Ride the White Horse

Films: Shoeshine (Sciuscia)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on The New Portable.

I said recently that there seems to be a reason that I have avoided certain films in the Oscar list for this long. I haven’t always known why, but for the last couple of months, the films have been ones that I haven’t enjoyed a great deal for one reason or another. In the case of Shoeshine (or Sciuscia, if you prefer the Italian), the reason was clear. Vittorio De Sica doesn’t make happy films, and I have to be in a particular mood to want to see a solidly depressing drama. Couple this with the fact that foreign films require a focus and concentration I’m not always capable of providing, and there’s a reason that it’s taken me half a decade to get here.

True to form, Shoeshine is a film that starts well enough but soon devolves into the sort of misery porn that director Vittorio De Sica made his bread and butter. We’re going to be spending the entire film with people who are desperately poor. In this case, we’re also going to get kids who are unknowingly committing crimes, being accused of much more serious crimes, and, while in their early teens, are getting thrown essentially into prison. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why.

Beginnings and Endings

Film: Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all’Italiana); Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all’Italiana)
Format: DVD from NetFlix (Marriage) and streaming video from Kanopy (Divorce), both on laptop.

The school I work for has recently signed up for a new movie database called Kanopy. I did a quick check of what it has, and there are a few I’d really like to see lurking in tis corners. When Marriage Italian Style showed up from NetFlix, I knew it was time to take Kanopy on a test run as the back half of a double feature. As it happens, of these two movies, Marriage Italian Style was released second. However, it only makes sense to have the marriage before the divorce.

The premise for Marriage Italian Style is entertaining. A wealthy businessman named Domenico Soriano (Marcello Mastroianni) is summoned to the home of his mistress. She has collapsed and is near death. We get a long flashback from him to tell us the story of him and his mistress. The two met during a bombing raid in World War II. Domenico finds a young girl in a brothel who refuses to leave because the public will see her and know where she works. This is Filumena Marturano (Sophia Loren), and it’s the start of a long relationship.

No Innocents in War

Film: Two Women
Format: DVD from Freeport Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

When I deal with rarities, or at least films that are difficult to find, I take what I can get. In the case of Two Women, this means being forced into a dubbed version of the film instead of the version in the original Italian. I’d rather watch a film in its original language, but given the difficulty of tracking this one down, well, a dubbed version is better than nothing. It does make me wonder, though, why this film is so difficult to find. Sophia Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for this in 1961, the first time the award was handed out for a non-English performance. It would have been nice to see it in the version that was awarded.

I knew pretty much what I was getting into when I saw Vittorio De Sica’s name flash across the screen as the director. That name means neo-realism and a plot that doesn’t go anywhere happy. Expecting a Vittorio De Sica film to be happy for anything more than a few minutes at a time is like expecting a Busby Berkeley dance number in the middle of a Hitchcock film.

A Man and His Dog

Film: Umberto D.
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen.

What can I say about Vittorio de Sica that I haven’t already said before? He made slice-of-life films about the poor and downtrodden being poor and downtrodden and seemed to love to cut the hearts out of his main characters and his audience. Ladri di Biciclette is one of the most gutting experiences I’ve had watching a film. I was braced for something similar when it came to Umberto D., a film that I’d been warned about. I expected it to be a great film and one that would absolutely tear my heart out. Yes and yes.

Our main character is the eponymous Umberto Domenico Ferrari (Carlo Battisti), an old pensioner who spent his life working for the government. As the film begins, Umberto is protesting for a raise in his pension along with a number of old men. While it seems that many of them simply want more money, Umberto needs the raise to make ends meet and pay off his debts. The small pension he gets is not nearly enough for him to live on, and he owes his landlady(Lina Gennari) a great deal of back rent, which causes her to threaten to evict him.

Doomed Idyll

Film: Il Giardino dei Finzi Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis)
Format: DVD from Bettendorf Public Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player.

