TONI - #1040

Toni is the 1935 drama from revered French director Jean Renoir. By his own admission (as seen in the intro included on this disc), Toni was Renoir’s attempt at Neorealism--though well before such a term existed. A story based in fact, shot in the town where the event happened, using people from the region--it’s not as raw as De Sica or Rossellini, but it is different from your classic Renoir. It’s sharper, less adorned, and more candidly honest about the lives it depicts. 

The titular Toni, as played by Charles Blavette, is an Italian who has come to a remote French community that is home to many migrant workers. Toni works in the quarry, has an affair with the woman running his boarding house (Marie, played by Jenny Hélia), and lusts after the sexy farm girl Josefa (Celia Montlaván). Toni has big romantic notions, but more along the lines of his own success than of the lovemaking kind. Sure, he imagines a future with Josefa, but it’s also part of his bigger plan to take over the quarry and improve his status. This takes on an even more macho cadence when his rival Albert (Max Dalban) also decides to pursue both tgose things. A scant few minutes separate Albert’s encounter with Josefa and Toni’s arrival, enough time for Albert to force his affections on her. Disheartened, Toni marries Marie, leaving Josefa to a less-than-ideal union with Albert. 

But, of course, it doesn’t end there. Josefa’s uncle ties Toni to his niece further by insisting he be the godfather to her child. The twists and tangles this causes marginalizes Marie, exposes Albert’s greed, and basically turns Toni into a weird white-knight stalker.

 

It’s interesting to consider this material and how Renoir might have approached Toni at a different time. This is really a melodrama in Neorealist clothing. Yet, instead of milking the script for the big emotion, Renoir’s mission aesthetic strips the story of its grandiosity and gets down to the nitty gritty of human desire and selfishness. Toni is no hero, and Josefa is no princess waiting to be rescued. If she has any real affection for either man, it’s never stated. And that kid that Toni is so concerned about protecting? You never really see it. 

Renoir seems fascinated by these sordid affairs. It’s like he’s wound up all these toys just to watch them go. And he inserts innocent bystanders like Toni’s older pal Fernand (Édouard Delmont) to play a little bit of devil’s advocate, to probe on behalf of the filmmaker and his audience, and be a voice of reason when Toni offers none; also, there is a Greek chorus of traveling minstrels reminding us of the macabre ballads that told these stories once upon a time. There is an even keel to the proceedings, the laser focus of Toni’s mission not really allowing for bigger swings, he’s all about what he can make his own. Even Marie’s bold decision in the final third is absent of any exaggeration. She is just as determined as the man who spurned her, and Toni’s heart rate only rises after he realizes the truth too late. (Though, really, it’s Fernand, who himself loves Marie, that pieces it together.) 

This seems by design. By going small, somehow things feel big. One love triangle crumbles, workers disappear, and a new train pulls into the station, unloading those that will come next, to either repeat this squalid history or make their own. The human tide beats on. 

 The new 4K restoration on Toni brings Renoir’s intentions to life, delivering a crisp black-and-white picture that gives sharp life to Claude Renoir’s photography. The location shooting looks amazing in this format, adding to the realism that the cameraman’s father was aiming for.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for the purposes of review.

DOV'E LA LIBERTA...? - FILMSTRUCK

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com as part of the Roberto Rossellini 2-Disc Collector's Edition in 2008.

Dov'è la libertà...? (Where is Freedom?) a dark social comedy from 1954 that stars Italian screen icon Toto as Salvatore, a man pleading his case before a judge in a Roman court. Salvatore has spent twenty-two years of his life behind bars, and after only a short time of being on parole, he was arrested again, this time for trying to break back into jail.

As Salvatore explains, prison life had an order built on a mutual need amongst the imprisoned to survive their incarceration with as little hassle as possible. Ten or more men to one cell meant forming a miniature society, one where the quiet barber muddled through by keeping order and helping the others maintain a fresh perspective. Salvatore himself was sent down the river for killing a man who tried to force himself on his wife, a crime of passion he is ready to put behind him. Unfortunately, the march of time has passed him by while being away, and he is surprised to find the world is not as trusting of him as he is of it, nor as honest. On the outside, Salvatore bounces from one bad situation to another, getting involved in a crooked marathon dance, the flirtations of the selfish daughter of a boarding house landlady, and even his former in-laws, who prove to be the least trustworthy of the bunch. And don't even ask what he finds out about his late wife! With each set-back, Salvatore loses a little more of his faith in humanity, making him long for the moral order of prison life and inspiring his reverse jailbreak.

Dov'è la libertà...? is a quietly satirical film, avoiding broad jokes and relying on a sort of common sense comedy. For as irrational as Salvatore's actions seem on paper, his point-of-view makes perfect sense, particularly as it is explained by Toto. With his expressive eyes and hound-dog face, the actor's weary bafflement comes across as totally logical. He's a little like a latter-day Buster Keaton, with maybe a smidgen of Marty Feldman and Peter Sellers thrown in. There's just something about his exasperated expression that makes you want to believe him even as you laugh at him for being so gullible. How can society be so out of tune with a man so down to earth?

