Italian neo-realism is widely believed to be post-war (WWII), specifically, to have begun with Roberto Rossellini's "Open City," filmed as the Nazis were withdrawing from Rome. Neo-realism did not entirely come out of nowhere. The technicians had learned their trade in a film industry that predated Mussolini, and flourished even during the war. Rossellini had made earlier films, as had Vittorio de Sica, whose "Bicycle Thief," "Shoeshine," and "Umberto D." are (justly) certified classics of neorealism.

In some ways, not least in being the first De Sica-directed film for which writer Cesare Zavattini took a screen credit, "I bambini ci guardano" is neo-realist. It looks unflinchingly at adultery and suicide and has one of the pained-looking young boys, which is something of a hallmark of neo-realism (Paisà and Germany, Year Zero in addition to "The Bicycle Thief," "Shoeshine," and (the second childhood of) "Umberto D."). However, the milieu is upper class, and from what I have seen, I would consider Luchino's Visconti's unauthorized adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice, "Ossessione" (1943) as the first neo-realist film.

Zavattini was one of six credited writers (including De Sica). Apparently, he rewrote the script, transferring the location from the novel's one of Sicily to Rome (and the resort of Alassio) and changing the ending. It seems to me that so many writers should have been able to come up with a more interesting story of wagging tongues and a mother torn between her child and a very insistent lover.

I have to say that I don't understand the title. It is not children in the plural (bambini) who watch the mother (Ilsa Pola as Nina) try to fight off her lover (Adriano Rimoldi as Roberto), but one boy. I think that the title should be singular: child (bambino). The original title was supposed to retain that of Cesare Giulio Viola's novel: Pricò, the name of the son (played by Luciano de Ambrodis) devoted to his mother and dismayed by her betrayal of her husband/his father (Emilio Cigoli).

Like Anna Karenina, Nina is torn between love for her son and for her partner in adultery. And there is a train and a suicide, and wrenching farewells. The story is shot from the perspective of the boy (de Ambrodis was not yet 5 when the film was shot in the summer of 1942). He does not narrate it ("tell the story"). I say "shot from his perspective," because the camera placement is generally low—at his eye level. A lot of it is told in his eyes in closeups, and in watching him run (along the moonlit beach) or scooter (in the Villa Borghese). He may not know what he knows, but he knows. That is, he knows that things are not right and that Roberto is a threat to his home.

De Sica found a very sensitive boy, an only child who had recently lost his mother, and probably was as emotionally needy as the character. I guess that his rawness provides support for the movie being neorealism avant la lèttre. (proto-neo-realism?)...

The camera was not as in love with lsa Pola as with Greta Garbo or Vivien Leigh, but De Sica was not particularly interested in making her look glamorous (except in a night club scene in which her dress shimmers). She looks torn (prefiguring Jennifer Jones in De Sica's Indiscretions of an American Wife).

Adriano Rimoldi looks the part of a demanding lover, and has little else to do. Emilio Cigoli is excellent, particularly in the film's second part. As the wise, old housekeeper, Agnese, Giovanna Cigoli (I don't know if the two were related, but suspect they were.) His onscreen character's mother is played at high cantankerous impatience by Jone Frigerio.)

The 2000 film restoration is crystal clear, the digitally restored mono soundtrack quite good, the subtitles clearly legible, and the Criterion DVD adds two very interesting bonus features: an interview with Luciano de Ambrodis 62 years after the movie was shot, and one with De Sica expert Callisto Cosulich. (There's also a 24-page booklet that I have not seen that seems to be mostly about Zavattini .)

The latter explains that the movie (the official release date of which was 27 October 1944) was shot in the summer of 1942, when Italians were unaware they were about to lose the war. This accounts for the proceedings looking like a country at peace, though if I'd been interviewing Cosulich, I would have asked about the invisibility of fascism in the movie's Italy. It is to Cosulichthat I am indebted for information about Zavattini coming in late (to rewrite the screenplay) and the context of De Sica's own dalliances of the time destroying his marriage. According to Cosulich, Zavattini provided and De Sica fought for the ending, which I think lifts the movie to a higher level (one which others might consider moralistic; I consider it tragic).

The movie has none of the dark comedy of "The Squid and the Whale," but prefigures it in a way that I cannot specify without plot-spoiling. And, more obviously, "Kramer vs. Kramer." One major difference is that "The Squid and the Whale" (like Anna Karenina) shows more clearly that the husband is not an innocent victim in the failed marriage, little as he understands that.

Renzo Rossellini's cloying music undercuts the clear-eyed perspective and de Ambrodis is too raw for me, but with the illluminating DVD extras and historical importance, I round a 3.5 upward. It is definitely not as great a movie as the neo-realist classics mentioned in my review's second paragraph, however.



©2006, Stephen O. Murray



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