Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage in Italy (1953) is a film that is
utterly devoid of memorable moments. In
an attempt to further separate himself from the movement of neorealism that his
1940s films had essentially created, the director continued to move away from
social issue pictures and toward cinema’s emerging emotional realism. As a result, this film, his third collaboration
with wife Ingrid Bergman, serves more as a testing ground for his talents in
the latter movement rather than a solid or cohesive work. From a narrative standpoint nothing much
happens, and neither Rossellini nor Bergman are yet adept enough working within
the emotional realism palette to offset this lack of plot.
Bergman plays Katherine Joyce, a
woman who’s come to Naples with her husband, Alex (George Sanders) for a
holiday and to sell the villa of a deceased uncle. From the film’s opening they are at each
others’ throats, with an uneventful car ride providing the setting for subtle
jabs and twists of emotional daggers they seem to have long ago buried in one
another’s backs. They don’t scream obscenities
or shout accusations. To do so would
break a code they seem to have adopted without a single necessary word of
agreement.
While the early scenes get the point across that
the marriage has all but evaporated, the dialogue doesn’t escape from the
performers mouths with the joy it might if the script were better. Sanders, who could deliver an unassuming but
fatal verbal blow better than almost anyone in cinematic history, is kept in
his cage, his powers reduced by a screenplay that counted heavily upon the
actors’ ability to improvise. This likely
sat well with Bergman, who trusted her husband’s ability to make it work and
whose lines would be dubbed in post production as with most Italian films of
the time, but Sanders was mortified.
There was a quality of his speech in his best performances that required
him to be “in the moment,” and the ADR technique robbed him of much of his panache.
For
several days the husband and wife live all but separate lives. She’s intent on seeing the sights and he’s
concerned with socializing, trying desperately to stave off the boredom brought
on but what he sees as the unbearably slow pace of Italian life. They bicker when their paths cross in the
villa, with conversations about art and philosophy somehow always morphing into
arguments that never quite explode into full on fights. Rossellini tends to side with Katherine, and
uses Sanders – who he had grown to dislike – to paint an unflattering picture
of Alex. By the time he picks up a
prostitute in the city we’re hardly surprised, and his declaration that the
girl is a “shameless, brazen hussy” seems to fit (while lewd by Hollywood
standards of the day) within his standard dismissive tone. The character of Katherine, alone for much of
the film, is established in an even less subtle way, relying on monologues as
she drives to and from museums and catacombs.
(Spoilers
Below)
In
these and many other aspects Voyage in
Italy is heavy-handed, and as such it becomes predictable in its structure. Most of the emotional cues, accept for the
final one, can be seen from miles off, making them wholly ineffective. And then there is the final scene. Katherine and Alex have decided to
divorce. She can’t stand him anymore,
and she lets him know it. Their car is
caught up in a religious parade. They get
out and Katherine is swept away into the crowd.
She calls for Alex. He catches up
quickly and the two glance something in the Catholic throng that causes their hatred
to melt. In fifteen seconds of screen
time they fall in love again. This didn’t
work for audiences upon the film’s release and it doesn’t work now.
I applaud Rossellini and his actors for not
laying on the romanticism throughout the film, but to bottle it all up for the
final shot feels more like selling out the picture’s established emotional tone
rather than artistically shifting it. Exchanges
like (Katherine) “Life is so short”, (Alex) “That’s why one should make the
most of it” could have been overplayed for schmaltz. They weren’t, and the film could have stuck
to its tonal guns, subtly growing toward a real confrontation or justified
reconciliation. Life is indeed too short
to have an unfounded and shallow happy ending tacked on.
Language:
English
Runtime:
87 Minutes
Grade:
1.5 Hats Off
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