Goodbye Again (1961) [NR] ****

Based on the best-selling novel Aimez-vous Brahms? (Do You Like Brahms?) by Françoise Sagan, and directed by Anatole Litvak, Goodbye Again is a poignant, bittersweet romantic drama about the tragedy of impossible relationships and unrequited love.

Paula Tessier (Ingrid Bergman) is a forty-something interior decorator living in Paris in 1961. For the past five years she’s been in a relationship with Roger Demarest (Yves Montand), a farm tractor importer / exporter. Paula knows Roger is an inveterate womanizer who cheats on her with an endless line of vapid, young women, all of whom he calls Maisie. However, because of her low self-esteem, insecurity or the naïve belief that she can change Roger, Paula clings to him and refuses to end the relationship. Roger claims he loves Paula, but he’s too self-centered and egotistical to give up his freedom as a womanizer. If Paula was honest with herself, she’d recognize that Roger was never going to change and their relationship was going nowhere.

One day Roger gives Paula the name of a wealthy American divorcee, Teresa Van der Besh (Jessie Royce Landis), who needs a decorator for her Paris apartment. Mrs. Van der Besh has a 25-year-old son Philip (Anthony Perkins), an attorney who is studying international law with a Paris law firm. Philip is immature, melancholy, directionless, spoiled, and has a penchant for play-acting at being physically injured or deformed. When he meets Paula, he becomes hopelessly infatuated with the attractive, cosmopolitan middle-aged woman, and insists that their fifteen-year age difference is no barrier to a romance.

Flattered by the novelty of having a young admirer, and plagued by Roger's serial infidelities, Paula does little to discourage Philip's persistent advances. He drives her around town in his little Triumph TR3 sports car, revealing his romantic philosophy in the process. They lunch in an outdoor restaurant and attend a Brahms concert.

When Roger goes on an extended international business trip, Paula allows herself to begin an affair with Philip, convinced she can change him like she changes the décor of an apartment, even though she’s tried, without success, to change Roger. At this point, although she may not realize it, Paula is involved with two men who act like irresponsible little boys and refuse to grow up

[Twenty years later, in 1983, psychologist Dan Kiley would define this as the Peter Pan Syndrome. He would also use the term Wendy Syndrome to describe women who act like mothers to their Peter Pan partners. So both Roger and Philip are Peter Pan, and Paula is Wendy.]

Eventually, Paula can no longer deny the reality that Philip is irresponsible, childish, indecisive, indolent, slovenly and unable to develop a passion for his work. All of this, plus her self-conscious guilt over having such a young lover, ultimately forces her to end their brief affair.

Litvak uses the recurrent theme of circles to convey the sense that the lives of these three people are going nowhere. There are scenes in which Philip drives aimlessly around the traffic circles of Paris in order to pass the time, and after Paula breaks up with Philip, she watches him as he descends a long, spiral staircase. Brahms' Symphony No. 3, whose melody has a cyclical theme, is used throughout the film, including a haunting blues version sung to Philip by a night club singer (Diahann Carroll), which reflects the hopelessness of Philip’s love for Paula, and of Paula’s love for Roger.

Bergman, Montand and Perkins are all excellent in their roles, and Perkins, especially, shows exceptional depth as the lost and vulnerable Philip. Paula is tolerant, forgiving and continually disappointed, Roger is self-indulgent and egotistical, and Philip is directionless and hopeless. Sadly, there is nothing positive or uplifting about this romantic drama, just the reality that these three people have learned nothing and will continue to enact the same patterns over and over.

Labels: drama, Ingrid Bergman, Paris, romance, Sixties

Internet Movie Database 7.0/10 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=NA, viewers=76) 

The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) [UR] ****

A film review by Jeffrey Kauffman for Blu-ray.com on February 8, 2014.

Gladys Aylward is a name that doesn't ring many bells nowadays, but for a brief time in the late fifties, she was the object of some considerable international interest. A small (barely five feet tall), unassuming woman who had spent her (equally small) life savings on a passage to China, where she worked with another émigré named Jeannie Lawson in spreading the good Word, and where she ultimately gained a certain notoriety for heroically leading a ragtag bunch of Chinese orphans to safety during China's war with Japan in the late thirties.

