Micitype Pretty Good

Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

lasttimeisaw A Rossellini-Bergman Neo-realism drama takes place in the post-war Rome, Italy. Bergman plays Irene, an elegant socialite, the wife of a wealthy capitalist George Girard (Knox, in his cold, unimpressionable and unpleasant patina), together they have a young son Michele (Franchina), who feels constantly neglected by his parents, especially Irene, with whom he has spent the dreadful bombing days in England during WWII. Thus, on the occasion of one of the regular dinner gatherings hosted at home, Michele impulsively attempts a suicidal jump to grab his parents's attention, only later passes away from a blood clot.Irene lapses into guilt and depression after the bereavement, she grows apart from George, who insists they should shake off the mourning period together. With the help of a close friend Andrea Casatti (Giannini), Irene is introduced for the first time to the hardships of the poverty-stricken living in "the other side of Rome", which has eluded her thus far. In her conscience-driven commitment, Irene throws herself in helping out those who are in urgent need: defraying the medicine expense of a deprived family to save a young boy's life; finding a job and standing in for a poor but spirited woman (Masina), who has six children to tend (three are her own kids, the rest are orphans); taking care of an ailing prostitute Ines (Pellati) in her last days. She transforms herself into a modern-day saint.But a saint always invites persecution in an unjust world, George, holding his own grudge and gnawing jealousy (he accuses Irene of having an affair with Andrea) against her, cannot stand her constant absence in the household and refuses to take her side with respect to her newly occupied activities. When she conducts a misdemeanour to help a young criminal to evade arrest, George and his lawyer conspire to put her in a mental institution, thinking that a spell of solitude is what she needs the most to resume her social and familial duty as a wife of an important businessman. Irene doesn't defy the ungrounded internment, instead, it strengthens her unerring advocacy of a pure conception of altruism, an act superior of any religious beliefs or political slants. In the final stage of the film, she regains her peace and abides by her conviction in front the review board, who then collectively decides that she should be locked up there permanently, only those who have been aided by her affectionately call her their patron saint, her martyrdom is aptly consummated.Bergman's performance is faultless, albeit the fact that her dialog was completely dubbed in post- production, it is a performance demands immeasurable investment from a thespian's emotional gamut (most of the time, those heart-rending moments are obtrusively intensified by Renzo Rossellini's highfalutin score), persistently expressive and emotive, her saintly appearance has taken shape through all the ordeal she experiences or witnesses, only Bergman can succeed in eliciting such powerful empathy without telegraphing an air of contrivance, Irene Girard is one of the absolute highlights in her prestigious career.In the end of the day, what can new audience say about the central story? Is Irene's self-inflicted sacrifice is a truly commendable virtue? Or, in a more pragmatic stance, her incarceration basically blocks herself from practicing the noble cause to assist the impoverished, she might acquire the tranquility she particularly yearns for after the loss of her son, yet, if that is the case, it contradicts the whole concept of her irreproachable devotion of altruism, the vestige of selfishness betrays from her final gesture, it seems, in order to find the ultimate peace in herself, she barters it with the actual good deeds she would have done if she chooses to accept her old role as a stopgap. With her wealth and wisdom, there are many ways she can continue her philanthropic endeavour, if she really puts her mind into it. That's the divide between then and now, a lofty, masochistic crucifixion is not fashionable and favourable any more, especially there is a more sensible alternative one can choose, pragmatism prevails in today's standpoint.

counterrevolutionary It's a bit melodramatic, but up until Irene's final conversation with Cassatti the Commie, *Europa '51* is a very interesting film, first about a pampered rich woman's reaction to her son's death, then about the difference between windy Marxist propaganda and real compassion.However, at that point, Rossellini's original idea takes over: He wanted to make a film about what would happen if a truly saintly person ever showed up in the modern world. And he had a very good idea of what would happen--or at least a very insistent one. The people here obviously behave the way they do solely to make the point Rossellini wants to make, even when their behavior doesn't seem very plausible. In defter hands, such manipulation can work. Here, though, you can see the tracks Rossellini has rather clumsily laid down to move the story where he wants it to go.