The most filmed historical event may well be the Holocaust. I have no proof of this, but based on the number of Holocaust films or Holocaust-related films I have seen in the last 20 months alone, it’s a topic that filmmakers like to visit and revisit. It certainly makes sense. There’s inherent drama at the highest and most intense level, tremendous potential for pathos, and even a guaranteed sense of sympathy from the audience. Unless you are an emotional stone…or a skinhead…you can’t help but feel for the people for whom the world has become a terrible place.

And so we get Vittorio De Sica’s entry into the field of oppressed Judaism in the form of Il Giardino dei Finzi Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis). What’s interesting here is that De Sica doesn’t come at this from the normal point of view and does not present us with a typical story. Instead, we get (naturally) the Finzi-Contini family, who have more money and idle time than they know what to do with. But, the Finzi-Continis are Jewish, which means the Final Solution will touch them eventually, and will touch them hard.

We start with rounds of tennis hosted by Alberto (Helmut Berger) and Micol (Dominique Sanda), the Finzi-Contini children, who are hosting this tennis party in their expansive, eponymous garden. The reason for this is that they have essentially been banned from the Ferrara tennis club because they are Jewish, and thus the tennis party must be at their estate. Also present is Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), a childhood friend from a middle-class Jewish family. It’s evident that Giorgio is madly in love with Micol, and equally obvious that this love is not particularly returned, or not returned in the same way.

What’s interesting here is that there are several stories going on at the same time, but all essentially express the same type of tension. The love story, or rather the lack-of love story between Giorgio and Micol often takes center stage here. Micol is frequently seductive around Giorgio, but constantly pushes him away, in no small part because she claims to view him more as a brother than as a potential lover.

At the same time, we see a similar tension between the aristocratic Finzi-Continis and the middle-class Jewish families, particularly Giorgio’s. Giorgio’s father (Romolo Valli) is particularly suspicious of the Finzi-Continis, wishing his son would not spend so much time with them. They are, for lack of a better way to put it, not in the same social class, a fact that is of great concern to the man. And yet just as Giorgio is helplessly pulled toward Micol, he is also pulled toward the social standing that the Finzi-Continis represent.

There is a real parallel here with the aristocracy’s relationship to the growing tide of fascism, both in Italy and in Europe at large at this point. Early in the film, Micol comments that everyone will soon have to learn German, and she sometimes peppers her speech with German words. Giorgio’s father in particular is given to the idea of appeasement, submitting to each new anti-Semitic decree with a resigned shrug and the rationalization that at least things haven’t gotten so bad that he can’t leave his house. He recognizes that he is a third-class citizen in the new regime of Il Duce, but that at least he is still a citizen.

And then there is Alberto, who early in the film stops leaving the estate, preferring to live his life entirely behind the large walls that separate the family estate from the outside world. In essence, he blocks himself off from the reality of what the world is and what it is becoming, remaining in an idyllic world of tennis and friends and the family garden rather than truly exposing himself to the mounting terror outside the walls. This tendency to keep himself both safe and willfully deluded is assisted greatly by the fact that Alberto is sickly, and is frequently too ill to even get out of bed.

It’s the unrequited love story that is in many ways the most interesting here, because it seems to serve as a metaphor for everything else going on. At one point, still obsessed with Micol, Giorgio sees her post-coital with Bruno Malnate (Fabio Testi), a gentile friend who she previously disregarded as too crude and too much the socialist for her. But even with his socialist tendencies, Malnate is far closer to the Aryan ideal, and poor Giorgio is forced to watch this stand-in for fascism essentially mating with the flower of Italian Jewish aristocracy. While it doesn’t go so far as to say that the Jewish aristocracy was complicit with the fascists (although one character does say it about the Finzi-Continis at one point), it certainly points in that direction.

This is a fascinating film. It lacks the power of De Sica’s earlier Ladri di Biciclette, but it is far more expertly filmed. And it ends at the right time. We are forced to confront what we know will happen without being forced to see it. What we assume is always worse and more tragic than what we are shown, and it was a good choice here.