Aylward's fame was quite considerable in China, but she was still only marginally known in her native Great Britain until Alan Burgess wrote a biography of Aylward entitled The Small Woman, which hit the bestseller charts in 1957. (Alan Burgess should not be confused with Anthony Burgess of A Clockwork Orange fame.) It didn't take Hollywood long to figure out this amazing story was ripe for a cinematic adaptation, though as so often happens in the film world, the truth wasn't deemed good enough, and several key changes were made to Aylward's actual story. Perhaps the oddest decision was the casting of Ingrid Bergman - tall, statuesque, obviously attractive, and not to put too fine a point on it, Swedish - as the diminutive, evidently Cockney accented and by all accounts fairly plain looking Aylward. The film perhaps more understandably telescopes some of the events in Aylward's actual life story to make for a more compelling film experience, but other decisions are almost funny; in real life, Aylward's Chinese hostel was actually called The Inn of the Eight Happinesses. Aylward was reportedly very unhappy with The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, but if one looks objectively on the film as an entertainment rather than an absolutely accurate historical document, there's a good deal to be enjoyed here. While perhaps too long for its own good (clocking in at well over two and a half hours), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is the kind of old fashioned historical epic that was so popular in the late fifties, one fraught with danger, lots of local color and just a hint of romance.

Bergman plays Aylward like a slightly petulant, stubborn and headstrong woman who is nonetheless absolutely convinced that God wants her to go to China to serve as a missionary. The opening scenes of the film establish Aylward's single minded determination to achieve this goal, despite the fact that film's official missionary group has deemed her inappropriate for such work. Leaving that assessment somewhat crestfallen, she rather coincidentally notices a travel agency and goes in, insisting that she be allowed to buy a ticket to China on an installment plan that the agency doesn't even offer. According to Aylward's unusual way of thinking, once she's committed to the idea with a down payment, it will make paying for it over the course of time an easier prospect.

The film stretches the truth a bit in its formulation of how Aylward actually ultimately gained a foothold in China, positing a kindly employer named Sir Francis Jamison (Ronald Squire) who pulled a few strings (and wrote a few letters), ultimately getting Aylward a position with the already established Jeannie Lawson (Athene Seyler). Despite this fanciful setup, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness starts to establish its bona fides as a moving drama, if not a stoutly accurate historical epic, once Aylward finally does get to the place she's been so sure she belongs for so long.

Aylward learns to interact well with the local leader, an imperious man (or more appropriately, Mandarin) played by Robert Donat. Her ability to interface with the local peasantry provides the early dramatic impetus for the film, as does a burgeoning romance with a so-called Eurasian captain named Lin Nan (Curt Jurgens). The film really starts to pick up steam once Aylward gets involved in what she sees as a major human rights issue, the horrifying binding of women's feet which had a long historical precedent but which was finally falling out of fashion.

The stories of the Mandarin, the captain and Aylward dovetail rather nicely in the film's final extended sequence, when the Japanese begin attacking mainland China and the captain tries to talk Aylward into evacuating immediately. Things get more complicated when Aylward suddenly becomes the caretaker for a gaggle of (incredibly cute) orphans, all of whom will perish in the attack if she can't figure out a way to get them to safety. This disconcerting state of affairs is only further exacerbated when even more orphans show up at the last moment, just as Aylward and her trusty aide Li (Burt Kwouk) have decided to make a run (and/or walk) for it, leading the kids by foot to a safer region.

The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is big, glossy entertainment, but it's surprisingly heartfelt, with a generous dash of both drama and humor spicing up the proceedings. Gorgeously shot (in Wales, of all places) by the incomparable Freddie Young, and with a really impressive production design capably recreating the village life of China during that era, the film is also notable for its nicely nuanced performances (though some may find the prospect of two Caucasians playing Asians - or at least half breeds - politically incorrect by today's standards). The film plays its heartstring tugging aspects without shame, repeatedly depicting people initially not especially liking Aylward but gradually at least becoming fond of her, and in the case of Lin, more than that. Perhaps surprisingly, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness snagged an Oscar nomination for its director, veteran Mark Robson, while remaining shut out in all the other categories.

