EUROPA '51 (1952)

Distraught after the death of her only child, rich socialite Ingrid Bergman blames herself for not seeing the real distress behind the pampered boy’s calls for attention.  And as friends & husband Alexander Knox callously move on with their lives, she can’t.  Instead, a search for meaning, bringing the care & understanding to poor strangers she failed to provide at home.  Encouraged in her quest by a Communist social acquaintance (Knox believes she’s having an affair), Bergman wanders the slums of Rome, befriending city have-nots: mothers with too many children*, tubercular prostitutes, street kids, etc.  But her DIY sainthood fits no philosophy, not the social elite she comes from (though Knox’s checkbook must figure in); not the coldly clinical Communist playbook; certainly not the Catholic Church; each unable to fathom her stance of complete acceptance.  Leaving only the poor, the innocent, the mad and the very young to clamor in support as she’s committed to the madhouse, too pure for this wicked world.  (Add a miraculous last-minute turnabout from the authorities and this is less Roberto Rossellini than Frank Capra, SIGNORA DEEDS VA A ROMA.)  Indeed, at its core, the film’s really all about Roberto.  (Even the child’s death a real moment out of his own pre-Bergman past.)  It all adds up to make Bergman’s small ‘c’ catholic sainthood a coded defense of Rossellini, knight-errant filmmaker, too pure for any system, craft or expertise.  Not merely disdainful of art, but contemptuous of it.  Too much the thinking man to need it; too important; too deep.  The film did no better with public or critics on release than other Bergman/Rossellini films, but it’s rep has grown over the years.  Less debatable is that Bergman is utterly fascinating to look at.  Different in nearly every shot: haggard, beautiful, gaunt, elegant, worn, magnificent.  Only Bette Davis in ANOTHER MAN’S POISON/’51 (looking perfectly terrible most of the time) can match it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That’s Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina as the enthusiastic mom.  Cabiria speaking with Brooklyn-Jewish inflection in the English-language version.  LE NOTTI DI YENTA?

DOUBLE-BILL:  Rossellini’s lack of technique helped rather than hurt his trio of Neo-Realism classics just afer the war.  It made them look more real.  He’s all thumbs on any sort of conventional film whether comic social commentary (DOV'È LA LIBERTÀ...?/’54); wartime drama of conscience (IL GENERALE DELLA ROVERE/’59) or sweeping period piece (VANINA VANINI/’61).  So how to explain the transcendent power, physical beauty and emotional resonance of Bergman and George Sanders in VIAGGIO IN ITALIA / JOURNEY TO ITALY/’54.  The exception that proves the rule?