La commare secca

La commare secca (literally "The skinny gossip", English title The Grim Reaper) is a 1962 Italian film written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, based on a short story by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The story is very similar to Akira Kurosawa's influential Rashomon, though in an interview Bertolucci denied having seen that film at the time.

A young man tells the police that he was meeting with priests in order to get a job recommendation, though we see that he and his friends spent the time trying to rob lovers in the park.

'Segnalazioni cinematografiche' found the film's ambition to adapt the work to "the most Pasolinian atmosphere and context of the marginal Rome' led to a "rather modest result".

[2] Janet Maslin, in her retrospective review for The New York Times, states that the film "has enough rough edges to mark it unmistakably as a debut effort.