Fear (La paura) (Angst) (1954) [NR] ***

Because this film is not widely available, and you’re unlikely to ever see it, this film review contains SPOILERS, so be aware.  Written by Sergio Amidei, Franz von Treuberg and Roberto Rossellini, and directed by Roberto Rossellini, Fear tells the story of Irene Wagner (Ingrid Bergman) who, together with her husband Professor Albert Wagner (Mathias Wieman) owns a pharmaceutical company in post-WWII West Germany.

Irene, bored and disillusioned with her life, has been involved in an affair with a handsome younger man, Erich Baumann (Kurt Kreuger), and as the film starts, she’s trying to end it, but lacks the willpower. Then, late one night, Irene is accosted outside her garage by Luisa Vidor, alias Joanna Schultze (Renate Mannhardt). Luisa claims to be Erich’s former girlfriend and she’s angry with Irene for stealing him. She threatens to go to Irene’s husband Albert unless Irene pays her off.

As Luisa’s blackmail demands increase, and Irene tries to keep a lid on her affair with Erich, she grows increasingly anxious and fearful. Finally, late one night at a bar, Luisa demands DM20,000 (roughly $5,000) for the return of a diamond ring she had stolen from Irene. Irene tells Luisa she won’t pay her anything and she’s going to the police. (She knows Luisa is from Berlin and has had problems with the police in the past.) Luisa breaks down, confesses that Irene’s husband is behind the whole scheme, including the blackmail. Distraught, Irene sees no way out except suicide, but Albert arrives at the laboratory in time, apologizes and the two reconcile.

This was the fifth and last film made together by Bergman and Rossellini, and some critics noted that their marriage was coming apart in 1954, and perhaps that was reflected in the film. Bergman carries the film, even though she has little chemistry with either Wieman or Kreuger. And while she has clearly aged in the twelve years since she made Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart, she will make twenty-three more films, win two more Oscars (Anastasia and Murder on the Orient Express) and appear in numerous stage productions, before succumbing to cancer in 1982 at age sixty-seven.

Filmed in Munich, Germany, in both German and English languages, the film is in black & white, and the print I viewed was dubbed in Italian and subtitled in English. The original Italian title was La paura, the English Fear, and the German Angst. Other than Bergman’s performance, the acting is amateurish, and the film may be most useful as a look back at West Germany, nine years after the end of WWII. Having studied high school and college chemistry in the late fifties and early sixties, the pharmaceutical laboratory depicted in the film is just as I remembered it.

If you are interested in the Bergman-Rossellini collaboration between 1950 and 1954, I’d suggest starting with Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia) (1954). That was Rossellini’s most important film of the period, recognized as one of the one hundred most important films of the twentieth century, and the film that defined Italian neorealism (Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, De Santis, Fellini, et. al.) and deeply influenced the French New Wave (Resnais, Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, et. al.)

Labels: drama, Fifties, Ingrid Bergman

Internet Movie Database 6.6/10

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=NA, viewers=64) 

Wikipedia Fear (1954 film)