The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is a near perfect entertainment in the vaunted old fashioned late fifties style. It's big, probably a bit too glossy for its subject matter, but undeniably enjoyable, filled with luscious scenery, really gorgeous sets and costumes, and some wonderfully moving performances. Some may feel the film could have been judiciously trimmed by at least twenty minutes to a half hour, but for those willing to relax into an old style epic, this is an evocative and even meaningful experience. [Kauffman’s rating: **** out of 5 stars]

Labels: biography, drama, Ingrid Bergman, romance, war

Internet Movie Database 7.3/10 

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Indiscreet (1958) [UR] ****

A film review by Jeffrey Kauffman for blu-ray.com on January 16, 2013.

One might be forgiven for thinking that there was a bit of cynical marketing at work by casting Ingrid Bergman in a film called Indiscreet. It seems like pop culture chump change now, what with movie stars in and out of rehab, vicious voicemails to their soon to be ex-spouses or estranged children played with relish on the evening entertainment shows, and civil and criminal court cases piling up against various celebrities, but Ingrid Bergman's seemingly minor peccadillo of having an affair (and the perhaps more major peccadillo of conceiving a child) with iconic Italian director Roberto Rossellini wasn't just front page news around the world in the early fifties, it was cause for actual denunciations in Congress (could you imagine a Senator denouncing Lindsay Lohan nowadays?). Bergman's career, at least in the United States, seemed to be over. This was the woman who had been a virginal presence in everything from The Bells of St. Mary's to Joan of Arc, and in that perhaps less celebrity conscious and decidedly more star struck time, people tended to confuse performers with their roles.

It wasn't until 1956 that Bergman was able to rehabilitate her stateside image and career with Anastasia, winning an Academy Award which not so coincidentally was accepted by her longtime friend Cary Grant. Two years later Grant and Bergman would reteam for the first time since having made the Alfred Hitchcock classic Notorious, this time in a decidedly different and lighter offering, though one which it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out was probably engineered to trade on Bergman's supposedly shaded past. If Bergman in real life had been pilloried for having had an affair with a married man while married herself, Indiscreet posits Bergman as an actress searching for a soul mate who falls in love with a debonair man played by Grant, a man who pretends to be married and is therefore carrying on an affair. There's kind of a nudge, nudge, wink, wink aspect to this slight twisting of then recent history, and while Indiscreet was in fact based on a not very successful Broadway comedy called Kind Sir which had run for a few months in 1953 and 1954 with stars Mary Martin and Charles Boyer, the fact that the film adaptation garnered its indicative new name and star was most likely an intentional act on the part of producer-director Stanley Donen, who was certainly no fool and no doubt understood the subliminal messages being conveyed to a potential audience.

Writer Norman Krasna had a long if not particularly distinguished career, more in the world of film than on the legitimate stage. But Krasna's approach to his material in Kind Sir is probably the major reason the show wasn't a multi-season smash on Broadway and isn't the most fondly remembered film in either Grant or Bergman's long and storied careers. This is material that fairly screams farce, with a debonair bachelor pretending to be married so that he doesn't need to make a commitment. But Krasna takes an almost dramatic, even soap operatic, approach to this fare, and the results are not only rarely amusing (let alone funny), they fail to really provide much interest beyond the glamorous setting. The strange thing is Krasna was a rather splendid farce writer, as some of his other screenplays prove, so why he chose to craft a kind of creaky, weepy entertainment that gets by - sometimes just barely - on the combined charisma of its two legendary stars is a quandary. There's really not much else there to Indiscreet.

Indiscreet would seem to be a rather unusual entry in the filmography of Stanley Donen. It's neither an ebullient musical like Singin' in the Rain nor a comedically tinged thriller like Charade. Even within the second tier of Donen's oeuvre, Indiscreet is a decidedly middling entry, one that fitfully sputters to life in the final act when Bergman's character of Anna Kalman discovers that Grant's character of Philip Adams is trying to pull the matrimonial wool over her eyes, and decides to create her own bit of subterfuge. But even that effort falls short of any real laughs, and once again Krasna and Donen revert to dewy eyed close ups of Bergman weeping at the joy of having found happiness with a man who has gone to great lengths to avoid making a commitment to her. One can only assume Donen's attention was more absorbed with his film version of Damn Yankees! which was being done at around the same time. Who knows what was on Krasna's mind.

