Marcello Fusco

A tremendous congestion hits the Rome highway ring. The biggest traffic jam ever seen lasts more than 36 hours. At the beginning the people blocked in their cars react normally. But as more time passes, the more we witness personal dramas, hysteric reactions and other grotesque situations. All the episodes are linked as if in a single plot. Cars and their hosts are a microcosm of stories part of a larger universe: the congestion.

This slight skewering of the mindset of the Fascist era when Italy’s “White Telephone” films (conservative minded sophisticated comedy-dramas revolving around the bourgeoisie) were in vogue gives Agostina Belli her best role – an ambitious Venetian girl that goes from chambermaid to prostitute to singer to film-star to mistress of ‘Il Duce’! – for which she received a special David Di Donatello award, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar.

A young peasant, Aldo Contini, come to Rome in search of a job. In order to observe two women who are sunbathing on a terrace, he climbs up to a roof, not knowing that he is on the roof of a palace, in which has been killed a little girl. Forced to escape, on his own from the moment in which someone discovers the corpse, he is mistaken for the assassin and only the providential participation of a policeman succeeds in saving him from the furious vengeance of an angry mob. In possession of some clues, he is subjected to a brutal interrogation by the police, during which Aldo, after having uselessly protested his innocence of the crime, ends up confessing to the crime in front of the enquirers.

"The Door to Darkness" is an anthology miniseries of four hour-long thrillers. The series' curator and producer is Dario Argento, the undisputed master of suspense cinema, who directs one of the four films under the pseudonym Sirio Bernadotte.