Gorgeous, dark-haired, luscious-lipped, shapely-legged, not afraid of showing as much of her body as could be, Elli Parvo was THE femme fatale of post-war Italy. Revealed by "Desiderio" (1943-1946), started in 1943 by Roberto Rossellini and completed in 1946 by Marcello Pagliero, she appeared as a sex-hungry vamp men had better not mix with. In her next film, directed by her husband Aldo Vergano, "Il sole sorge ancora" (1946), an important work about Italian Resistance, she was once again on the wrong side of morality as the provocatively beautiful noblewoman who tries to seduce her lover out of right-minded Lea Padovani's arms. However this ability to embody the ruthless seductress proved a mixed blessing. Indeed, as she grew older, Elli Parvo had the same problem as her French look alike Ginette Leclerc: either she was reduced to parody herself, like the comical vamp she played in "Toto terzo uomo" (1951), or she got more and more insignificant supporting parts in the films of the nineteen fifties. As no director or producer gave her a real opportunity to express all her talent, she finally called it quits after a last foray into an Italian comedy. She can nevertheless be seen in Antonioni's heart-rending "Il grido" (1957).
She has an entry in Jean Tulard's "Dictionnaire du Cinéma/Les Acteurs" (ISBN: 978-2-221-10895-6) published in Paris in 2007 by Robert Laffont/Bouquins.
After living seven years with the mechanic Aldo, having a daughter with him, the simple woman Irma is informed that her absent husband had just died in Sydney. She becomes upset when Aldo proposes to marry her and she tells him that she is going to leave him. Unable to explain how much he loves her, Aldo takes their daughter Rosina and travels with her, meeting different women in different places, trying to establish a new relationship and fill the emptiness of his sentimental life. He visits his former lover Elvia; he meets and lives with the widow Virginia, who owns a gas station; he lives with the prostitute Andreina. But these relationships never complete the needy Aldo.