Raffaello Matarazzo started writing film reviews for the Roman newspaper Il Tevere before re-editing scripts for the Italian film company Cines. His first films were comedies until he shifted to making melodramas. With Chains (1949), produced by Titanus in 1949, he became the most successful director in Italy. Audience loved his melodramas. Critics, however, have tended to disparage his work and dismiss it as 'saccharine neorealism.' Since the 1970s, some film critics have tried to restore Matarazzo's reputation. French magazine Positif loved his erotic-historical drama The Ship of Damned Women (1953).