Old Venetian Prison Film

February 8, 2007 1:53 PM

Does anyone know the title of old Italian film - Partly set in a Venetian Jail?

I'm trying to find this film for an old friend - Who described it, but was very flaky about the details.

It's an old Italian film (poss. c1950's?)
Rough plot: A man is wrongly imprisoned (by the guilty person) in a Venetian prison. At one point in the film, water rises in the cell, and the man has to struggle to remain above the water.

I believe at the end of the film, the man is vanquished.

posted by Dub to media & arts (7 comments total)

The plot line might be off, but could it be Fellini's Casanova? There is tons of water (famously when he's in a gondola on a "sea" made out of trash bags), and he's jailed for political reasons and then escapes... but the bulk of the movie is more about sex than prison (well, except metaphorically).
posted by occhiblu at 2:52 PM on February 8, 2007

Long shot, and not Italian, but Papillon has a scene where the wrongly imprisoned man is struggling to remain above the water in a Venezuelan jail.
posted by goo at 2:52 PM on February 8, 2007

The best match I find is Il Tradimento.

You can try using the IMDB power search to search. I was using these search parameters:
country of origin = Italy
release date between 1930-1970
plot summary include words: prison; jail; Venice (I did three separate searches).
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:54 PM on February 8, 2007

Papillon has a scene exactly like that. He is in a dug-out jail cell that is flooded twice a day whenever the tide comes in.
posted by afx237vi at 3:34 PM on February 8, 2007

Thanks people!

I checked IMDB ealier (but I didn't know about the power-search, LobsterMitten)
Papillon seems too new (from what the chap spoke of the film, it seemed much older - That said, it could have been dubbed into Italian, and his memory may be playing tricks on him)
I'll have to quiz him some more about Casanova di Federico, Occhiblu. He may have "forgotten" the sexy scenes, because his wife was in the room :), but that seems quite recent too.

I hope others still contribute - I'd like to track this down for him.
posted by Dub at 4:35 PM on February 8, 2007

vanquished? or vindicated?
posted by sergeant sandwich at 5:06 PM on February 8, 2007

He may have "forgotten" the sexy scenes, because his wife was in the room

Heh, they weren't all that sexy. It's mostly extreme close-ups of Donald Sutherland's face as he huffs and puffs away, as if you in the audience were his (bored) partner. It's hard to forget, and not really in a good way!
posted by occhiblu at 6:28 PM on February 8, 2007