Why to watch Il Giardino dei Finzi Contini: It’s both idyllic and terrible.
Why not to watch: How many Holocaust stories do you need?

The Getaway is Built In

Film: Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thief )
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Well, after watching two wrist-slitters yesterday, I guess I haven’t had enough depression for this week, because I decided to push my way through Vittorio de Sica’s Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thief, sometimes called Bicycle Thieves), which kicks our main character in the hoolies within the first 15 minutes or so and never stops.

Our film takes place in post-war Italy, where the economy is far worse than it has been in the U.S. in recent years. Everyone is out of work, and everyone is looking for work. Our hero, Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) is offered a job by the employment office. He is to ride around town putting up posters. The downside is that to do the work, he needs a bicycle, and his is in hock.

He tells his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) about the problem, and she helps by hocking the family’s sheets to get his bike out of the pawnbroker’s shop. All seems well, and they even have a little bit of money left over. She goes to pay a fortune teller the money she owes, and Antonio scoffs at her for spending money in such a foolish way. The next day, he heads out for his new job, and if you can remember the name of the film, you can guess what happens. His bike is stolen while he is putting up a poster. Now unable to continue his job, Antonio is desperate—even more desperate than before.

The police refuse to help—they have more serious crimes to deal with than a stolen bicycle, no matter how devastating the loss is to Antonio and his family. He and his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) search through the streets for the missing bike and are unable to find it. He does, however, spot the thief and confronts him. The police are summoned, and the thief (Vittorio Antonucci) is not arrested because of a lack of evidence. Antonio is humiliated by the neighbors of the thief as he walks away, more desperate than ever—especially because he still doesn’t have his bicycle; the thief has already sold it. Now, Antonio’s only option is to steal a bike himself.

The English translation of this title is mildly contentious. The copy I have calls it The Bicycle Thief, but in truth there are at least two thieves in this film—the man who steals Antonio’s bike and Antonio himself. There’s a deeper meaning here as well, because the bicycle represents life and wealth to many different people. For Antonio, it is a way to support his wife and son; for the thief, it is a way to do the same, since he profits by selling his stolen goods. Additionally, the purchaser of the bicycle from the thief survives by virtue of the bicycle as well.

In essence, Antonio Ricci is merely one story of the tens of thousands that could have been told in post-war Rome. When Maria pawns the linens, we see them go onto a high shelf laden with hundreds and thousands of similar bundles; the Riccis are not the only ones forced into pawning off everything that they own for another meal and another day of survival.

What is the point of this film? Good question. On the one hand, it seems to be about the value of a person. Antonio Ricci, in the opinion of the masses in the film, has no value because he loses his bicycle and can no longer provide for his family. Without the ability to feed his wife and child, he becomes nothing more than a creature of desperation, looking for a way to survive the increasingly difficult and relentless circumstances he has been thrust into. Essentially, he has no true value—only the bicycle does.

And yet, he continually attempts to prove that he does have value as a man. In a heartbreaking scene, after scolding Bruno, the pair go to a restaurant, and Antonio spends a large percentage of the family’s remaining cash to give the boy a treat. It is as if providing something special for Bruno gives him back a measure of his humanity—he can still do the sort of thing a father is supposed to do for his children, even if he can only do so this one time.

Perhaps this film is merely striking me at a bad time. It’s the end of the year, Christmas has just come and emptied everyone’s bank account, the economy is still in the tank, and my car is racking up repairs. Without the car, I cannot perform my job, just as Antonio cannot perform his. I’d like to suggest that I have more value than my car, but at times like this, I begin to wonder.

Ultimately, Antonio is pitiable because he is also perfectly real. Because he is perfectly real, this film resonates like few others.

(If you viewed this before the write-up was complete, I apologize. This film required that I sleep on it to fully digest it.)

Why to watch Ladri di Biciclette: A classic film for many, many reasons.
Why not to watch: Holy crap on a stick is it depressing.