IL GENERALE DELLA ROVERE - #463

World War II left a lasting impact on a lot of filmmakers, for obvious reasons, though there seems to be a particularly special connection to wartime stories for European directors who lived in occupied nations. Many French directors have looked back at the Resistance and tried to make some sense of what happened as well as celebrate the heroic individuals who fought the good fight, in much the same way that some Japanese directors would later confront the post-War American occupation through film. Less often covered, however, at least in my cinematic experience, is the period during the war when Germany had set up camp on Italian soil. Last year, when I reviewed Roberto Rossellini's Era notte a Roma, I was not only surprised by the subject of the story, but also by the famed Neorealist's honest depiction of his own people. In one scene, one of the foreign soldiers asks why no Italian he meets is ever in favor of the war, because if it's true no one was behind it then it never should have started, and the response is that citizenry was more than willing to sway with the wind. When the war was good, it was popular; when it was bad, it was never popular. It's an all-too human response, I suppose. This scene also came to mind when I recently saw an episode of This American Life in which an Iraqi immigrant set out to travel America to learn what the U.S. really thought of the Iraq conflit, and he wondered why if everyone was so against our being there, no one stopped the invasion of his country from going forward.

A year before he made Era notte a Roma, Rossellini tackled related material in his controversial box-office hit Il Generale Della Rovere (1959)--though even that had not been his first time examining the internal struggle of occupied Italy, as fans of his breakthrough Roma, città aperta well know. Yet, I think both Il Generale Della Rovere and Era notte a Roma are significant in that they do represent a bit of a stylistic shift, a narrative style approaching something more akin to Golden Age Hollywood than the gritty strictures of Neorealism. Even so, Rossellini puts his stamp on the material, taking the more conventional structure and infusing it with his trademark realism.

Il Generale Della Rovere is the story of Emanuele Bardone, a con man played with believable salesmanship by Vittorio De Sica, best known as the director of Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. Bardone is all things to all people. In the opening scene of the movie, he ingratiates himself to a Nazi Colonel by the name of Müller (Hannes Messemer) by telling him that unlike his fellow Italians, he thinks the war is a good thing; when speaking to those fellow Italians, however, he is far less kind about the Germans. Bardone's latest hustle requires him to play both sides. Having found a willing deskbound sergeant (Herbert Fischer) to go along with his scheme, he solicits bribes from families that have a relative in Nazi jails, skimming off the top before he passes the cash along for promises that the accused won't be shipped to Germany. Whether these promises are carried out is of little concern to Bardone as long as he can string the suckers along and keep paying for his gambling habit.

Or so we would at first believe, but Bardone is a difficult guy to figure out. It's never clear when he's being honest, and so, as part of the audience, it's hard to differentiate his true intentions from the game he runs. Perhaps he's so caught up in it, he can't figure it out either. He's willing to rob one girlfriend (the luscious Giovanna Ralli) to keep his con going, but not another (the equally luscious Sandra Milo), proving that there are people in the world whom he really cares for. When he is eventually caught, Bardone makes an impassioned speech about the burden of his task and the hope he couldn't bear to destroy, and he sure sounds like he means it. Could he really care for them all, could be believe in what he's doing? It's possible. Still, it's a lot like listening to Bernie Madoff talk about how he wanted to stop thieving but had dug himself too deep to ever get out of the Ponzi racket he'd set up. Any sensible person would think that all one has to do is at some point stop taking the money and start giving it back.

Bardone isn't taken down by his own greed so much as he just picks the wrong mark. Though the Fassio family looks like a good bet due to their obvious wealth, Carla (Anne Vernon), the wife of the arrested man, never really believes that Bardone is any kind of saint, and when facts get in the way of his lies, she isn't afraid to turn him in. This puts Bardone in the custody of the aforementioned Colonel Müller. Having problems of his own, Müller realizes that they are ones that Bardone's particular talents could solve. A recent attempt to capture the renegade Generale Della Rovere when he snuck into Italy to join the partisans was botched by Müller's soldiers and the Generale ended up dead. More valuable as a living asset, Müller convinces Bardone to go to prison in Della Rovere's stead so that the Germans can use the folk hero as a bargaining chip. The plan continues to morph when the Resistance leader codenamed Fabrizio (Giuseppe Rossetti) is believed to be amongst a group of men recently picked up in a raid. If the fake Generale can uncover which of the jailed is Fabrizio, he will be given a fat wad of cash and safe passage to Switzerland.

