This utterly gorgeous Gothic melodrama would be widely hailed as a masterpiece, had it not been made in Italy during the Mussolini regime. A gross injustice, as Malombra - unlike Piccolo Mondo Antico, Mario Soldati's earlier film of an Antonio Fogazzaro novel - contains not one moment of triumphalist flag-waving or Fascist family values. Oddly akin to Rebecca in its atmosphere of death-haunted romance and voluptuous doom, it reaches a peak of visual refinement of which Hitchcock could only dream.　　Its star is Isa Miranda (famous, and not without reason, as Italy's answer to Garbo and Dietrich) playing a headstrong but unstable young noblewoman, confined by her uncle to a gloomy villa on the shores of Lake Como. A yellowed and crumbling letter, found in an old spinet, convinces her that she is the reincarnation of her uncle's first wife - another troubled beauty who died a virtual prisoner after being caught in a forbidden love affair. When a handsome young writer (Andrea Checchi) comes to stay, Miranda decides that HE is the reincarnation of the dead woman's lover. Gradually, she lures him into her web of sex and revenge...　　What more to say without spoiling the fun Miranda gives a performance to rival any of the great divas of Hollywood. Only Davis and Stanwyck, perhaps, could play a bad girl so boldly without losing all sympathy. The evocation of 19th century aristocracy, in its full decadent splendour, is visually and dramatically flawless - a model for such later Italian gems as Visconti's Senso and The Innocent.　　It helped, perhaps, that Soldati himself was a leading novelist. Blessed with an absolute respect for the classics he adapted, but in no way inhibited by them. He was also the guiding spirit of the now-forgotten 'calligraphic' movement, which brought the Italian cinema to such wondrous aesthetic heights during World War Two, only to collapse before the horror of Neo-Realism. Can we blame Soldati for giving up film-making in disgust and going back to writing novels　　So if you've ever felt (as I do) that Rossellini's much-touted Rome - Open City is the work of an amateur...well, Malombra is the film you have to see!

Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Muller), a scientist experimenting with the possibility of regenerating blood through electricity has his home and laboratory in the castle owned by his wife Muriel (Barbara Steele). Arrowsmith finds her later having sex with a gardener and disfigures him with a hot poker and burns Muriel's face with acid before electrocuting both of them. Arrowsmith hides their hearts in an urn and then uses their blood to rejuvenate the aged servant Solange (Helga Liné).　　Later, Arrowsmith realizes that he is not Muriel's heir, but that the estate has been willed to her sister Jenny (Barbara Steele). Jenny is mentally unstable, and Arrowsmith marries her, later planning to have Solange drive her to the brink of sanity. Jenny begins having nightmares which include the sound of beating hearts and Muriel's voice urging her to murder Stephen. Arrowsmith brings Jenny to the doctor Derek Joyce (Marino Masé) who is convinced that supernatural forces are at work. Arrowsmith later tries to give Solange another blood transfusion, the doctor then discovers the hidden hearts of Muriel and the gardener. The two return as ghosts with Muriel burning Stephen alive while David reduces Solange to a skeleton by sucking her blood. The doctor and Jenny leave the castle and consign the two found hearts to a fire.

马克斯·伯纳尔（鲍比·坎纳瓦尔 饰）曾经是个成功的深夜喜剧编剧，之后变为不那么成功的单口喜剧演员，最近毁掉了自己的事业和婚姻，他搬去和父亲（罗伯特·德尼罗 饰）住在一起。当他和前妻詹娜(拜恩)发现他们在如何解决11岁的自闭症儿子埃兹拉（威廉·菲茨杰拉德 饰）的需求上产生了分歧后，马克斯决定绑架他的孩子，带他进行一次跨越全国的冒险旅程，也带来了滑稽的灾难性后果。