ringfingers I am surprised this film is so undervalued on IMDb, as it is the one that Gilles Deleuze talks about more than any other in Cinema 2 as one an example of what he calls the 'time-image', those postwar films in which rather than 'movement prevailing over time', 'time prevails over movement'. Basically what that means is that, because of the social and political transformations that emerged in the wake of WWII, people were essentially incapable of reacting to their new situations, yet for that reason also became that much *more* capable of attaining a shift in consciousness, and this was reflected in the cinema of the time. Rational, linear, sequential narratives, which tended to follow very cliché progressions are themselves overcome by this change, so that there often is no satisfying 'conclusion' to the story, the characters often being as much an 'audience' of unfolding events as we are. As he puts it, "if all the movement-images, perceptions, actions and affects underwent such an upheaval, was this not first of all because a new element burst on the scene which was to prevent perception being extended into action, in order to put it in contact with thought?" (1) So, this is what he says occurs in such Rosellini's 'Europa 51'; the character Irene, the bourgeois housewife , who in the course of the story, is lead by the suicide of her war-traumatized son to question the structure of her society as a whole. Thus, intrigued by the insight offered by her friend Andreas, she wanders aimlessly, but with the highest of awareness through the slums, the factories and other elements she had never taken into account previously: "her glances relinquish the practical function of a mistress who arranges things and beings, and pass through every state of an internal vision, affliction, compassion, love, happiness, acceptance, extending to the psychiatric hospital where she is locked up at the end of a new trial of Joan of Arc: she sees, she has learned to see" (2). It is not only the audience then, who become 'seers' (as opposed to 'agents' in the narrative structure that prevailed before the war), but the characters such as Irene are also a kind of 'audience', they perceive a world which they can barely conceive how to intervene in. When the character's motor capacities are short-circuited by overwhelming situations, says Deleuze, "he records rather than reacts. He is prey to a vision, pursued by it or pursuing it, rather than engaging in action" (3). Thus, just as each of us have sensory-motor patterns that make us turn away at the sight of something we would rather not see, so too does Irene, but because of her son's suicide she suffers a 'shock' and this habituated way of 'living' is interrupted so that just as she does not, *we* do not turn away either so that we become *seers*. 'Europa 51' I would say, breaks with what at the time was the prevailing emotional posture, particularly that of metaphor and cliché, which tend to direct our attention away from that which is difficult to comprehend. As Deleuze says, "we normally only perceive clichés. But if our sensory-motor schema jam or break, then a different type of image can appear: a pure optical-sound image, the whole image without metaphor, brings out the thing in itself, literally, in its excess of horror or beauty, in its radical or unjustifiable character, because it no longer has to be 'justified' for better or for worse…the factory creature gets up, and we can no longer say, 'Well, people have to work…' I thought I was seeing convicts: the factory is a prison, school is a prison, literally, not metaphorically. You do not have the image of a prison following one of a school: that would simply be pointing out a resemblance, a confused relation between two clear images. On the contrary, it is necessary to discover the separate elements and relations that elude us at the heart of an unclear image: to show how and in what sense school is a prison, housing estates are examples of prostitution, bankers killers, photographs tricks - literally, without metaphor" (21). What was especially interesting in regards to all of this was the reversal that occurs in the main character, (that is very similar to Joseph Losey's 'Mr. Klein') in which, once Irene comes to the factory and spends a day working there, says "I thought I was seeing convicts" to her friend Andreas, only for her to end up in a similar position, under the similarly knowing gaze of others. This matching is foreshadowed when the sound of the 'work whistle' that starts the workers' day sounds very much like the air raid siren she reminisces with her son about just before his death, and when her husband begins to worry that she is cheating on him with Andreas, her only response being that her love has expanded to encompass the entire world. By the end of the film, after being persecuted by this newly 'liberated' society for her beliefs, the situation has turned upside down, as we begin to see *her* as a kind of 'prisoner' also, though I will not say in what sense (so as to not cross the spoiler boundary). Her son's death mirrors that of her 'downfall', as well as how it is 'understood': as the doctor says of Michel early on, "unusually sensitive children are liable to go to extremes when they are upset". Despite the kind of 'do-gooder' mentality that prevails, which may be tiresome for some, I thought it was a quite powerful film and I can definitely see why it made its way into some of the most outstanding film theory texts out there.

nancy-l-wax I watched the Americanized version last night on TCM. It was a bit choppy, and the dialog didn't match up very well with the actors' mouths, but overall the story was very moving. I like the analogy of St. Francis of Assisi or Mother Theresa, except they weren't locked up. But I think maybe that was also a commentary on the repressive social regimes of the times. The TCM commentator mentioned an interesting side-note, that during the making of this film, Ms. Bergman discovered that she was expecting twins. I think that was very much reflected in her interaction with the children in this story. Hopefully TCM will show the Italian version one day.