User reviews

For some inexplicable reason this movie pitched up on TCM. Thought Id seen everything this somewhat tired channel has to offer... I couldn't stop watching. The movie seethes with subliminal and explicit homo erotic content in a way that I think was a ahead of its time. The black and white photography is very moody and the performances command attention. The influence of Italian neo-realism is very present. It has that distinctive style of some 50s drama, where the scenes develop without much explanation moving the story forward. When the young gangster arrives on the island you know something is going on, without having been given all the usual clues you find in American movies.

Of the two Italian films that addressed male bisexuality I prefer ' Il Mare ' as I feel it was better directed. For a start it had Umberto Orsini, and Francoise Prevost in it plus a moody young man, who rather looked like the moody young man in ' L'Isola di Arturo. ' The whole feel of ' Il Mare ' was more compelling and that again is partly due to the acting. I am not sure I was totally convinced by the acting in ' L'Isola di Arturo ', and sadly it does not make me want to read Elsa Morante's novel upon which it was based. ' Il Mare ' was also better as I believe it was more in the Nouvelle Vague way of being simply itself. I was also not taken with the wretched island ' Arturo ' was set on, nor its rituals of religious superstition. The story is complex and yet simple; a teenager idolizing his blond and very handsome father until he turns out to be a man obsessed by a male gigolo ( antiquated term, but appropriate here ), and the said gigolo is a decidedly loathsome character. Despite the terrible treatment towards women in this film I felt quite sorry for the father who ends up as equally imprisoned within himself as the actual prisoners who are incarcerated in a prison on the island. All this is seen through the decidedly heterosexual young Arturo who pouts his way to some understanding which leaves him with a decision to make, and no spoilers. So why have I given it such a high rating ? Mainly because it tackled its controversial subject matter which must have been a bit scandalous for the Italians of 1962, and also because the black and white photography is excellent. I have very mixed feelings about this film, rarely seen, and almost as forgotten as ' Il Mare' is. Both were released in the UK with X certificates for adults only and neither I think made any great impact. In that sense they paved the way to better films dealing however marginally with homosexuality, and the outright positive representations to be found in the 21st c.