{"id":13123,"date":"2026-10-04T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=13123"},"modified":"2026-09-27T11:32:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T11:32:52","slug":"idealism-has-a-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/idealism-has-a-price\/","title":{"rendered":"Idealism Has a Price"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MOVIE REVIEWS
\nCorruption (La corruzione)<\/strong>
\n –  <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Drama
\nYear Released: <\/strong>1963, 2026 Blu-ray
\nRuntime:<\/strong> 1h 22m
\nDirector: <\/strong>Mauro Bolognini
\nWriters: <\/strong>Ugo Liberatore, Fulvio Gicca Palli
\nCast: <\/strong>Jacques Perrin, Alain Cuny, Rosanna Schiaffino, Isa Miranda, Ennio Balbo
\nWhere to Watch: <\/strong>available now; order your copy here: www.radiancefilms.co.uk<\/a>, www.mvdshop.com<\/a>, or www.amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>CORRUPTION opens with a young man being told that the life ahead of him should be guided by moral responsibility, then spends the next 82 minutes demonstrating just how difficult that becomes when everyone around him has learned to treat morality as negotiable. Mauro Bolognini’s 1963 drama isn’t especially subtle about the forces pulling Stefano Mattioli in different directions, but something is fascinating about watching his certainty slowly collapse. The movie isn’t really asking whether Stefano can resist one temptation. It’s asking how long anyone can hold onto an ideal when practically every part of the world around them is designed to make surrender easier.<\/p>\n

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Stefano (Jacques Perrin) has just finished his studies in Switzerland and intends to enter the priesthood. That decision horrifies his wealthy father Leonardo (Alain Cuny), who has already planned a considerably different future for his son. Leonardo owns a successful publishing business and expects Stefano to inherit the empire, so abandoning everything for a religious life feels almost incomprehensible to him.<\/p>\n

Leonardo doesn’t try to understand why his son has made the decision. Instead, he decides Stefano needs correction. A trip aboard his yacht becomes part vacation and part carefully arranged test, with Leonardo bringing along Adriana (Rosanna Schiaffino), his much younger mistress, and effectively placing temptation directly in his son’s path. What could have become a fairly simple story about sexual temptation quickly grows into something much more uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

Cuny makes Leonardo unsettling because he rarely behaves like someone who believes he’s doing anything particularly monstrous. He has accepted a world where money, influence, sex, and loyalty all have prices, so manipulating his son is simply another problem that can be solved using the resources available to him. There’s a cold confidence to the performance that makes Leonardo far more disturbing than he would have been as an openly cruel father.<\/p>\n

Perrin gives Stefano the opposite energy. There’s softness in the performance that makes his idealism believable without making him seem completely foolish. He isn’t merely rebelling against his father for the sake of rebellion; he genuinely believes there must be another way to live. The tragedy is that his understanding of good and evil is so absolute that once he believes he has failed his own moral standard, he has very little room to forgive himself.<\/p>\n

That weakness is one of the most interesting things about CORRUPTION. Stefano may be morally opposed to his father, but he’s also poorly prepared for a world that refuses to divide itself neatly between purity and sin. His certainty gives him strength early in the film, yet it also leaves him vulnerable. Once Leonardo manages to create doubt, Stefano doesn’t have much between complete devotion and complete surrender.<\/p>\n

Adriana could easily have been reduced to the beautiful woman hired to pull Stefano away from the priesthood, but Schiaffino makes her more complicated than the role initially suggests. She understands the arrangement better than Stefano does and seems considerably less convinced than Leonardo that any of this will actually help him. At times, she seems to participate because that’s simply how her relationship with Leonardo functions, which quietly makes her another person caught in the same system Stefano wants to escape.<\/p>\n

The yacht scenes are where Bolognini makes the movie’s emotional ugliness look almost impossibly attractive. Sunlight, open water, expensive clothes, and leisure surround conversations about manipulation and control. Nothing about this world looks miserable from the outside. That contrast matters because Leonardo’s life is supposed to represent everything Stefano rejects, yet Bolognini never presents wealth as physically unpleasant. The ugliness comes from what people will do to maintain it.<\/p>\n

Leonida Barboni’s black-and-white cinematography gives those sequences an almost detached elegance, while Giovanni Fusco’s music adds another layer that can feel strangely at odds with Stefano’s discomfort. That disconnect works. CORRUPTION frequently looks and sounds more inviting than the story feels, placing the audience in a position not entirely different from Stefano’s. There’s beauty everywhere, but very little peace.<\/p>\n

