Rossellini's last film with Ingrid Bergman.
Personally, this cycle of films seems to me to be among the most interesting works and they are considered an essential step towards modern cinema. They did not have great public or critical success at the time, but over time several have come to be considered masterpieces. This is one of the least known, but it seems to me an extraordinary film. It is inevitable to interpret it in code and in relation with Rossellini relationship with Bergman. Something similar to what will happen later with Godard-Karina.
Often these works are films about a marital crisis surprisingly resolved in a final reconciliation, and centered on the female character. Ingrid Bergman left us here some of her most beautiful, authentic and natural interpretations.
It is not very clear which side the viewer should take (and hence, for example, the two contradictory endings). Rossellini uses two scenes as a metaphor for the general content of the film, but these two metaphors are very different and even almost contrary.
On the one hand we have the scene of the father who tries to convince his daughter to confess an obvious lie. The girl has stolen her brother's toy shotgun but is unable to recognize it to her parents. And this is one of the central themes of the film, the inability to recognize a deception or a betrayal, especially to loved ones. But on the other hand, the father is not only inflexible, but also authoritarian and cruel: it is he who decides that the girl cannot receive the gift she wants, the shotgun, and she has to enjoy the gift that her father chooses for her, the stuffed animal. . Those are the rules of the game that the girl must accept. Her rebellion against these rules leads her to betray her family's trust, and the girl must accept the rules and admit her fault.
On the other hand we have the scenes of the laboratory: this Mr. Wagner, a pharmacist with a Nazi past (which is still creepy), who has recently returned from a concentration camp and finds himself in a prosperous Germany, very different from the one he met a few years earlier, who is certainly envious of his wife's role as responsible for the family's economic well-being, analyzes the behavior of rabbits experimenting with gradually increasing doses of poison, observing the response, how they assimilate the growing tension, until lead them to death by heart attack or to recovery after administering a saving antidote at the last moment.
These two scenes reproduce two fundamental themes of the plot.
The film revolves around the Wagner marriage and begins with the unfaithful Mrs. Wagner breaking up with her lover. Rossellini does not show us the love relationship between the two, only how they have broken up. The lover hardly has an important role in the film and does not participate in any dilemma of the protagonist who, after all, from the beginning is repentant and clearly in love with her husband. What has led her to betray her beloved husband is a mystery, or at least it is not an important part of the film. Nor is it clear how he can love Mr. Wagner, who, as we will see, is a dark and irritating character.
Mrs. Wagner's problem comes when her ex-lover's old girlfriend blackmails her into telling her husband the truth if she doesn't give her large amounts of money. The husband finds the wife nervous and worried, hiding suspicious behavior or denying the evidence.
We soon suspect that the husband is fully aware of what the woman is going through, that he knows the story, that he has even hired the blackmailer, that he deep down does not stop trying to do with the wife what he did with the girl: force her to confess her betrayal. At the same time, he treats his wife much like the rabbits in his experiments, administering ever-increasing doses of stress, pushing her to the limit to force a desired behavior, and at the last moment either letting her die or administering an antidote (the final reconciliation). ).
Mrs. Wagner ends up discovering her husband's machinations, but this surprisingly does not diminish their love, but rather increases her feelings of guilt and shame, which leads her to the brink of suicide.
The final scene, in its international version, is the reconciliation of husband and wife, in which each asks for forgiveness. In the Italian version, the woman does not forgive her husband's behavior and flees with her children. The two endings are unrealistic, but the second is completely out of place and far from the theme of the film.
We can't help but think that Rossellini has put a lot of his relationship with Bergman into the film, has dished out blame, dishonestly (Rossellini is the one who betrays Bergman a couple of years later), but is clearly desperate for an impossible reconciliation. It is this ending similar to that of Viaggio in Italia: he desperately hopes for a final reconciliation in the name of a love that all the cruelty, resentment, jealousy, betrayal, contempt that we have seen during the film, have not been able to annul. .
Bergman is extraordinary and beautiful, although the script does not allow her to be very convincing as a successful business woman, it is something that we have to believe without much evidence. But in general, far from the sometimes dolled-up image that was forced on her in Hollywood, lit in a much less artificial way, the actress gains in naturalness and humanity and is absolutely moving. Only sometimes Rossellini wants to narrate too much with her face, and forces her to go through too many consecutive emotions, making it seem as if she is responding to a contrived playbill.
As so many times with Rossellini, the film is uneven. Rossellini said he could do a film just for one specific scene.
There are beautiful scenes like Bergman's wandering between the cells of the laboratory rabbits. One remembers that other wonderful scene of the child who wanders through the ruins of Berlin before throwing himself into the void.
You have to see the English version of 81 minutes, avoid the Italian version that cuts the scenes, gives them an explanatory voiceover and includes an unsatisfactory ending.