Indiscreet is a film that on paper looks like it couldn't possibly miss. How could a film helmed by Stanley Donen and starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant be anything other than a wonderful entertainment? Well, just watch Indiscreet to find out just how far on paper is from finished film. This is a slow and pretty dreary exercise in scattered titters and unnecessary melodrama. Something must have attracted these fantastically talented people to this project, but I for one am at a loss to say what it was. For those wanting a little old school Hollywood glamour, you could probably do worse, but the fact is just cherry picking any other Stanley Donen film will probably guarantee you'll do considerably better. [Kauffman’s rating: *** out of 5 stars]

Labels: comedy, Fifties, Ingrid Bergman, romance

Internet Movie Database 6.8/10 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=73, viewers=72) 

Blu-ray 

Blogger's comment: I've seen Indiscreet twice and appreciated it much more the second time. Bergman and Grant are incredibly talented and have great chemistry together. Part of the appeal of a light, romantic comedy like this, is that male viewers can put themselves in Grant's place, and female viewers in Bergman's place. And this is an aspect of the film that Kauffman's review completely ignores. It's also the reason that so often critics' ratings and viewers' ratings are so far apart. If you enjoy Bergman and Grant together, don't miss Notorious (1946).

Anastasia (1956) [NR] ****

A film review by Richard Cross, 20/20 Movie Reviews on October 20, 2013.

The myth that the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the youngest daughter of Emperor Nicholas II, survived the assassination of the Romanov family during the Russian revolution was an enduring one for most of the 20th Century. Anastasia’s remains were found with those of eight others of her family in Ekaterinburg in 1991, finally bringing speculation to a conclusion, but when director Anatole Litvak’s screen adaptation of the hit Broadway stage play by Marcelle Maurette was released in 1956, the mysterious fate of Anastasia was still very much in the public eye.

The film takes place in Paris in 1928, ten years after the Romanovs were assassinated. Rumors circulate amongst the exiled Russian aristocracy that Anastasia, the Tsar’s youngest daughter survived the assassination. The rumors endure partly due to the fact that £10 million left by the Tsar in an English bank still waits to be claimed, which has resulted in any number of con men and opportunists producing fake Anastasias in an attempt to get their hands on the inheritance. One of these opportunists is former White Russian General Bounine (Yul Brynner), who, together with fellow emigres Boris Chernov (Akim Tamiroff and Piotr Ivanovich Petrovin (Sacha Pitoeff), is part of a syndicate established to locate and groom a suitable candidate for the part. Their attention turns to Anna Koreff (Ingrid Bergman), a refugee in Paris who once claimed to be Anastasia while recovering in a Romanian mental hospital. Anna is initially a reluctant recruit into their scheme, even though she still claims to be Anastasia and bears an uncanny resemblance to the girl, who was 17 when the Romanovs were assassinated. But eventually she capitulates under the forceful persuasion of Bounine with whom she develops an intense love-hate relationship.

Attempts to convince the Russian aristocracy prove inconclusive, and so Bounine decides they must somehow convince the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovona (Helen Hayes) of the authenticity of Anna’s claim. However, the Dowager is a crusty old dame who has grown inured to the repeated attempts of fraudsters to get their hands on the family fortune, and she initially refuses even to meet with Anna.

There’s a pleasing ambiguity about Arthur Laurents’ screenplay for Anastasia which always leaves us unsure about the veracity of Anna’s claim. In fact, she herself seems occasionally uncertain about her true identity, with perceived memories becoming confused with the overbearing Bounine’s meticulous tuition on every tiny detail of the young Duchess’s life. Bounine and his cohorts are, in fact, entirely fictional and so the story is only very loosely based on truth which, of course, frees any writer to embellish to their heart’s content, so it’s to Laurents’s credit that the film remains a sober account of Anna’s claim without ever feeling dry or forced. And while he finds it impossible to entirely disguise the story’s stage origins, the quality of the performances from Bergman and Brynner are strong enough to facilitate such a wordy screenplay. However, given the strength of both of their performances, its sadly surprising at how little chemistry is created between them. [Cross’ rating: ** out of 4 stars]

Labels: biography, drama, history, Ingrid Bergman

Internet Movie Database 7.1/10 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=73, viewers=70) 

Blu-ray 

YouTube "Too Beautiful to Last"
Anastasia Nicholeavna Romanov - her true story

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) 

Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia) (1954) [NR] *****

Journey to Italy (Voyage to Italy, Viaggio in Italia)

A film review by A.O Scott, for the N.Y. Times, April 30, 2013.