Pretty much from the moment he enters his prison cell, Bardone starts to become aware of how far out of his own control his life has swerved and has to face the gravity of the scams he's been pulling. The walls of his cell are covered with the last words of the four men who previously inhabited it. Their expressions of futility and acceptance and farewells to their loved ones could be notes for any of the families he took money from. He also must deal with the fact that the men all around him are in that prison for a reason: because they believed in something. Not only is he in there pretending to be a hero he most certainly is not, but he also has up until this point believed in no one but himself. Nobody says it, but the irony is that Bardone is the only prisoner who is actually imprisoned for committing a real crime.

A fundamental question of literature from the middle third of the 20th century is the meaning of action. Writers like Hemingway and Chandler looked at themselves and, by extension, the people around them and asked, when the chips are down, what did I do? What did you do? This is an extension of the existential school of thought, and an idea largely associated with Albert Camus, himself a member of the French Resistance. In the end, each of us can only be judged by what we chose to do. Even if it's the wrong side, even if things go against you, at least you were part of what was going on. Far worse to be the person who did nothing, who just waited it out. From WWII, we got the notion of "the good German," the ones who went along to get along, who claimed innocence because they were not a part of the atrocities, but whom others would say were guilty because they didn't do anything to stop them either. In Il Generale Della Rovere, one of the men picked up with Fabrizio insists it's unfair that he should be punished the same as the rest, he was never part of any movement; the others say he deserves worse for that very reason.

As it turns out, this man was also a banker who reaped the rewards of the wartime economy. This puts him on par with Bardone, a man who set aside all principles in service of his wallet. The difference is that now Bardone is in the position to change his fate. Since he started pretending to be the Generale, he has started to assume that role, offering soothing words to his fellow prisoners when they ask for them and even taking command to calm them down in an air strike. The moral choice for him is whether he continues to only save his skin or he starts working for others, as well. Hell, even choosing to go along with Müller whole hog would be better than getting pushed around.

Bardone's transformation is a believable one for how it happens by degrees. There is no great epiphany, no shining light on the way to Damascus--even if Rossellini does actually use a small skylight to illuminate one of the final puzzle pieces in the con man's change. This is what makes the earlier ambiguity about the character's true motives, as well as De Sica's ability to play him as such a greasy chameleon, so important. If we had one strong opinion about what kind of a man Emanuele Bardone really was, then the lessons he ends up learning walking a mile in Della Rovere's boots would be pat. It would be like a sports movie where the chubby, nerdy kid goes from being the underdog to the hero of the big game. No mystery to the change, he was just pushed through training and into digging down deep so he could be part of the team. Bardone does what he does for himself, joins the cause by his own decision, realigns his moral code to fit what he has seen and heard rather than a grab at glory.

Unsurprisingly, Roberto Rossellini does a marvelous job at recreating war-torn Italy for Il Generale Della Rovere. From Bardone's cramped apartment, packed full with the accoutrements of a stage show (the charlatan's tools), to the bombed-out cityscapes, the environment is haunting and real. This is partially aided by some carefully placed newsreel footage showing the destruction and the cost of human life. Some argue that Rossellini was intending to draw a clear line between the real and the fake and emphasize the notion of film as invention with the difference between the stock footage and sets, but I didn't notice any line between when watching the picture. This is because the fiction is so vivid. Particularly memorable is the cold and imposing prison Bardone is sent to. I would have imagined Rossellini must have used a real jail, but it turns out it was a set built at Cinecitta. The director's production team deserves some extra credit for building such a harsh interior, so convincing in its cold and imposing design.

