Antonioni's Il grido

Il grido (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1957)

Known for his films from 1960 (L'avventura) to his death in 2007, Michelangelo Antonioni is a deep meaningful italian director. For many his artistic peak was L'avventura or Red Desert, personnally Blow-Up is his best offer. But as a true cinephile I must admit that his pre-L'avventura work is worth a look and it even announces his masterpiece period.

Il grido is the story of a man, Aldo, rejected by Irma a woman recently widowed. He begins a new empty life with his daughter trying to fulfill his lost love with the meeting of many women. This is a film that carries the main themes of Antonioni's filmography: the failure of communication, the emptiness of a broken heart, and pessimism. That's right, Antonioni made many films on that subject and I think the tragic ending of Il grido explains easily the pessimism of Antonioni's oeuvre. I also observed that intentionnally Antonioni put a poster of Charlie Chaplin's The Kid, this may be a reinterpretation of those themes or elements by Michelangelo Antonioni...

Like the rest his entire work, the photography of Il grido is memorable and every frame is near perfect. The mise-en-shot is characteristic from Italian cinema and gives lot of exposure to the tragic scenery. However, the presentation is nice but the content and the story is so cold that we hardly get into the story and get involve with the characters. His 1960 offer, L'avventura is more fulfilling and delivers a better plot.

Far from calling Il grido a masterpiece, I think it is a film worth a look expescially for those who love Italian Cinema and Antonioni.

A review by Michaël Parent

Viaggio in Italia

Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)

To many critics, Viaggio in Italia is the culmination of Roberto Rossellini's oeuvre. Well, far from being his worst film it's his most personal offering and maybe his best collaboration with Ingrid Bergman.

Katherine (Ingrid Bergman) and Alex (George Sanders) Joyce are a British couple on a trip to Italy to sell Alex's late uncle house. Beside being a business or pleasant trip they are on a journey into the core of their relationship. The film is a reflexion of the Rossellini-Bergman couple. It will be their final collaboration together and they split up at about that time.

Rossellini's camera becomes a microscope on the relationship of every couple that last long enough to feel that it is ending or stagnant. They are at a point where the failure of their marriage is only mentioned by cynical remarks to each other. They both know that their couple is drowning and they don't do anything to keep it from falling apart. They both feel jealous to each other and their incomfort when they are alone with on another reflects their failure and their lack of will.

Ingrid Bergman is once again the best actress of her time as Katherine Joyce. The husband, Alex, portrayed by George Sanders who I think is a perfect alter-ego to Roberto Rossellini for his physical appearance to his tired expression. Their delivery is so real that we feel like we are entering in their intimacy...

Rossellini's style evolved from his first Neorealist films to a more personal approach to cinema, he uses more editing and shorter takes. He seems to master better the narrative elements of his story and the impact of his dramatic elements.

In Viaggio in Italia we see the true or the real Roberto Rossellini, this is why this film is considered by many as his masterpiece.

Stromboli, terra di dio

TSPDT Greatest Films #520 Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

The first collaboration of actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini. It is during the production of Stromboli that Bergman had an extra-marital affair with Rossellini and got pregnant. At the time she got blacklisted by Hollywood.

Karin a young woman accepts to marry Antonio to escape from a WWII prisoner's camp. After the wedding they move to Antonio's hometown: Stromboli. A small island North of Sicilia where there's always a current menace of the eruptions of the volcano. In this story the volcano symbolizes the power and the wrath of god. The reason Karin married Antonio was to escape from the prisoner's camp, well she wanted freedom, but the island where she is confined is even worse than the camp.

Rossellini, who influenced largely some of the best directors of the French New Wave distincted himself for his approach; he worked without a script with only some personnal notes. It may be why there are many long takes. The long takes are also used here to emphasize the loneliness of Karin in her house and on the island. In some case it gives a sense of realism to the story but also it lets enough space and time for the actors to improvise in many scenes. With Stromboli, Roberto Rossellini created moments of intensity that only Italian Neorealism could have achieved.

This other lesson about war demonstrated by Roberto Rossellini, shows how society (or Italy) should stop being so selfish and think to try to built a better world for its future. The idea of the story is very subtil and unlike Germany Year Zero of Rome Open City the broad lines are fuzier in Stromboli but no less interesting or clever.


A review by Michaël Parent

Anno 1948 in Germania

TSPDT Greatest Films #251 Germania anno zero aka Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)


With his Roma, citta aperta, Roberto Rossellini invented the Italian Neorealism. It was not a film genre but more like a current or a different approach to filmmaking. Rossellini wanted to tell "real" stories of "real" people with the few or if possible no dramatic or manipulative elements.

With Germania anno zero Rossellini clearly annonces his intentions to bring hope and faith in the lives of all those who suffered during and after World War II. With objective camera and objective storytelling he wanted to tell the story of Edmund the more realistic possible. His camera is constantly moving, the lighting is crude or very dark, it gives a documentary-like aspect to the feature. This is Italian Neorealism at its best.

A young boy, Edmund twelve years old lives with his sick father, his older sister waiting for her husband to come back from the front, and his older brother hiding from the police because he didn't surrender when Allies troops entered Berlin. They manage to survive with the minimum.

Those desperate times meant desperate measures and to feed his family Edmund stole and sold records of speechs by the Führer for his ex-teacher. This teacher has an important influence on Edmund. When the boy turns back again to his teacher for more help because his father is very ill he misundertood what the teacher told him and made an irrevesible mistake. He murders his father with poison. On some level it could be a very compassionate gesture to be able to dispense his father from pain and his family from this weight they had to carry.

It could only be a child that could think without remorse like that. It shows how the people of Germany (Edmund) were intoxicated by the Führer(the teacher)'s speechs and they could have murdered millions of jews in cold blood. The worst in that case was that the murders past on the people of Germany but were conducted by the Nazi regime that hypnotized and manipulated the population.

This landmark in Italian film is remarquable and I truly consider it as a masterpiece. Having only seen Roberto Rossellini's Roma, citta aperta I'm looking forward to see his Stromboli, Journey to Italy, and The Rise to Power of Louis XIV, etc.

A review by Michaël Parent