Looking for title of European film - 1950s or 1960s

Note: this message was previously posted on the [link=bd0000001] board. My initial inquiry was for a French film, but since posting it, one person from the group thinks it could have been a European film (e.g. Italian, Spanish, or perhaps Portuguese). She does not think it was made in English. She also thinks it was made in the 50s or 60s.


I saw this on tv in Quebec, Canada in the mid 1970s. It was a French-language film. I doubt it was made in Canada, so I'm guessing it was from France. I have no idea what channel it was on. I watched it at the house of my host family where I stayed for a school cultural exchange. We were a bunch of teenage girls watching this risqué/erotic film and switching the channel on the tv every time an adult entered the room, lol. I'm still in touch with some of the group, but none of us recalls the name of the film (if we ever knew it).

Here are the details we remember:

We think it was a black-and-white film, but we've considered that it might have been simply a black-and-white print (made for tv) of a color film. It also seemed to be an older film, not contemporary. We 1950s or 1960s.

It's about a family of sheep farmers living in the countryside. The setting seems early 20th century, but we aren't certain. The mother was very pretty and portrayed very sexy and sensuous, like Gina Lollobrigida or Sophia Loren (except she was French) and the sexuality was much more overt. She was a buxom brunette with below-the-shoulder wavy hair. She had a slim teenage daughter with straight dark hair. She also had a teenaged son who was obviously cognitively challenged.

Their neighbor was a young unmarried sheep farmer in his twenties. The mother and the neighbor begin an affair and there are a couple of partially nude sex scenes, out of doors. Later in the film, the son observes the mother having sex with the neighbor and becomes angry and disturbed about it. He kills one of the sheep with a knife and later ends up killing his mother by stabbing her. (I think he was jealous.) I can't remember if he dies or is taken away.

The daughter ends up being consoled by the neighbor and they have sex too, out of doors, we think.

It's not much to go on, but as I stated, we had to keep changing the channel because the adults kept coming into the room, lol.

Also, it was not subtitled, as it was shown on a French language station, it being the French-speaking province of Quebec. ⚜ 🇨🇦