A Seminal Film by Roberto Rossellini
In his documentary My Voyage to Italy, Martin Scorsese talks at some length about Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy (shot in 1953, released in 1954). Scorsese refers to the film by its alternate titles, Viaggio in Italia and Voyage to Italy. He calls the Rossellini movie "one of my favorites" and "a rich, moving experience," and asserts that "it had a profound effect on film history.
But for many years Journey to Italy has been difficult to see in North America and has only recently become available in a DVD format playable on standard American electronic equipment. The printing on the DVD box is in English and Korean, and erroneously lists the feature film's language as Italian. The movie on the disc is in English (with optional Korean subtitles). Video and audio are not of the highest quality, but they are quite serviceable.
Rossellini's fame derives mainly from his work in the 1940s as one of the founding fathers of Italian neorealism, but he kept evolving as a filmmaker. Journey to Italy represents a significant departure from his earlier movies, and as Scorsese warns, "it's not instantly accessible." In terms of cinema history, Journey to Italy's place is as a forerunner to the avant-garde films of the French New Wave and Michelangelo Antonioni.
Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders Star
The central roles in Journey to Italy were perfectly tailored to fit two internationally famous Hollywood stars, Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders. They play Katherine and Alex Joyce, a well-to-do, sophisticated, upper-middle-class couple who live in England, but visit the Naples area for a few days in order to sell a lovely villa they have just inherited. The film's focus is on the unfolding of a major crisis in their marriage during their Italian sojourn.
Katherine and Alex are northwestern European types to their very cores, and when the Neapolitan milieu upsets their equilibrium as a couple, they grow increasingly irritated with each other. On Capri, Alex makes a play for a woman of his own social set, then he returns to Naples and picks up a prostitute. Katherine does some sightseeing, but the catacombs, ruins and smoldering landscape around Vesuvius leave her depressed. Their relationship hits bottom as they watch a plaster cast of volcano victims being uncovered at Pompeii, and finally they get caught up in a procession honoring the Madonna in a town on the Amalfi Coast.
The pacing of Journey to Italy is languorous, the plot is wispy, and Katherine and Alex are far too civilized to ever do anything in an explicitly dramatic way. Yet, through the accumulation of detail and an episodic series of small events, Rossellini draws in the responsive viewer both emotionally and intellectually. He uses art, archeology and geography to reflect the state of mind of the characters, inducing in the viewer a meditation on alienation and desire.
Scholarly Audio Commentary
The Journey to Italy DVD provides only one extra, but it's a good one. It's an informative feature-length English-language audio commentary by Laura Mulvey, professor of film and media studies at the University of London's Birkbeck College. She avoids jargon, and no special knowledge of film theory or psychology is needed to follow her commentary.
Mulvey gives lots of interesting background to the movie, citing George Sanders' autobiography as the source of some of her information. She also talks about the marriage between Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, which she says had already begun its disintegration when Journey to Italy was being shot. In addition, she gives her own reactions to and insights into the film, including making a convincing case that the lead couple's last name is intended to make us think of James Joyce, particularly because Katherine tells a story in the movie that closely parallels one in James Joyce's "The Dead."
Mulvey calls Journey to Italy "a milestone of modern cinema."
DVD Release Date: February 6, 2010
Feature Film Runtime: 1 hour 22 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated