So much average

From my favorite movies..

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

An unhappily married wealthy couple drive to Naples to dispose of a deceased uncle's villa. He is dry as an old bone, completely unfeeling around his wife, while she grows more and more upset as time passes at their lack of connection and romance. Eventually they decide to get a divorce, before the final scene where they abruptly change their mind and declare their love for one another, without any indication as to how they reached such a conclusion. The film does a pretty good job of avoiding melodrama until that point, but a more insipid ending you couldn't imagine.The lack of any human warmth in this film makes it an emotionless affair, though it does manage an inviting mood thanks to the wonderfully scenery. Set mostly in sunshine, mountains rise in the background, oceans sit on the horizon, stony streets are woven, and we get a travelogue of the southwest coast of Italy - Naples, Capri, Pompeii - volcanic smoke, catacombs, and marbled statues. Rossellini does well to pull back from the actors and let these locations breathe fresh life into a relationship of stale air. Learning foreign history and observing foreign life pass around them, the mood is that of disconnect - though there is a sense of wonder and searching for our place within it all. Certain nods to the macabre along the way impart some vague thematic elements, though I empathise with any who thought this was made by a tourism promotion company.

Billed as one of Roberto Rossellini's best, Journey to Italy aka Strangers (1954) is difficult to appreciate unless you understand the language (Italian) or can read its English subtitles as fast as they appear on the screen. Plus, if you're reading, you're missing a lot of the scenery - Naples, Pompeii, Mount Vesuvius, and Capri - which is so beautiful (and could have been more so, had it been filmed in color).Also challenging for many moviegoers is that there isn't much of a plot; it's the study of a marriage that's collapsing after 8 years. Even though it features Ingrid Bergman (the director's wife at the time) and George Sanders, I find it hard to recommend to a general audience. However, the print I saw on TCM was barely 80 minutes in length, as much as 15 minutes less than the original running time, so it's possible there were scenes missing that would have made it more palatable.Katherine (Bergman) and Alex Joyce (Sanders) travel to Naples to sell a home that was left to him by a recently deceased uncle, who was popular in the idyllic town. They realize that they hardly know each other as they struggle to have any kind of meaningful dialogue or interactions without frustration or heartache. He's a workaholic while she's overly critical and sensitive. They no longer see each other as desirable, though each is curious to notice that their spouse is fun and attractive to others, when the couple mingles socially.For me, the film's best scene occurs after Alex returns late at night from a several days trip to Capri, where he was hot for a dalliance that didn't happen and Katherine is clearly hoping he'll romance her (absence makes the heart grow fonder). He's typically unaware - even aloof - of her wishes, and she's too timid to express her vulnerability, e.g. need of him. Unfortunately, much of the rest of this marital study fails to illuminate, and their reconciliation at the end feels as tacked on as any Hollywood production.

Hulu has recently added the Criterion restoration of JOURNEY TO ITALY. It's a 1954 drama about an Englishman (Sanders) and his wife (Ingrid Bergman) who travel from London to Italy to take care of a deceased relative's estate. Along the journey, they begin to understand why their marriage is crumbling. Bergman's own marriage to the director, Roberto Rossellini, was starting to crumble off-screen.George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman had costarred 13 years earlier in MGM's RAGE IN HEAVEN. When JOURNEY TO ITALY was originally released, it did not do well with audiences and critics were lukewarm towards it. But it has steadily grown in reputation and is believed to have influenced many well-known directors.At any rate, I watched it yesterday...it gets better with each subsequent viewing. George and Ingrid are in a way playing bourgeoisie caricatures but probably because Rossellini had a loose script, this caused them to invent dialogue that was much more natural than what we're accustomed to hearing them recite in their Hollywood movies. A few things really stand out-- the clothing is fabulous on both of them, and the hotel and villa used for those scenes are exquisite-- better than anything that could have been constructed on a sound stage. It feels like the characters are living in a real time and place because of this, and ultimately, it makes the film and its goals more endearing. Also, I love the little tourist interludes Rossellini has Bergman do, not only at Pompeii, but earlier in the film when she visits the museum, I was completely caught up in it, though there was little plot during those sequences, probably because of the fluid camera work.I did think the film slowed down a bit when George's character went off to Capri, and we'd see her driving around looking at women with baby carriages. But I understood why this was done, as it gave us insights into what was wrong with her. Then when we cut to him ending his time away, tempted by a hooker on the street, we were likewise given insights into what was wrong with him.The ending of JOURNEY TO ITALY is truly wonderful. There's this long scene where they are on a street and they get tangled up with some outdoor religious procession that occurs in the main plaza. The way they come to their senses and realize the potential of their relationship is well played. I think the way he pulls her in for the embrace was spectacularly done. To me, this scene, as well as a scene earlier in the picture where he is eating pasta with her and raving about the wine, are moments where we see George Sanders are his most vulnerable and at his best.

Roberto Rossellini wasn't about to rest too much on his laurels - or let a little thing like a controversy slow him down (an affair with Ingrid Bergman that wrecked marriages, albeit produced daughter Isabella which is nothing short of miraculous) - so a film like Journey to Italy seemed like just the thing to get him motivated and challenged. It's a challenging picture. There's not the same sort of melodramatic drive through a lot of it that you see in Rome Open City or even Stromboli - at least until perhaps the last third. I remember seeing the clips in Scorsese's Italian movies documentary, though it was hard to come by except on over-priced VHS online, until the Criterion collection put out a Rossellini/Bergman box-set, which gave me my chance last year.I have to wonder if Kubrick might've watched this film before making Eyes Wide Shut, if only for the early scenes. But there's little chance for real romance here; Bergman and George Sanders are the married couple, on holiday in Rome. Well, partly holiday anyway, more like an estate deal that's being closed on (an inhereted villa in Naples actually), and she's bored out of her mind... at first. Very slowly as she goes on trips to museums, encouraged by an acquaintance, there is a certain mood about Rome, a history, the objects which loom over her and speak to something MORE than what she is experiencing in her life and marriage, that do something to her.Of course, stuffy George Sanders can't see that - nor that their marriage isn't very happy at the moment, or about there being a lost lover in the equation as well (flirting for Sanders, too). And there may be more trouble on the horizon as well, but what's so fascinating is that Rossellini keeps a lot of things under the surface, the unspoken between the two, the tension, is what has to be put forward. For drama, this can be tricky, and Rossellini with his documentary background is able to get his actors to such a place as to be totally comfortable in their characters - people who are paradoxically uncomfortable with where they're at, romantically, spiritually (spirit's a big one), and geographically. And in a sense the ultimate message here reminds me of the line from Night of the Living Dead, where an unhappy married woman says to her husband: "We might not like living together... but dying together won't solve anything." Is this couple sort of, you know, trapped? Most likely, and the zombies are actual conflicts they're avoiding in life. A lot of what they end up seeing together is death. This comes by the way right when they tentatively agree after a really bad argument (there's a lot of arguing here by the way, but all believable because it's these two stars who are tremendous talents. They're taken along on an archaeological expedition, and they're privy to the remains of people from long ago. It's a startling, breathtaking sight for them, maybe more for Sanders in a way because he hasn't already been exposed to these bewildering, eye-opening sights like Bergman has. And this realization of one's mortality dawns ever closer.Journey to Italy was a prized darling among the French New Wave, and perhaps it's because of the questions it raises about life and death, love and loss, and having any sort of REASON for anything, that gives it an existential edge. Have things been too petty for them? Can they reconcile? The ending is where Rossellini finally lets things boil over dramatically speaking: in a way this is a more sophisticated film, if a little harder to exactly "enjoy" outside of a sort of intellectual level (unlike, say, Open City), but when Bergman and Sanders are torn apart, if only briefly, by a parade, it becomes a BIG struggle, and that's what counts. What will you do with the time you have here? Love, squabble, fight, bicker, take things in and experience things? Maybe all of those.I'm glad the movie was re-discovered and championed by those crazy bunch of Cashier du Cinema folks; the movie works its way ever so slowly on you, and has the layers of great art revealing itself. Did I mention how good these two actors are, especially Bergman again with her husband/musee? Good, it's worth repeating.