The film becomes even stronger once it moves beyond whether Stefano will give in to Adriana. Sexual temptation is only the easiest form of corruption for Leonardo to arrange. The publishing business exposes Stefano to something much larger: a system where people who once claimed to have principles have learned how comfortably those principles can be exchanged for money, security, or status.<\/p>\n

Ennio Balbo’s Morandi is important in that regard. Stefano admires him as an intellectual connected to ideals that seem opposed to Leonardo’s worldview, only to discover that intellectual conviction can be compromised too. That realization pushes the movie beyond a simple religious argument. Stefano isn’t merely discovering that his father is corrupt; he’s discovering that people from seemingly opposing sides can eventually arrive at the same place once comfort outweighs belief.<\/p>\n

Bolognini occasionally pushes these ideas so directly that the characters start to sound like participants in a debate rather than people having a conversation. CORRUPTION is at its weakest when it feels determined to explain every ideological difference between Stefano and the adults around him. The symbolism can be equally blunt, and there are moments when the movie’s moral position is clear long before the scene has finished making its point.<\/p>\n

That directness is probably the biggest thing keeping the film at a 3.5\/5 for me. There’s a sharper, more psychologically complicated movie hiding inside some of these confrontations, particularly because Stefano himself is more interesting when he’s uncertain than when he’s being used as a representative for idealism. Bolognini gives us glimpses of that complexity but occasionally returns to arguments that feel predetermined.<\/p>\n

The performances keep those stretches from becoming dry. Perrin is especially effective once Stefano’s confidence begins disappearing because his face does much of the work. He increasingly looks like someone searching for an exit and realizing that every available direction requires compromising something. Cuny remains frighteningly calm beside him, making Leonardo’s certainty feel almost impossible to fight.<\/p>\n

The cruelty of CORRUPTION eventually comes from recognizing that Leonardo doesn’t need Stefano to believe the same things he does. He only needs his son to stop believing that resistance matters. Breaking Stefano’s certainty is enough, because once he accepts compromise as unavoidable, Leonardo’s world has already won something from him.<\/p>\n

That idea gives the film a surprisingly modern sting more than six decades later. The specific conflict between religious vocation and inherited wealth belongs very clearly to Stefano’s story, but the broader pressure is much easier to recognize. People enter adulthood believing they’ll live by certain principles, then encounter institutions and individuals that reward compromise, one small decision at a time.<\/p>\n

Radiance Films’ new 2K restoration gives CORRUPTION a welcome North American Blu-ray release, and the presentation is particularly valuable for a film so dependent on its black-and-white photography. The limited edition also includes a new interview with critic and programmer Adrian Wootton, an archival discussion with producers Alfredo Bini and Manolo Bolognini, improved English subtitles, and a booklet featuring new writing by film scholar Marco Natoli.<\/p>\n

CORRUPTION can be heavy-handed, and at times its philosophical arguments are more compelling than the people delivering them. Yet Bolognini’s visual control, Perrin’s vulnerable performance, and Cuny’s unnerving coldness keep pulling the film back toward something human. Stefano begins believing he can simply choose a better life than the one his father represents. What makes the film linger is the realization that making that choice and being allowed to live it are two very different things.<\/p>\n

Bonus Materials:<\/strong>
\n2K restoration
\nUncompressed mono PCM audio
\nNew interview with critic and programmer Adrian Wootton
\nArchival interview with producers Alfredo Bini and Manolo Bolognini
\nNewly improved English subtitle translation
\nReversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow
\nLimited edition booklet featuring new writing by film scholar Marco Natoli
\nLimited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings<\/p>\n

Please visit https:\/\/linktr.ee\/overlyhonestr for more reviews.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of RADIANCE FILMS, MVD ENTERTAINMENT]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEWS Corruption (La corruzione) –      Genre: Drama Year Released: 1963, 2026 Blu-ray Runtime: 1h 22m Director: Mauro Bolognini Writers: Ugo Liberatore, Fulvio Gicca Palli Cast: Jacques Perrin, Alain Cuny, Rosanna Schiaffino, Isa Miranda, Ennio Balbo Where to Watch: available now; order your copy here: www.radiancefilms.co.uk, www.mvdshop.com, or www.amazon.com RAVING REVIEW: CORRUPTION opens with a young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/img\/0367\/0367802.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t