It's a fitting outer symbol of the harsh interior of Bardone, the moral prison that he has created for himself. The key to unlock this prison is also the key to unlocking his lost humanity, and it's the quest that drives Il Generale Della Rovere. He can clear his conscious with the same effectiveness as the frequent wipes Rossellni uses to erase the images on the screen and move the story along. It's that deftness of craft that makes this film truly great. It's why despite the heaviness of the subject matter, it all goes down so easy. A story expertly told, both in front of the camera and from behind it, Il Generale Della Rovere glides by. It's tightly wound drama, written without any excess, a perfect personal journey of one individual set against the backdrop of the larger world that he has tried to deny, but which he has affected and that has affected him in turn.

A new video essay by Rossellini expert Tag Gallagher explores the history behind the film, both the reality that informed the story and the stylistic approach the director employed in making the movie. Entitled The Choice, this fifteen-minute piece is an essential supplement, recounting the real-life inspiration for the story, the political climate that almost destroyed the picture, and Rossellni's personal reluctance to make the movie and how that affected the production. I don't quite agree with Gallagher's assessment of the sets used in the picture, but difference is the spice of debate.

That's Rossellini in the center with the handkerchief.

For a full rundown on the special features, read the full article at DVD Talk.

THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE... - #445

This is the last of three new Criterion releases of Max Ophuls films from the 1950s, the other two being La ronde and Le plaisir.

Many consider Max Ophuls' 1953 film The Earrings of Madame de... to be his masterpiece, and with the film's concise storytelling and unguarded emotion, there is certainly a case to be made for this being true. Adapted from a short novel by Louise de Vilmorin, it is an expertly tailored film. Not a hair is out of place, no word of dialogue or frame of film is superfluous. A melodrama of manners, a comedy of passion, Madame de... is a delicately balanced study of infidelity and the cost of loving amongst the upper crust in France in the early 1900s.

The Comtesse Louise de..., played by Danielle Darrieux, Ophuls' frequent go-to actress in his late French period, is a spoiled wife of a respected General (Charles Boyer), to whom appearance and formality is everything. In order to avoid a scandal, Louise resorts to selling a pair of diamond earrings her husband gave her for their wedding so that she can quietly pay off the debt she has accumulated through her extravagant shopping. She then fakes their loss during a night out at the theatre, which she thinks will be a simple solution to explaining their disappearance. Unfortunately, her act is too convincing, and scandal erupts anyway. The story goes around that the earrings were stolen, and it becomes all the talk of the gossip rags.

Fearing what will happen if he tries to sell these hot rocks, the jeweler (Jean Debucourt), goes to the General and tells him what happened. Shocked by his wife's deceit, but also unwilling to raise a fuss, the General buys the earrings back. He then hands them off to his mistress, Lola (Lia Di Leo), who is leaving France for Turkey; presumably, the General will never have to see the earrings again.

Oh, how wrong he is! Like the proverbial bad penny, the earrings keep popping back up. An Italian ambassador, the Baron Fabrizio Donati (legendary Neorealist director Vittorio De Sica), buys the jewelry on his travels. As fate would have it, he is immediately smitten with Louise when he encounters her not once, but twice, on his way to his new post in France. Romantic feelings spring up between them, and in a twist worthy of O. Henry, the Baron gives Louise the earrings as a gift. Further lies are told to explain their reappearance, alerting the General to his wife's emotional wandering, and all manner of heck breaks loose.