INGRID BERGMAN’S SWEDISH YEARS: INTERMEZZO/A WOMAN'S FACE - ECLIPSE SERIES 46

These reviews originally appeared on DVDTalk.com as part of a previous set of films released in 2011.

Ingrid Bergman is a genuine Hollywood icon thanks to her co-starring role in Casablanca and her collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock [review 1, 2. While many are aware of her later films, including the challenging Italian pictures directed by her husband Robert Rossellini, as well as her eventual pairing with the other famous Swedish Bergman, Ingmar, not as much attention is paid to her pre-Hollywood career. For a short period, Ingrid Bergman made her name as an actress in Sweden, and six of her m films from her home country are now collected in the Ingrid Bergman's Swedish Years boxed set from Eclipse--giving many of us our first chance to see a screen legend developing her craft in the earliest stages of her endeavors.

Though she had appeared in six features prior (including one uncredited role), one could argue that the 1936 version of Intermezzo was really what got things started. Directed by Gustaf Molander, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gösta Stevens, Intermezzo was the movie that brought Ingrid to the attention of famed producer David O. Selznick. He would soon bring her to Hollywood and cast her in the remake of Intermezzo, her breakthrough English-language role, in 1939.

In the movie, Bergman plays Anita Hoffman, a promising young pianist who ignores better advice and pairs up with concert violinist Holger Brandt (Gösta Ekman), joining the married man as both his musical accompanist and his lover. Brandt sacrifices his home life, leaving behind his wife and two children, to go on tour with Anita, who also gives up the tutelage of Brandt's former partner (Hugo Björne). The two are essentially happy, but they practically live in exile, with Anita in the subservient role of being Brandt's back-up rather than blossoming into her own as an artist. When an opportunity to study in Paris comes along, the two must ask themselves what is really important: the love for each other, or the love of music. Brandt must also face what he's already left behind. As he puts it, they are stuck with the irony that his past and her future can never be joined.

For a movie about two passionate artists locked in a scandalous affair, Intermezzo is surprisingly lacking in both passion and scandal. Its polite restraint is almost Victorian, like something akin to an Edith Wharton novel. Though solidly written, it never really gets much gas, and the inevitability of the melodrama more drifts toward its foregone conclusions than it relays any sense that there is a great force driving their fates. Thankfully, it's a film that is very well performed, with both Gösta Ekman and Ingrid Bergman making great use of their roles. They strike a fine balance, with Ekman's needy ego fitting in perfectly with Bergman's desire to please. The actress displays a sweet innocence at the start of the movie that is vastly different than some of her better-known, well-traveled roles. Intermezzo is also a pretty film to look at, with lots of intricate sets and a gorgeous wardrobe, presumably reflecting the style of 1930s Sweden.

Bergman teamed with Gustaf Molander a second time for the 1938 film A Woman's Face. Written again by Gösta Stevens, but this time adapted from a play by Francis De Croisset, A Woman's Face is a melodrama with a touch of noir. Bergman plays the villain of the piece--or at least, half a villain. At the start of the picture, she is the femme fatale of a blackmail ring, though her role tends to be more on the planning side than seduction. A childhood accident has left half of her face burned, and also left her bitter against the world.

Bergman plays Anna with a surprising anger, and also a pronounced vulnerability. She regularly reaches her hand up to her face, protectively shielding her scars. She projects her rage outwardly, pushing her crew to be tougher on their victims, and ends up taking one of the cases over herself. She is caught by the mark's husband (Anders Henrikson), who by no small coincidence is a doctor who fixed similar scarring for soldiers after World War I. He offers to operate on Anna's face, hoping it will warm her heart and inspire her to turn her life around. At first, she ignores the opportunity the healed visage offers, joining a previous scheme to cheat a young boy (Göran Bernhard) out of his inheritance, but posing as his governess helps her embrace love--particularly when she finds it with one of his uncles (Gunnar Sjöberg).

Anna's transformation from hard-bitten criminal to tenderhearted softie is a predictable one, but it's made believable by Ingrid Bergman's performance. She instinctively understands the various stages of Anna's metamorphosis and her work actually stands apart from the script, which I think expected the switch to be more automatic. Despite the fairly standard plotting, A Woman's Face avoids the treacle, never quite giving in to more conventional urges, instead settling on an ending that is more bittersweet than one might expect. I haven't seen the remake with Joan Crawford that came a couple of years after Molander's version, but knowing the Hollywood formula, it wouldn't surprise me if it took an entirely different exit than the Swedish production.

You can also read my review of Ingrid Bergman's final film, June Night, here.

THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS - #854

Criterion fans know the name Ermanno Olmi from his excellent Neorealist films, Il posto [review] and I fidanzati [review], small dramas set in then-modern times (1961 and 1962) that are elegant, personal, and focused. And if that, like me, is all you know, then his Palm d’Or-winning The Tree of Wooden Clogs may be a bit of a surprise. Released in 1978, this three-hour-plus drama is modestly epic in scope, more open in approach, and yet surprisingly just as engaged with the personal.

