Unlike most Italian films of the 1940s, Augusto Genina's Cielo Sulla Palude opened in Venice rather than Rome. The film's American title was Heaven Over the Marshes, and indeed most of the story is set in the disease-ridden Pontine Marshes on the outskirts of Rome. This was the home of Maria Goretti, a pious young girl who was murdered by her would-be seducer. For reasons elucidated in the course of the film, Maria's short time on earth made her worthy of Sainthood, which was actually bestowed u...