The 1950s are full of movies that were initially greeted, by critics and audiences, with indifference or derision, only to be hailed as masterpieces in hindsight. Vertigo, The Searchers and The Sweet Smell of Success are among the best-known examples of this kind of revisionism. Another, only slightly less famous, is Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia, a film so maligned and neglected in 1955, the year of its American release, that it did not receive a review in The New York Times.

Better late than never. A restored digital version of Voyage to Italy (one of several English titles that have been used over the years) begins a nine-day run at Film Forum on Wednesday, which seems as good an occasion as any to update the critical record. As it happens, the treachery of time - the unwelcome intrusion of the past, the empty languor of the present, and the terrifying uncertainty of the future - is one of Rossellini’s themes, and part of what makes this film, for all its charming glimpses of a bygone era, feel so unnervingly contemporary.

Its failure no doubt had something to do with the scandal that embroiled the movie’s director and its star, Ingrid Bergman, and also with the ideological volatility of Italian cultural life. In 1948, after seeing Paisan and Rome: Open City, Bergman wrote Rossellini a letter offering her services if he should need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well. While making Stromboli, (1950) they began an affair that ended both of their marriages and provoked the highly selective moral outrage of the American press. In his own country, Rossellini was attacked less for marital infidelity than for betraying the cause of neorealism, allowing his camera to stray from local social problems to Hollywood stars.

And yet the reality of postwar Italy is very much visible in Voyage, as is a strong intimation of the direction of Italian cinema in the coming years. The film follows Katherine and Alex Joyce (Bergman and George Sanders, All About Eve), a British couple who arrive in Naples to sell a piece of property belonging to a recently deceased and highly enigmatic relative known as Uncle Homer. That business transaction is never concluded, and is in any case a distraction from the luxurious stasis that envelops Alex and Katherine, a state that might be described as a blend of ennui (boredom) and la dolce far niente (pleasant relaxation in carefree idleness).

The two languish for a while at a hotel and at Uncle Homer’s villa, where the frosty state of their relations fails to melt in the Mediterranean sun. Katherine spends her days sightseeing in the Museum of Archaeology and experiencing a tremor of anxiety at the Cave of the Cumaean Sibyl. Alexander takes an excursion to Capri, where he flirts and socializes.

Sanders later complained that the story of the film was never understood at any time, by anyone, least of all the audience when the picture was released. And he had a point, even though he may have missed Rossellini’s point. Voyage to Italy is not driven by the usual machinery of plot and exposition, but rather by a succession of moods, an emotional logic alternately reflected and obscured by the picturesque surroundings. The rich symbolism of the Italian landscape - the volcanic pools at Vesuvius, the ruins of Pompeii, the vistas that have stirred the imagination of artists at least since Virgil - makes the emptiness of the Joyces’ marriage all the more palpable and painful. Their emotional and spiritual sterility contrasts with the fertility signified by the baby carriages and pregnant women Katherine encounters every time she ventures into Naples, and also by the religious procession of the film’s devastating final scene.

Rossellini’s way of dissolving narrative into atmosphere, of locating drama in the unspoken inner lives of his characters, anticipates some of what Michelangelo Antonioni would do a few years later in L’Avventura. Voyage to Italy is thus in the vanguard of what Pauline Kael would disparagingly call come-dressed-as-the-sick-soul-of-Europe parties. Some of us will never tire of those soirees, with their black-tied gloom and elegant suffering, and will therefore relish the beauty and melancholy of this voyage, along with its touristic snapshots and heart-tugging Neapolitan songs.

