I Knew Her Well

“When you’re twenty and you like music, what, you don’t dance? Of course you dance!” Pier Paolo Pasolini might have described Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli), the heroine of Antonio Pietrangeli’s cruel yet tender masterpiece, as really pretty—beautiful; kind, well-mannered, smiling, playful, flirtatious. Poor thing. This affinity is no coincidence. Pasolini and Pietrangeli were contemporaries, both working in Rome in the 1960s. While the former turned his camera toward boys—those from the suburbs and those newly arrived in the city from the countryside—the latter, with rare and invaluable virtuosity, created vivid female characters and revealed their inner worlds. There is something fundamentally “Pasolinian” about the light yet heavy comedy-drama I Knew Her Well, yet Pietrangeli’s painterly directorial touch achieves extraordinary subtlety. An unforgettable film—filled with suffering and love.

Stanisław Bardadin

Antonio Pietrangeli (1919–1968) – Italian director and screenwriter. He combined neorealism with commedia all’italiana, portraying social change through a subtle blend of seriousness, irony, and satire. Female characters occupied a central place in his work – Pietrangeli observed the shifting position of women in Italian society with rare sensitivity, telling their stories at an unhurried pace. The openness of the frame and the lightness of his narrative created an impression of freedom and new perspectives, even if these ultimately remained beyond his characters’ reach. The director drowned while working on his final film, How, When and with Whom. Although his career was tragically cut short, his legacy secured him a lasting place in the history of Italian cinema.

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