The NFSA has restored Giorgio Mangiamele’s uncompleted (and therefore mute) first feature film 'Il Contratto' (The Contract). A remarkable film in the context of Australian cinema of its era, 'Il Contratto' was the only feature of the 1950s to unflinchingly show the isolation, alienation and loneliness of Italian migrants to Australia. Mangiamele based his script on the experiences of the fellow countrymen with whom he travelled to Australia in 1952. The film’s authentic portrayal of immigrant hardships was accentuated by his casting of people who had lived through the events they were portraying. While Mangiamele later focused on loners who were up against the system, the characters of 'Il Contratto' are sustained by their unity.
Twins (both played by Infante) are separated while very young, one raised as a singer by their widowed mother and another as the heir to one of Mexico's richest families.
In the spring of 1945, World War II is coming to a close. Roger Halyard, a dignified, strait-laced Englishmen, lives on a South Sea atoll with his three daughters, Gloria, Hester and Violet, along with the housekeeper, Thelma, who has raised the girls since childhood.
A jeweller is killed in a gang robbery leaving the daughter as the only witness. When the police can't build a case against him she decides to go undercover to infiltrate the home of the killer's brother.
Swindler in jail devises a scheme to blackmail the family of recently deceased people, threatening to tell supposedly incriminating facts about their dead relatives' lives.
