Just as his ideal young female appears on the beach at the end of "La Dolce Vita, " so in this film she takes the form of a pristine Claudia Cardinale, "a child and yet already a woman, " hovering tantalizingly just beyond Guido's reach.

WSJ: 8?: A Flawed Filmmaker's Life Turned Into Art by Peter Cowie

The setting is a cramped, chilly room off a desolate courtyard, sometime in the late nineteenth century, where a poor, elderly couple, Gebo (Michael Lonsdale) and Doroteia (Claudia Cardinale), are haunted by the eight-year absence of their prodigal son, whose wife, Sofia (Leonor Silveira), they have taken in.

NEWYORKER: Gebo and the Shadow