Set in Italy's Bergamo province at the tail of the 19th Century, The Tree of Wooden Clogs tells a season in the life of a farming village. At the time, peasants lived as sharecroppers on a wealthy landlord's estate, working his fields, keeping 1/3 of what they produced, giving the rest to him (see also Bertollucci’s 1900 [review] for a similar scenario). The farmers shared one community building, four or five families per, individual tribes within a larger conglomerate. As his narrative progresses, Olmi dips in and out of different families in one particular dwelling, mining their collective stories. There is the young man looking to woo his neighbor's daughter, or the old timer looking to beat the others to the tomato harvest, and the various wives and mothers keeping their children in clean clothes and nourishment. Each action is individual, but it also adds to the whole. No one family, no patch of land, is an island. Or, to change metaphors, The Tree of Wooden Clogs is a tapestry, and each singular weave somehow ties back to the center, and you don't see the full tableau until you step back and take it all in.

The closest thing we have to a central family is the clan whose challenges give The Tree of Wooden Clogs its name. This incident is a small story embedded in the whole. The family’s young son, Minek, is a bit of a prodigy, and the parish priest insists his father send him to school, even if it is a four-mile walk each way. On one such trek, the same day his baby brother is born, the child breaks one of his clogs. His kindly father doesn't scold him or make a fuss. Instead, he sneaks out into the night and cuts a chunk of wood from a tree alongside the road. It's unclear whether he takes to this task quietly so as not to disturb the boy's mother, still recuperating from the birthing, or because he's taking the wood without clearing it with the landlord. All we feel is there is something momentous and heavy in the act, especially as he begins his carving while the rest of his family says their evening prayers. Is this plea to the heavens to be his absolution?

This is how connected everything is--religion, birth, survival. Within the relatively short period--short in the context of an existence, at least, because make no mistake, this is a long movie--we see the full circle of life. Crops are grown, animals slaughtered, children born. We see only a small sliver of the other side, a brief peek into the landowner's life. We see how faith holds sway, even when impractical. We also catch a glimpse of political tides to come. But as large as the land and the sky and the whole of the world may appear, it's still the little things that matter. The simple pleasures.

Olmi applies the Neorealist method to great effect. Like Roberto Rossellini did with the Sicilian fishermen for Stromboli [review], or even Michael Powell and the Scotsmen on The Edge of the World, the director worked with the real people of the Bergamo region, even having them speak in their native Bergamasque. The landscape of The Tree of Wooden Clogs is not populated by actors, but the actual citizenry of the world Olmi is capturing. Yet, they still are actors, aren't they, since they live in the now while dressing up to play their ancestors in front of a camera. Such is the illusion, and so powerful the effect, you'll be forgiven for how often you'll forget you are not watching a documentary. The details are real, and often not for the squeamish (if you've never seen a goose or pig butchered...), and the script so absent of point-A/point-B plotting, the final cut has the feeling of real life, not a cinematic construction. Like life, it can be a bit of a haul to reach the end, but hopefully we’ll all find both tasks worth it. (Though I’m not holding out much hope for this living business...)

The span of The Tree of Wooden Clogs only grows macro in its third hour, when the young couple we’ve watched court one another gets married and goes off on their honeymoon. Traveling with them, we see nearby townships, and people beyond the landlord’s property line. These new elements almost seem cartoonish by comparison, so used have we come to the quiet life within the farm. The honeymoon itself passes without much fanfare--at least until the newlyweds return home and, immediately after, other narrative threads finally start to pay off--some good, and some bad. I suppose it’s up to each viewer to divine where Olmi is coming down in terms of the divine and its relation to what happens to the peasants, or what that also says about the nature of small community. A sad fate befalls Minek’s family, one that is swift and without recourse. As neighbor turns away from neighbor and relies on prayer rather than intervening, I found myself caught between my empathy for their resorting to their faith due to a need for some kind of explanation of why life is cruel and my more visceral reaction. I can’t help but think they are using religion to sidestep their responsibility toward their fellow man, and that this is perhaps why the cycle of the wealthy oppressing the poor continues. (“I’ve got mine, let God take care of the rest.) One could surmise this is why Olmi includes glimpse of the socialist revolution on the rise. Certainly nothing happens on screen in The Tree of Wooden Clogs by accident, given that the director, in the truest auteur fashion, is credited with script, photography, and editing. Just as the hands of the farmers draw riches from the land, Olmi’s hands draw out this mis-en-scene. Soil has never been so beautiful, and yet so daunting. Soft and brown when giving life, dark and muddy as the day grows hard.

