Gotham Diary:
Joy Unbounded
11 March 2014
When I went out to lunch, I did so without wrapping a muffler around my neck. No gloves! In the taxi, I lowered the window, and let the fresh air rush in as we glided down the FDR Drive. I had the driver pull over on 53rd Street midway between First and Second, because the traffic was backed up a bit by the light and I wouldn’t mind walking. I didn’t mind walking! It was lovely to be outdoors! Ditto coming home!
What did I do when I got home? I went straight out onto the balcony! I tidied up a bit — nothing serious; spring isn’t here yet. I beat the dust out of some pillows, and swept a bit of dirt that had fallen out of overturned pots. I saw that the ivy by the wall was doing fine, and that the ivy in the planter by the railing would probably start putting out new leaves. Over the in the far corner, I spotted a pot full of dessicated stalks and thought, “Papyrus!” Time to order papyrus from White Flower Farm! Which I thereupon did. The plants will be sent at the appropriate time — I don’t have to give the matter another thought.
I even sat outside for a little while. That was probably rash; I came in the moment I felt chilled, but, more than an hour later, I still feel chilled. I’ll be fine, though: the possibility of spring will see me through. I didn’t realize, until today, that I had really given up on spring. Which made today a lovely surprise.
***
As if spring weren’t enough, I’m unsettled by a movie that I watched yesterday afternoon, after I’d done what I had to do for the day. I’d been looking forward to it, but worrying about it, too, as is always the case when you get your hands on the DVD of an old movie that has languished in obscurity for decades, and only just recently been released for easy purchase. The movie was Roberto Rosselini’s Viaggio in Italia (1954), which I prefer to call by its Italian title, even though almost all the dialogue is in English. “Journey to Italy” sounds plain stupid. (“Italian Sojourn” would have been acceptable.) The movie is all about what happens to a married couple in Italy — in and around Naples, to be precise. This couple has been married for eight years, but the trip is their first time “really alone together.” This is to say that being in Italy forces them to see themselves and one another for what they are.
The actors playing the couple are Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, and if they’re even better than you expect them to be, it’s partly because they’re in a foreign movie — a movie shot without regard for Hollywood (or even Shepperton) conventions. One of the first great things about the film, in fact, is that the speaking of English sounds so foreign. Although the surface of Viaggio in Italia is rough and sometimes even crude, it displays the unmistakable structural elegance of a great baroque church. Rarely has a movie been so vividly “shot on location,” but never has a location been more integral to a movie.
We meet Alex and Catherine as they are nearing Naples in their car. They have driven down from London, and it’s clear that they haven’t been having a good time. Something has made them feel like strangers, and they don’t like what they see. It doesn’t take very long for their hostility — or at least their impatience — to become overt. The bald directness of their remarks is somewhat shocking, not because of what they say but because they’re so cool about it. They seem determined to deal with the newly-discovered unpleasantness between them as if they were still back in England, forging ahead dispassionately. But of course this is impossible in Italy, where ubiquitous invitations either to enjoy life or to remember how short it is only intensify their discomfort. Once actual pain has been acknowledged, the relation breaks down quickly. But the marital climax is swamped by another, richly cinematic one: Alex and Catherine must immediately, although they are hardly in the mood, put in a social appearance that they can’t wriggle out of. This is not a matter of attending a dinner party, either; rather, they are obliged to accompany their host to the ruins of Pompeii, where workers are unearthing plaster casts made in the cavities left by the long-decomposed bodies of a man and a woman. This is so much more than a mere metaphor for the love that has died between Alex and Catherine that the living husband and wife are nearly as crushed as the ancient victims of Vesuvius. In what I was sure would be the final scene, they stagger away, seemingly yards apart, across the stone pavement in front of a majestic arcade, fated to stumble off into insignificance.
I would bet that Rosselini wanted to end the film there, and that the producers wouldn’t hear of it. Alex and Catherine get back into their car, and soon resume bickering, but now Catherine seems to desire a reconciliation. When they are stalled by a grand religious procession, and are very nearly swept apart by the crowds, Catherine gets her wish, and the couple end up in a clinch. I found all of this very unconvincing, but it did no real harm; the departure from Pompeii, like the eviction from Eden, couldn’t be gainsaid. It was a moment of shattering cinematic truth, and I am still shaking.
Bergman and Sanders are transformed by the movie; or perhaps it would be better to say that their professional, actorly masks are pulled away, leaving them with little more than the muscle memory required to walk in and out of a scene. Alex is every inch the man to, as George Sanders would, claiming to be bored, kill himself, and Bergman’s search for salvific meaning is reduced to a tic. The whole thing would be unwatchably embarrassing with lesser talents; Sanders and Bergman make the experience just bearable. That is, they make it bearable enough to appreciate the grandeur of Rosselini’s filmmaking.
Apart from and despite the forgettable surplusage of the “happy” ending, Viaggio in Italia is the starkest of masterpieces.