Personally, this cycle of films seems to me to be among the most interesting works and they are considered an essential step towards modern cinema. They did not have great public or critical success at the time, but over time several have come to be considered masterpieces. This is one of the least known, but it seems to me an extraordinary film. It is inevitable to interpret it in code and in relation with Rossellini relationship with Bergman. Something similar to what will happen later with Godard-Karina.
Often these works are films about a marital crisis surprisingly resolved in a final reconciliation, and centered on the female character. Ingrid Bergman left us here some of her most beautiful, authentic and natural interpretations.
It is not very clear which side the viewer should take (and hence, for example, the two contradictory endings). Rossellini uses two scenes as a metaphor for the general content of the film, but these two metaphors are very different and even almost contrary.
On the one hand we have the scene of the father who tries to convince his daughter to confess an obvious lie. The girl has stolen her brother's toy shotgun but is unable to recognize it to her parents. And this is one of the central themes of the film, the inability to recognize a deception or a betrayal, especially to loved ones. But on the other hand, the father is not only inflexible, but also authoritarian and cruel: it is he who decides that the girl cannot receive the gift she wants, the shotgun, and she has to enjoy the gift that her father chooses for her, the stuffed animal. . Those are the rules of the game that the girl must accept. Her rebellion against these rules leads her to betray her family's trust, and the girl must accept the rules and admit her fault.
On the other hand we have the scenes of the laboratory: this Mr. Wagner, a pharmacist with a Nazi past (which is still creepy), who has recently returned from a concentration camp and finds himself in a prosperous Germany, very different from the one he met a few years earlier, who is certainly envious of his wife's role as responsible for the family's economic well-being, analyzes the behavior of rabbits experimenting with gradually increasing doses of poison, observing the response, how they assimilate the growing tension, until lead them to death by heart attack or to recovery after administering a saving antidote at the last moment.
These two scenes reproduce two fundamental themes of the plot.
The film revolves around the Wagner marriage and begins with the unfaithful Mrs. Wagner breaking up with her lover. Rossellini does not show us the love relationship between the two, only how they have broken up. The lover hardly has an important role in the film and does not participate in any dilemma of the protagonist who, after all, from the beginning is repentant and clearly in love with her husband. What has led her to betray her beloved husband is a mystery, or at least it is not an important part of the film. Nor is it clear how he can love Mr. Wagner, who, as we will see, is a dark and irritating character.
Mrs. Wagner's problem comes when her ex-lover's old girlfriend blackmails her into telling her husband the truth if she doesn't give her large amounts of money. The husband finds the wife nervous and worried, hiding suspicious behavior or denying the evidence.
We soon suspect that the husband is fully aware of what the woman is going through, that he knows the story, that he has even hired the blackmailer, that he deep down does not stop trying to do with the wife what he did with the girl: force her to confess her betrayal. At the same time, he treats his wife much like the rabbits in his experiments, administering ever-increasing doses of stress, pushing her to the limit to force a desired behavior, and at the last moment either letting her die or administering an antidote (the final reconciliation). ).
Mrs. Wagner ends up discovering her husband's machinations, but this surprisingly does not diminish their love, but rather increases her feelings of guilt and shame, which leads her to the brink of suicide.
The final scene, in its international version, is the reconciliation of husband and wife, in which each asks for forgiveness. In the Italian version, the woman does not forgive her husband's behavior and flees with her children. The two endings are unrealistic, but the second is completely out of place and far from the theme of the film.
We can't help but think that Rossellini has put a lot of his relationship with Bergman into the film, has dished out blame, dishonestly (Rossellini is the one who betrays Bergman a couple of years later), but is clearly desperate for an impossible reconciliation. It is this ending similar to that of Viaggio in Italia: he desperately hopes for a final reconciliation in the name of a love that all the cruelty, resentment, jealousy, betrayal, contempt that we have seen during the film, have not been able to annul. .
Bergman is extraordinary and beautiful, although the script does not allow her to be very convincing as a successful business woman, it is something that we have to believe without much evidence. But in general, far from the sometimes dolled-up image that was forced on her in Hollywood, lit in a much less artificial way, the actress gains in naturalness and humanity and is absolutely moving. Only sometimes Rossellini wants to narrate too much with her face, and forces her to go through too many consecutive emotions, making it seem as if she is responding to a contrived playbill.
As so many times with Rossellini, the film is uneven. Rossellini said he could do a film just for one specific scene.
There are beautiful scenes like Bergman's wandering between the cells of the laboratory rabbits. One remembers that other wonderful scene of the child who wanders through the ruins of Berlin before throwing himself into the void.
You have to see the English version of 81 minutes, avoid the Italian version that cuts the scenes, gives them an explanatory voiceover and includes an unsatisfactory ending.