Yet, for the filmmaker to add any editorial or exposition would be to betray his motivating conceit. The Tree of Wooden Clogs is meant to be an observation, not an explanation. It’s a morality play without a coda. The staging, the lighting, everything is as natural and real as is possible in the confines of a motion picture construct. The camera itself seems to disappear in the crowd. The light is never brighter than the hazy grays the sun provides. The visual story is limited to what the eye can see, the same way it would be were this a newsreel. Olmi doesn’t dress the set, he doesn’t call attention to the design of his shots, he doesn’t zoom emphatically. His approach is as straightforward and quaint as the daily life he is chronicling. It’s also as intimate, and therein he finds his truth. From the supplements accompanying the movie on this disc, especially the British television special from 1981, we hear how the film was inspired by stories the Olmi’s grandmother told him about her life, and so we can see that the director’s exacting methods are born of a personal pride. He is reaching back into his own history, digging for the roots that would eventually put him on his own two feet and lead him here.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

INGRID BERGMAN: IN HER OWN WORDS - #828

Late in Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words, when director Stig Björkman is highlighting one of the actress' final films, Autumn Sonata [review], he holds on a silent close-up from the movie. It’s a scene where Ingrid Bergman stares directly into the camera, letting an emotional beat wash over her, engaging with the audience in a way that lets us see exactly what she is feeling. It's a great moment of punctuation for the documentary, because throughout Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words, the performer's children have noted that her lifelong relationship with cameras, both as the subject and the operator, stemmed from the fact that her father--who died when the Swedish-born star was very young, leaving her an orphan--was a professional photographer. She learned to live by looking at a camera, and she learned to love by the way it looked at her.

Stitching together news and interview footage with film clips, personal photos, and home movies, Björkman has crafted an intimate portrait of an enduring personality, getting beyond the superficial press image or even the standard tribute. Granted access to an extensive collection of artifacts left behind by Bergman, and with the aid of her four children, all of whom share their own memories of their mother, Björkman shows us the star from earliest childhood, tracking her moves from Swedish cinema to Hollywood, and through scandal and triumph. Narrated by Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), who reads from Bergman's diaries and letters to three of her closest friends, the images are enhanced by the subject's own private thoughts. It's the things she maybe wouldn't have shared with interviewers or her family that prove most revealing. For those who have seen Bergman's onscreen work, be it her romantic roles in movies like Casablanca and Notorious [review] or her more artful, emotional work with second husband Roberto Rossellini, the secret to Ingrid Bergman’s craft is made clear: even if she often gave more to cinema than she did her day-to-day existence, she was as thoughtful and tender in here real life as she was in her invented ones.

Bergman also possessed an incredible strength, as evinced by her weathering the public scorn following her leaving her first husband for Rossellini. It seems inconceivable that a private individual would be denounced on the floor of Congress as a bad example of morality, but that's just what happened. Through it all, Bergman was resilient, her characteristic charm never wavering. Perhaps her long fascination and association with Joan of Arc gave her some insight into martyrdom. Whatever gave her purpose, Bergman offered no apologies.

Then again, Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words is careful not to draw obvious connections between movie roles and true events, the way a director might otherwise if this were a dramatic biopic--though Bergman's loves and travels would definitely make for a solid narrative, were someone willing to try. No inference is drawn, for instance, from her choice to star in a light comedy about infidelity like Stanley Donen's Indiscreet [review], despite it being very easy to make a claim that it served as a defiant middle finger to her critics. Rather, Björkman lets the work exist on its own. He's more concerned with his subject’s wandering spirit and how her choices affected those around her. Having been given the appropriate time to deal with things, her children are surprisingly generous, admitting they were as enchanted with her as much as the moviegoing public. Which may be the greatest revelation of all: Ingrid Bergman was no manufactured icon, the woman we fell in love with in the movies was who Ingrid Bergman really was. At times aloof and unknowable, but always seductive, always interesting to watch, and always leading with her heart.

Bonus materials on the Criterion Blu-ray of Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words give us extra glimpses into her life and artistry. Deleted scenes and further excerpts from Bergman’s own home movies, shot by the Ingrid herself on 8mm, add to our knowledge of the star’s life. Perhaps more illuminating for film fans are the two bits from early Swedish films. The outtakes from her 1936 romance On the Sunny Side show her natural charisma. Even more telling, though, is her brief appearance as an extra in the 1932 movie Landskamp, her screen debut. Even as a silent background player, Ingrid Bergman stands out, her eyes finding the camera, and engaging with her public. She’s the only one in the group that you’d ever think would end up being a star, and probably the only one there that even dared to dream it.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purpose of review.

BITTER RICE - #792

NeoRealism meets noir in Giuseppe De Santis’ 1949 crime drama Bitter Rice.

The bulk of the story is set in the rice fields of Vercelli, a place nomadic workers travel to for 40 days at a time to harvest the current crop and plant the next one. It’s at the train yard the day the workers are supposed to ship off  where two thieves hope to mix in with the crowd and get away with stolen jewels. Except one of the pair, Walter (Vittorio Gassman, Big Deal on Madonna Street), has been made and the cops are on scene to nab him. He makes a run for it, leaving Francesca (Doris Dowling) with the loot. With the help of Silvana (Silvana Mangano, The Decameron [review]), Francesca gets a job with the rice crew--albeit an illegal one, since official contracts have all been handed out already. Silvana is experienced with the system, and is also experienced manipulating people. We are introduced to this spitfire when she is dancing in the train yard to a jazz tune playing on her portable record player. All attention turns to her. Like many a femme fatale before her, Silvana knows she is desired and takes the power that comes with it.

