Crime of Love (Delitto D’Amore)

A forgotten classic, Crime of Love is a story about two factory workers living in Northern Italy who get romantically involved. The woman, torn between the freedoms of the North and her traditional Sicilian values, slowly allows herself to love and eventually marry her co-worker. Soon after her wedding, she dies as a result of industrial pollution from her job. This film, part melodrama and part social/political commentary, is a historical document of the living conditions of the workers from southern Italy that emigrated to the north of the country to work in the industries in Milan. The film gives a good idea of the north-south mentality clash in Italy. The workers from the north and the south may have the same political ideas, but when they go home totheir families they are worlds apart. They can't understand each other, even when in love as in the case with the film's protagonists the northerner, Nullo and the southerner, Carmela; it is death that ultimately unites them, a death caused by the factory's ruthless disregard for safety measures.