2 JUNE 1950, Page 12

Far removed from the uncanny depths of Orpheus is a

new Italian film, In the Name of the Law, which concerns the efforts of a newly-appointed magistrate to' replace the rough justice of the Mafia in Sicily with the laws of the land. Signor Massimo Girotti is the young man who, with only' two policemen, faces a whole community of incorruptible and self-styled honourable murderers. He is excellent, and in that barren, Obverty-stricken, sun-baked landscape evokes a sense of his great loneliness and the thankless- ness of his task. The film is over-long but admirably directed ifl a simpler, slightly documentary style by Signor Pietro Germi ; and it deserves a visit.