Only, the femme isn’t all that fatale. Or nearly as experienced as she thinks. Though she quickly susses out the truth about Francesca and why she is running away, Silvana is not prepared for the consequences of getting tangled up with dangerous people. When Walter comes looking for Francesca, he sets his eyes on the new girl. Silvana immediately forgets the cautionary tale that Francesca spun for her, about how Walter got his hooks in her and she can’t escape. He is a manipulator himself, and an abusive one at that. By the end of Bitter Rice, the women will have switched places. Francesca will learn the value of hard work, while Silvana will learn the downside of chasing a quick score.

There are many twists and reversals to be found as Bitter Rice progresses. The jewels change hands, Silvana tries to get Francesca kicked out of the camp, they make up and become friends--it’s both melodrama and pulpy crime. A handsome soldier, Marco (Raf Vallone), proves to be equal parts conscience and romantic distraction. And there is another heist yet to be planned.

Giuseppe De Santis creates a seductive amalgam of post-War Italian cinema and contemporary Hollywood Bs. His premise is rooted in reality, even if his plot is thoroughly hardboiled. Bitter Rice opens with a radio correspondent addressing the film-going audience and laying out all the details about Italy’s rice production and why the industry relies on women to do the picking (small, fast hands). The director could have easily made a film about the conditions of the migrant workers and the politics of the system, but rather than make a polemic, he uses the unique setting as his foundation. Rather than let the romantic quartet of criminals and their opposition be the sole focus, he lets the film breathe, moving away from their machinations to show us other characters. Bitter Rice has a large cast, and its narrative is brimming with life. We first see this early on, with the first of many beautiful tracking shots executed by De Santis and cinematographer Otello Martelli (a regular collaborator of Rossellini and Fellini, he shot both Paisan [review] and La dolce vita [review], among others). While seeking out the source of Francesca’s music, the camera pans across the train cars, and in every window, we catch glimpses of an individual existence. Each passenger is given action and purpose.

So, too, are the ladies that form the workforce at the rice fields. Several emerge as key players and return again and again. We see a lot of them in another elaborate, uncut take, as men come to the work site to catcall, and the ladies answer back, generally giving as good as they get (though, amusingly, Francesca is noticeably annoyed, as separate as ever). Again and again, De Santis will choreograph this kind of sequence to show us the full crowd, and to create a very real backdrop for the rest of his plot to play out.

Infused in all that are little nuggets about workers’ rights, fair treatment, class structure, and just general proper community behavior. Francesca initially takes to the work out of opportunity, but she bonds with the other women and comes to appreciate what it means to stick her hands in the soil and make something grow. Thus, when Walter starts to focus on the rice itself for his next crime, she can’t go along. She offers the age-old justification: when they stole from people who could afford it, it was okay, but stealing from people who toiled over something and leaving them nothing to show for it is despicable. (Never mind that several tons of rice doesn’t seem like the easiest thing to go fence. Walter doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who thinks things through.) While Mangano gets the showier performance--and with it, a different kind of attention from the camera--Dowling makes a more subtle transformation. With her perfect posture and dark eyes, she could be misconstrued as overly arch, but it fits Francesca, who begins the picture completely on guard, but ends it in a more empathetic place, yet without surrendering any of her strength.

The final half hour of Bitter Rice is an exceptional orchestration. As the workers plan to celebrate their last day with a wedding, Walter and his new gang put their scheme into motion. De Santis jumps around, taking in all the action, building tension, and then releasing all of his players to their fate. It’s quite riveting, and ultimately satisfying. Crime, as per usual, doesn’t pay, and virtue is rewarded, but that reward is hard earned. The final image of the film encapsulates all these things, with ultimate respect being paid to the more sustainable values, the things that Silvana once knew but has rebuked, and that Francesca has come to anew.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

A SPECIAL DAY/HUMAN VOICE - #778

“You’d think loneliness was some kind of luxury.”

It’s fascinating watching countries grapple with their own troublesome history, particularly when the events in question aren’t yet that distant in the past. We can already see it in some of the early American films about both wars in Iraq. Consider how formless and lost ThreeKings and Jarhead were as the first out of the gate, or the polarizing aspects of American Sniper [review], which I still think was most interesting when it was the least political.

I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but this use of art to sort through the guilt and wreckage of wartime politics and, in a sense, a national defeat, was a major factor of the Neorealist cinema, including, of course, the great films of Roberto Rossellini, who portrayed the anti-fascist resistance [Era notte a Roma] and also tried to show the everyday life of Italian citizens living under Mussolini in many of his releases during the 1940s and ’50s [like these]. Though following many years on, director Ettore Scola picks up that thematic torch for his 1977 film A Special Day, a potent drama grounded in the lives and homes of two very different people.

A Special Day is set in the late 1930s during Hitler’s visit to Italy to meet with Mussolini and the fascists. All Italian citizens are expected to turn out and greet the visiting dictator as he tours their streets in a grand parade. Left behind in a towering tenement is beleaguered housewife and mother of six, Antonietta (Sophia Loren). An escaping mynah bird leads to a chance encounter with a neighbor across the courtyard, a depressed bachelor named Gabriele (Marcello Mastroianni). Unbeknownst to Antonietta, Gabriele is on his own because he is an antifascist who has been fired from his job due to his political beliefs. An intellectual and effete, Gabriele sees little hope in a life under fascist rule.

