The Italian director Roberto Rossellini is mostly known, and has gained his reputation as a great director mainly for his neorealistic films from the 1940's. However, by the 1950's he had moved on and concentrated on depicting human relations, mostly couples who are going some sort of a marital crisis.
"La paura" (fear in English; actually its original title is "Die Angst", because the film is in German not like in Germania anno cero, which did take place in Germany, but whose characters spoke Italian) can be seen in continuance with these works, for example with "Viaggio in Italia" (1954), where Ingrid Bergman also plays the female protagonist. "La Paura" focuses on showing the emotional distress and literally the fear of a woman who has had an extra-marital relationship and who is, besides tormented by her infidelity, now being blackmailed by her lover's ex-girlfriend.
In no way could this film be characterized as neorealistic, so obvious is the use of melodramatic music to underline the suspense, and furthermore the film doesn't really criticize the society as it does its individuals in their private affairs (or does it?). Genrewise, it is located somewhere between a melodrama and a psychological thriller. It owes a lot to the German expressionism of the 1920's in its use of shadows and camera angles, and might be defined as somewhat film noirish (which isn't actually a genre, but a style) both in its gloomy imagery and in its ambiguous moral universe. In film noir the world is always a twisted place, where traditional values have been lost and individuals feel alienated, all of which is connected to the threatening urban atmosphere. Normally women are corrupt and not to be trusted, but in this European version the most cruel role plays the husband, who is mercilessly putting his wife on a test, as he himself has hired the girl to blackmail his wife.
One of the most memorable scenes shows Irene Wagner (Bergman) following her husband's crew performing a laboratory test on a guinea pig, where first poison and then antidote are injected in the object-victim. The monotonous and anguish-producing sound from the measurement device makes the scene a small masterpiece, corresponding with and further emphasizing Irene's agony.
The etymology of the original title 'Angst' (anguish) carries within the meaning 'godless', which is not too far-fetched as the film's persons are concerned. Without God there is no homogeneous moral construction, and so no universal ethics or values exist. This can be extended to the end of Great Narratives, which might have existed still in the 1950's, but in general there was no universal guideline to follow. People, individuals, are thrown into a world full of insecurity, and there lives appear to be meaningless. Their actions seem often sporadic and they can't really empathize with other people's feelings. In the end the husband saves her wife from suicide and they embrace each other in fervor, repeating "I love you" an ending very similar to that of Viaggio in Italia. The film ends very abruptly after having reached its climax, which left me doubtful on the credibility of the outcome and made the solution seem merely a pseudo closure (as David Bordwell calls a closure which seems forced and thus false).
All in all, I recommend this film as another case study on human psyche.
"La paura" (fear in English; actually its original title is "Die Angst", because the film is in German not like in Germania anno cero, which did take place in Germany, but whose characters spoke Italian) can be seen in continuance with these works, for example with "Viaggio in Italia" (1954), where Ingrid Bergman also plays the female protagonist. "La Paura" focuses on showing the emotional distress and literally the fear of a woman who has had an extra-marital relationship and who is, besides tormented by her infidelity, now being blackmailed by her lover's ex-girlfriend.
In no way could this film be characterized as neorealistic, so obvious is the use of melodramatic music to underline the suspense, and furthermore the film doesn't really criticize the society as it does its individuals in their private affairs (or does it?). Genrewise, it is located somewhere between a melodrama and a psychological thriller. It owes a lot to the German expressionism of the 1920's in its use of shadows and camera angles, and might be defined as somewhat film noirish (which isn't actually a genre, but a style) both in its gloomy imagery and in its ambiguous moral universe. In film noir the world is always a twisted place, where traditional values have been lost and individuals feel alienated, all of which is connected to the threatening urban atmosphere. Normally women are corrupt and not to be trusted, but in this European version the most cruel role plays the husband, who is mercilessly putting his wife on a test, as he himself has hired the girl to blackmail his wife.
One of the most memorable scenes shows Irene Wagner (Bergman) following her husband's crew performing a laboratory test on a guinea pig, where first poison and then antidote are injected in the object-victim. The monotonous and anguish-producing sound from the measurement device makes the scene a small masterpiece, corresponding with and further emphasizing Irene's agony.
The etymology of the original title 'Angst' (anguish) carries within the meaning 'godless', which is not too far-fetched as the film's persons are concerned. Without God there is no homogeneous moral construction, and so no universal ethics or values exist. This can be extended to the end of Great Narratives, which might have existed still in the 1950's, but in general there was no universal guideline to follow. People, individuals, are thrown into a world full of insecurity, and there lives appear to be meaningless. Their actions seem often sporadic and they can't really empathize with other people's feelings. In the end the husband saves her wife from suicide and they embrace each other in fervor, repeating "I love you" an ending very similar to that of Viaggio in Italia. The film ends very abruptly after having reached its climax, which left me doubtful on the credibility of the outcome and made the solution seem merely a pseudo closure (as David Bordwell calls a closure which seems forced and thus false).
All in all, I recommend this film as another case study on human psyche.