The Career of a Chambermaid

Italian comedy

A satirical Italian comedy-drama that traces an ambitious woman's rise through various social roles while skewering Fascist-era bourgeois pretensions and the conventions of sophisticated cinema.

This slight skewering of the mindset of the Fascist era when Italy’s “White Telephone” films (conservative minded sophisticated comedy-dramas revolving around the bourgeoisie) were in vogue gives Agostina Belli her best role – an ambitious Venetian girl that goes from chambermaid to prostitute to singer to film-star to mistress of ‘Il Duce’! – for which she received a special David Di Donatello award, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar.