Its Saturday night and I'm trying to catch up on my Italian Neorealism this Winter. Considering my trauma relating to Bicycle Thieves, you can probably understand why this is isn't a film movement I have embraced the same why I did Screwball Comedies or French New Wave. In fact the above pretty much sums up my feelings about Italian Neorealism, but I've nervously begun attempting to watch at least a little more. I think its all about where you start with certain directors e.g. don't watch Faces as your first Cassavettes (if you're a depressive type) and then follow it with Love Streams and Opening Night (which of course I love, but seriously? Temper it with Gloria or Minne and Moskowitz), you could say the same thing about diving into the most recent Godard etc etc. Anyway point is I'm restarting with Il Posto and I Fidantzati, which don't seem quite so brutal, but I still teared up at the interview scene above (even though its kind of funny in its own way).
However I'm still sure it will be a cold day in hell before I settle in to watch Shoeshine or Umberto D. though.
2 comments:
i loved il posto
umberto d painful but unforgettable & great
brando has a good quote somewhere about bicycle thieves
wikipedia: In a review of Vittorio De Sica's 1946 neorealist Shoeshine (Sciuscià) that has been ranked among her most memorable, Kael described seeing the film
“[...]after one of those terrible lovers' quarrels that leave one in a state of incomprehensible despair. I came out of the theater, tears streaming, and overheard the petulant voice of a college girl complaining to her boyfriend, 'Well I don't see what was so special about that movie.' I walked up the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance of Shoeshine. For if people cannot feel Shoeshine, what can they feel?... Later I learned that the man with whom I had quarreled had gone the same night and had also emerged in tears. Yet our tears for each other, and for Shoeshine did not bring us together. Life, as Shoeshine demonstrates, is too complex for facile endings."
Kael gets the devastation! I love it, but I'm even more terrified to watch them both now. Old people and children, total weak spots for me.
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