Perhaps sensing a similar loneliness in the housewife, Gabriele turns up on her doorstep seeking coffee and conversation, and risking scandal from the spying landlord. Over the course of their day together, they get to know one another, crossing a divide that is greater than their courtyard: Antonietta is a true believer in the current regime.

A virtual two-hander, the success of A Special Day relies entirely on the chemistry of its stars. Fortunately, Mastroianni and Loren had a tremendous and deep working relationship that had started many years prior and included several films in collaboration with Vittorio De Sica, including Marriage Italian Style [review] and Sunflower [review]. The pair was always comfortable and natural in each other’s presence, and are overdue their distinction as one of the great screen couples of classic cinema. Their experience infuses this first-time meeting of their characters with something uncommon. Gabriele’s confidence, Antonietta’s nerves, their mutual need for acknowledgement--there is a gravity connecting them immediately. There is little hint, at least initially, that their attraction is sexual or romantic, though Antonietta wouldn’t mind a single man desiring her again. Loren may be a sex symbol, but she is such a strong actress, she was also able to internalize the dowdiness required here in a way that goes beyond wardrobe and make-up. Any time her natural beauty starts to peek through the façade, she manages to wrangle it back down.

Scola, who was a credited writer on 1962’s Il sorpasso and also co-writes here, opens his film with a lengthy newsreel that sets up the events of the day. It features voiceover commentary that carries through the narrative, heard throughout the tenement on the radio as the pomp and circumstance blooms. Scola and director of photography Alfio Contini (The Night Porter) dial the color way down, pumping up the browns, matching the documentary footage and giving A Special Day a faded, sepia-toned sense of authenticity. This aesthetic--and the isolated location--give the movie a feeling of immediacy, and despite a visual technique that might, in other cases, seem distancing, uses the familiarity of memory and the closeness of the sets to create intimacy. A Special Day feels less like a film we observe than it does one we actually participate in.

This distinctive touch is given particularly nice treatment in the new high-definition restoration and Blu-ray transfer, but the relevance of the situation would communicate regardless of image clarity. A Special Day seems particularly crucial as a rediscovery today, when the political divide that splits many nations is so strong, there seems to be little by way of common ground. Or at least empathy and common understanding. There is a beautiful image midway through the movie where Gabriele sits at his table eating an omelet, and Antonietta stands outside the kitchen, on the opposite end of the frame, deciding whether she will join him. There is a wall between them, and by its placement within the image, we feel a great distance, despite the actual proximity of the two figures. Scola effectively erases it, the next cut being the pair at the table together. No one had to cross the divide. They were already there. They break bread while, in the background, two oppressive powers celebrate their union.

Because, in the end, it’s not about dogma or ideology or belief, it’s about human contact and the essential longing within all of us. As we learn more about both participants, other secrets are revealed, other more defining aspects of their personalities that make them different, but also essential to who they are. Gabriele has a particularly powerful revelation to make, one I will leave to your discovery, even though it may be far more obvious to modern eyes than it was 40 years ago. The real reason he is in exile should only add a bigger wedge between him and Antonietta, but instead it underscores how they suffer the same feeling of alienation and have the same requirement to be needed. Mastroianni gets to slowly unleash, his quiet confession turning to external rage, but Loren gets a more subtle, more fragile chance to reveal Antonietta’s weakness. She may not have lost her “job” the way Gabriele did, but she is not valued as a person all the same. Her husband, as it turns out, sees her as a servant and a baby factory (one more kid and they get a tax break for being a large family!), making the betrayal that he is cheating on her with an educated woman doubly heartbreaking. She has thoughts and feelings, too, but no formal outlet to express them. No wonder, we realize, she was drawn to Gabriele. Their whole second meeting is predicated on his insisting she borrow a book, a copy of The Three Musketeers, because it would never occur to him that she wouldn’t have an interior life in need of nurturing.

It’s important to note that, despite the ease with which we will automatically take sides in A Special Day, Scola offers no extra commentary on the citizens who support fascism. Antonietta does not change her mind in the end, and there is no profound transformation a la the anti-Semitic old man coming to love the young boy in Claude Berri’s The Two of Us [review]; even so, as the movie closes, we do see that she has been moved by her new friendship, even if, tragically, she is stuck in the life she lives, and still required to fulfill her “duty.” The day may have altered the hearts of two individuals, but the collective still dominates.

It’s kind of weird to jump nearly four decades from A Special Day to 2014’s Human Voice and see Sophia Loren in her late ’70s, but the pairing is fitting in that both of the characters she plays are solitary women at a loss for love.

Human Voice is a short film adapted from Jean Cocteau, and directed by Loren’s son, Edoardo Ponti. Loren stars as an older woman waiting in her home for her regular Tuesday rendezvous with her lover. Over the course of several phone calls, it becomes apparent that he won’t be coming that evening, and that the affair may be at an end.

