shows up, former fiance-turned-gangster Emilio (Aldo Nicodemi), who wants Rosa to come back to him -- and threatens to tell her husband about their past if she doesn't agree. She resists, he insists, and everything goes as bad as can be hoped. Matarazzo milks the situation for all it is worth and, of course, makes sure everything is resolved in 90 minutes. It's melodrama at its purest and most unadulterated. Think of Almodovar without all that irony and wit.