The films of Pietro Germi, whatever their ostensible backgrounds, were invariably preoccupied with questions of personal honor and allegiance to codes of behavior. Although Germi never visited Sicily before he made In Nome della Legge (In the Name of the Law,1949), he frequently returned to the island, with its foreboding ambiance of fearful independence, its tribal suspicions and its perverse moralities.
Marcello Mastroianni's restlessly comic wife-killer in Divorce - Italian Style (1961) is a prisoner of the very same society as Saro Urzi's earnest carabinieri of In the Name of the Law and the tragic heroine of Sedotta e abandonata ( Seduced and Abandoned,1964) whose life is ruined because of the rigid code of honor which prevails in the mafioso-riddled island.