The Vanquished

The Vanquished is an Italian-French crime drama made up of three separate stories set in Paris, Rome and London. Each follows young people from comfortable backgrounds who become involved in a killing. In France, a group of students commits murder over money. In Italy, a young man turns to smuggling. In England, an ambitious poet is drawn into a death that brings him publicity. Although the three episodes stand apart, they share a common subject: privileged youth whose moral bearings have given way.

Michelangelo Antonioni directed the film, his second feature after Story of a Love Affair in 1950 and before Il Grido in 1957. He wrote the screenplay with Suso Cecchi d'Amico and Roger Nimier, and Turi Vasile produced. The large credited cast of twenty-six includes Etchika Choureau, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Jacques Sempey, Henri Poirier, Annie Noël and Guy De Meulan, with the French episode carried mainly by the younger performers.

Released in October 1953 and running 113 minutes, the film holds a 6.5 rating from about 1,200 votes on IMDb and a 6.3 from a much smaller sample on TMDB. Audience response is therefore moderate rather than enthusiastic. It belongs to the early, less widely seen stretch of Antonioni's career, before the films that established his reputation.