The Joyces, though their manners and modes of dress mark them as creatures of another, perhaps more refined age, are immediately recognizable in their loneliness, their cynicism and their thwarted desire to connect and to feel. It may be too late. Voyage to Italy takes place in a series of simultaneous aftermaths - of World War II, of a glorious ancient civilization, of Uncle Homer’s wild life, of whatever passion once united Katherine and Alex. And yet amid all this exhaustion it finds signs of vitality. In its time, this film represented the arrival of something new, and even now it can feel like a bulletin from the future.

Labels: drama, Fifties, Ingrid Bergman, romance, rom-drama-faves

Internet Movie Database 7.4/10 

Metacritic 100/100 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=87, viewers=76) 

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Ingrid Bergman Remembered (YouTube 50:15) 

YouTube Journey to Italy (full movie, 720p HD, 1:26:08)

Europe ’51 (Europa ’51) (1952) [UR] ****

A film review by Dr. Svet Atanasov, for blu-ray.com on September 11, 2013.

Winner of International Award at the Venice Film Festival, Roberto Rossellini's Europe '51 (1952) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion. The supplemental features on the disc include the Italian-language version of the film, Europa '51; an archival introduction by Roberto Rossellini; exclusive video interview with Italian film critic Adriano Apra; and a video interview with Italian film scholar Elena Dagrada. In English or Italian, with optional English SDH and English subtitles. Region-A locked.

A tragic event forces the beautiful socialite Irene Girard (Ingrid Bergman, Intermezzo, Casablanca, Notorious) to temporarily abandon her wealthy husband (Alexander Knox, Khartoum, Crack in the World) and enter the world of the poor and underprivileged. She begins spending time with single mothers who can barely make ends meet, prostitutes, and underpaid workers, and then begins reevaluating her life.

In Rome's slums, Irene quickly realizes that her previous life has been a meaningless illusion because she never cared about her friends and their feelings. Overwhelmed by guilt, Irene also begins to ponder the importance of faith.

This often overlooked film directed by the great Roberto Rossellini is essentially a contemporary replica of his excellent The Flowers of St. Francis. Predictably, the focus of attention in it is not so much on Irene's actual journey through the slums, but on her gradual character transformation and the humility and happiness she rediscovers after she abandons her posh lifestyle.

This is also a film that is seriously concerned with the polarizing division between the poor and the wealthy in post-war Italy. Indeed, the sense of guilt that initiates Irene's character transformation is only a pretext to question the values and beliefs of the wealthy, as well as to promote various leftists ideas and principles.

The tragedy that occurs in the film is a product of the division – it is inspired by the coldness and isolation the wealthy have become comfortable with. After Irene leaves her family, Rossellini points the camera to the short discussions where her decision is debated to further expose the ignorance of those who have had an active role in her life. Pay close attention to their attitude and you will see that it mirrors Irene's from the party sequence in the beginning of the film.

Interestingly enough, Irene's transformation also leads to isolation. Of course, this time it is her relationship with the poor that is responsible for it, but she is again removed from the real world and consequently forced to suffer.

Bergman is at her very best in Europe '51. The sizable transformation she undergoes is remarkable. The great Giulietta Masina plays the single mother from the slums whose life is a lot simpler and a lot more fulfilling than Irene's. The prostitute Irene befriends is played by the beautiful Teresa Pellati. Alexander Knox is the wealthy husband, while Ettore Giannini plays Irene's quiet left-leaning cousin Andrea.

Europe '51 was lensed by Aldo Tonti, one of the greatest post-war Italian cinematographers. (Marcelo Pagliero's Roma città libera, Luchino Visconti's Ossessione, Federico Fellini's Nights Of Cabiria).

Rossellini's film exists in a number of different versions: the Venice version (Europa '51, Italian-language), the Italian theatrical version (Europa '51, Italian-language), the U.S. version (The Greatest Love, English-language), and the International version (Europe '51, English-language). Criterion's Blu-ray release contains two versions of the film: the international English-language version, Europe '51, which runs at approximately 110 minutes (01.49.46), and the Italian-language international version, Europa '51, which runs at approximately 119 minutes. (Please note that Bergman spoke her lines in English). [Atanasof’s rating: **** ½ out of 5 stars]

Labels: drama, Fifties, Ingrid Bergman

Internet Movie Database 7.6/10 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=NA, viewers=76) 

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YouTube Europe ‘51 full-length movie in HD free