It’s a great showcase for the actress, and a great gift from her son to create it for her. Age has done nothing to dull Loren’s onscreen presence, and the forcefulness and honesty of her performance here is remarkable. The device of having a one-sided conversation over the phone allows for Loren to undercut her own vanity and to be vulnerable. At first, the telephone line allows her to lie, to hide her true feelings and situation, only to open up as the day progresses, and then to break down completely. As emotions flare and implode, it’s heartbreaking, and would be so even without Ponti’s short cutaways to other scenes--the lovers together, the woman waiting outside the man’s house, etc. They work, but the context is unnecessary. Loren gives us everything we need to know.

The movie was provided by Criterion for review.

THREE FILMS BY ROBERTO ROSSELLINI STARRING INGRID BERGMAN: JOURNEY TO ITALY - #675

My current frontrunner for the best movie of 2013 is Richard Linklater's Before Midnight [review], an emotionally turbulent, challenging movie about a long-tem couple who unexpectedly find themselves at a crossroads where they are questioning whether or not their relationship is worth continuing. It's a film that earns all of the feelings in engenders. Not unlike its spiritual predecessor, Roberto Rossellini's 1954 movie Journey to Italy (a.k.a. Voyage to Italy).

The director's crowning collaboration with Ingrid Bergman could serve as a sort of omen: their relationship would eventually disintegrate for good. Here, though, we find the pair perfectly in sync. Bergman plays Katherine Joyce, an upper-class wife of a British businessman. Alex (George Sanders) has recently inherited some property from his uncle, some land and a fancy home in Naples. Alex and Katherine have gone to Italy to sell it, and while they are away, do a little vacationing. Alex is a workaholic and it's hard to get him out of the office, which may explain why, now that Katherine has managed to get some alone time with him, they realize they don't know each other at all.

Ennui and jealousy make for a nasty combination. Husband and wife are bored with each other and the decades-long conversation they've been having. Yet, as is usually the case in such situations, they don't want anyone else being bored by their spouse, that is their right alone. And so it is that Alex begins to resent a dead poet whose verse has outlined Katherine's Italian itinerary. Though this kind of suspicion angers Katherine, she becomes guilty of it herself when they happen to run into a woman Alex has known previously. She is on a group vacation with some friends, and Alex pays the ladies in the traveling party extra attention when they are all out having drinks. Katherine says that she never knew that her hubby was so interested in women. Translation: why aren't you that interested in me?

After a few snippy arguments, the pair goes their separate ways to finish out the trip. Alex goes to Capri to catch up with his friend, while Katherine stays behind in Naples to continue to tour the historical spots and look at the ancient relics. She also spends her time drinking in the local color and observing the people. I was reminded a bit of Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation [review]. Ingrid Bergman wandering about and soaking up the culture has echoes in how Scarlett Johansson spies on ceremonies and customs in Japan while her husband is off pursuing actresses; likewise, George Sanders is gruff and sarcastic, and while not as loveable as Bill Murray, his flirtations with familiar ladies in foreign lands is not that different than Bob Harris.

It all points to a long tradition in world cinema. Many directors have portrayed troubled marriages via wayward nights and heated conversation, be it Ingmar Bergman's prolonged breakdown in Scenes from a Marriage or Michelangelo Antonioni's sharply focused La notte. While plenty of folks lately have been invoking Godard's famous line about all you needing to make a movie is a girl and a gun, Rossellini and those who followed in his footsteps all do without the gun. The girl and a guy provide plenty of drama without firearms ever getting involved.

Perhaps it's because he loved her that Rossellini tips the scales a little in Ingrid Bergman's favor in this film. Katherine is given an internal monologue that, despite its vitriol, humanizes her to a greater degree than Alex. Couple that with her more demonstrable abilities to empathize with her fellow man, and she seems far less beastly than her husband. Alex's self-recrimination is born of failure and rejection, and the standards he nearly sacrifices to try to reclaim some of his wild oats are troubling--even to him. “Beastly” may not be the right word, actually. Alex is less likable, but he's no less human. Sanders is also an actor on par with Bergman, and despite the clash of wills, both performers manage to make the Joyces seem like a real couple. Despite their differences, despite the spite, they fit. It's evident anytime they are in the car, but particularly in their penultimate conversation, when it appears they will call it quits. (Again, automobiles make for a regular staging ground for arguments. The Before Midnight disagreement begins in a car, also while the couple are on vacation; and let's not forget the hot-tempered, cold-blooded exchanges between Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney in Stanley Donen's exceptional Two for the Road .)

As a conclusion to this cycle of films, the trio of Ingrid Bergman vehicles sometimes known as “The Solitude Trilogy,” Rossellini brings it all back around to Stromboli [review]. He does so aesthetically by his incorporation of real locations and real people to the drama, and how her new surroundings affect his leading lady. He also connects it back to their initial collaboration in how he handles the ending. The fate of the Joyces' conjugal union is decided by a religious epiphany, by a miracle--though in this case, not one that happens to Ingrid Bergman. Rather, it happens in her vicinity and threatens to swallow her. It is a human volcano, rather than the literal one in Stromboli; the people who move against her confirm her truth by trying to sweep her away a la Europe '51 [review]. There's a directness to how the director handles it in Journey to Italy that makes it more powerful than the endings of its predecessors. In Journey, the actions of the characters take over, and there is no need for further explanation. The intense feelings that power their decisions speak for themselves.

