"Chains" is the only film in the set I've seen, and I was drawn to it because the film plays an important part in "Cinema Paradiso" and I wanted to learn more about it. It's a pretty standard melodrama of the period, with virtue, faith and family eventually triumphing over evil. But to the Italians in the late 1940s, it must have been a pleasure after the slew of gritty post-war Italian films of neorealism. Criterion has done a good job assembling a watchable edition and the subtitles are fine. It remains more a film for film students than general audiences now.