Journey to Italy plays Saturday, July 6, at 8:45pm, again on Sunday, July 7, at 8pm, and finally on Monday, July 8, at 7pm, as part of the NW Film Center's presentation of "The Solitude Trilogy." View the full schedule here.

THREE FILMS BY ROBERTO ROSSELLINI STARRING INGRID BERGMAN: EUROPE '51 - #674

Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman reteamed the year after Stromboli [review] for a more conventional melodrama, though one that also had a strong role for a female lead and a message that is both spiritual and political. Released in 1952, Europe '51 (sometimes also known as Europa '51) is easier terrain than Stromboli, as Rossellini continues to massage the ragged edges of Neorealism to fit inside the boundaries of more traditional cinema.

Once again Bergman plays an immigrant living in Italy, the wife of an ambassador who has been in country since before the war. Irene Girard and husband George (Alexander Knox) are wealthy and run in society circles, and perhaps are better off now than they were before WWII--though of a status not wholly unearned. George fought on the front lines, leaving Irene to raise their young son (Sandro Franchina) on her own. This has caused mother and child to have an uncommon bond, perhaps too close. He is a sensitive child who can't stand time away from her or share her attentions.

The youngster's clinginess provides Europe '51's inciting incident. When his mother is dismissive of him before a dinner party, the boy disrupts the event by throwing himself down the stairs. Whether he intended to kill himself or not is never clear, but the child succeeds regardless. Irene's world becomes unmoored, and she sees no purpose in carrying on. That is, until her leftist friend, Andrea (Ettore Giannini), a journalist, introduces her to a family who is too poor to buy their child life-saving medicine. Unwilling to allow another mother lose her baby, Irene gives them the money they need, and she finds some satisfaction in this charitable work. Seeing how the family lives--in a tenement, where the sense of community transcends finances--the sheltered wife is awakened to the struggles of her countrymen. She begins to help out other people, including finding a gregarious single mother of six (the great Giulieta Masina, La strada [review]) a factory job and then filling in for the woman so she doesn't lose it. This brief yet overwhleming assembly line experience would be enough to push just about anyone toward Communism, no matter how much it is frowned upon by friends, family, and society at large. It's Irene's first taste of real labor, and she doesn't care for the flavor.

Irene's metamorphosis is not just political, however, nor is it achieved lightly. Rossellini walks a fine line connecting Marxist philosophy to early Christianity and Jesus' role as a liberator of slaves and champion of the poor. Europe '51 suggests a moral and religious justification for Communism, and reminds us that the defense of the least amongst us is the greatest of virtues. In the most obvious parallel to New Testament parables, Irene cares for an ailing prostitute, defending the woman against doubts and aspersions cast by her neighbors. There is no promise of reward for doing so, the motivation is simply that it's the right thing to do.

Bergman gives a sensitive performance as Irene, avoiding any histrionics or showboating. There are no big monologues here. The stronger emotion comes from what she keeps in reserve, in how little she telegraphs Irene's interior pain. Even in the movie's third act, which bears no small resemblance to the metaphysical melodramatics of Douglas Sirk (Magnificent Obsession [review], for instance), Irene is unflappable when faced with disbelief. Rossellini, it would seem, is transferring lessons learned from his cinematic interpretation of St. Francis of Assisi two years earlier: the more opposition Irene faces, the more courageous her convictions. Her devotion is challenged for real when her husband and mother have her committed to a mental institution. Even there, she becomes an angel of mercy. (Is it crazy that Raffaello Matarazzo's The White Angel [review] comes to mind?)

As with Stromboli where Rossellini juxtaposed Bergman's star-quality with the non-professional actors that rounded out the cast, here the director uses the ostentatious apartments of the rich, and the illusion of movie wealth, to illuminate the other side of life. Shooting on location in real slums, and capturing actual laborers at work, he shows the conditions that the class system creates for those on its lowest levels. It's an indictment of upper-class excess, but in a nod to his Neorealist roots, Rossellini is also questioning the accepted representation of the high life in popular cinema. Most of us don't live like Irene, but our movie watching has made her wealth seem practically normal; at the same time, the majority of us are (hopefully) still shocked by images of the working poor. Real life is far less familiar to a movie screen than fantasy.

The impact of the movie comes not from the tears shed, however, but from the way the director uses one specific experience and spreads it out to show the impact the individual can have on the world around her. The film is called Europe '51 because what Irene sees, despite being confined to one neighborhood, represents the problems that plagued the entire continent. By extension, she is a citizen without borders, her example serving as a lesson to all. If she can change, why not the rest of us?

Europa '51 plays Saturday, July 6, at 6:30pm, and again on Sunday, July 7, at 5:45pm, as part of the NW Film Center's presentation of "The Solitude Trilogy." View the full schedule here.