Louise de Vilmorin's novel, simply titled Madame de... and helpfully included in this package by Criterion, is a wonderful little gem of a book. Her elegant prose lends a simplicity to the tale that makes its less than believable machinations come off as perfectly natural. The author spends a lot of time explaining and gently satirizing social convention and her characters' interior motivations for the actions they take in her tragically ironic drama. Unless he were willing to indulge in multiple voiceovers, Max Ophuls did not have the same option for his film version, and so he takes several steps to alter how the story works tonally in order to make it flow more smoothly as cinema

Despite changing the setting and the names and occupations of the characters, plot-wise, Ophuls changes very little, at least in the first two acts of the movie. His main changes come in the portrayals of the General and his wife, whose early behavior comes off as more comic than it did in the novel. Without the gravitas of the prose, their concerns with propriety and social standing seem silly. The General runs around the theatre looking for earrings that are not there, and then must gallantly explain himself to others. His deflection of a perceived insult, that he may have looked at a friend's wife accusatorially, is priceless. For her part, Louise is far more of a drama queen, feigning fainting spells and constantly insisting on her own honesty even as she's telling another lie. Ophuls could have just stamped "methinks the lady doth protest too much" on her forehead and been done with it. The director is clearly having some fun at the couple's expense. He even plays around with the literary conceit of not saying their last name, finding different ways to cut off its revelation. (In classic literature, to omit the names to protect the innocent was a regular convention that, in its odd way, lent the telling an air of truth. In de Vilmorin's book, the omission is represented by an emdash rather than an ellipsis. "Madame de—." Louise is also not given a first name in the novel, so Ophuls' choice clearly comes with a wink.)

Playing up the comedy in the first act gives Ophuls license to play up the melodrama in the second, toying with the sudsier elements of "women's pictures" in a sly manner that allows him to put his characters and his audience both on an emotional incline. With the random encounters between the lovers prior to their social introduction, Ophuls emphasizes fate even more than de Vilmorin, suggesting that it can be treacherous and that coincidence is actually cruelly arbitrary. As we slide toward the climax of The Earrings of Madame de..., the situation gradually grows more serious, the comedy becoming a full-blown tragedy. Here is where Ophuls makes his one major deviation from the original text, downplaying the fourth sale and resale of the earrings--the jeweler is one of the funniest characters in the novel, benefiting from the constant trading of the same diamonds--and changing how the love triangle resolves itself. The filmmaker had always been interested in the differences in how men and women react to romantic tension, and Madame de... is no different. de Vilmorin stresses the importance of honor in the decisions both the General and the Baron make, but Ophuls takes it a step further. He lays the groundwork early by establishing a greater connection between the Baron's function as an ambassador and the General's military position. (Though the story is set long before WWII, the film was made after, and lines about friends and enemies could be read as a nod to where history would eventually take France and Italy.) Peace talks break down, and the General uses his rival's pacifism as an excuse to challenge him to a duel, thus sparing himself the public humiliation of having to admit that this man has privately wooed his wife.

It's an interesting change because it takes the focus away from Louise and puts it on the male ego, whereas in the book she grows ill due to a broken heart and both men put aside their differences to honor her. Ophuls also lays a better groundwork for this with the fainting spells, which like the rest of his film, goes from being laughable to serious as the situation demands. When you think about it, that's also the nature of the flirtation of the Baron and Louise. The pleasure of conversation and innocent dances blossom into real love. The climactic duel makes sense within the context of Ophuls other work. He has always had a greater sympathy for his female characters than the male, and I would suggest that the theme that interested him most about Madame de... was the irony of how the men in Louise's life are perfectly capable of deceit--the General has Lola, the Baron is willing to commit adultery--but they demand total honesty from Louise. The General may say that he understands that everyone has secrets, but when he does so, he also insists that his wife dispense with hers. He never reveals his own affair and his own role in the travels of the earrings; neither does the Baron ever see the folly of putting his would-be mistress in the position of having to be duplicitous but then insisting that her duplicity be of a variety approved by him. It's no wonder Madame would become so fatigued!

As in all of his films, Ophuls displays a tremendous visual sense and a control over his camera in The Earrings of Madame de..., though I would argue that maybe he's toned his style down some in comparison to La ronde and Le plaisir, which preceded Madame de.... Perhaps he was inspired by De Sica to keep it more real, but there are less sweeping shots or extended takes that call attention to themselves due to their complexity. One notable exception is the beautiful montage of balls and galas, where one dance between the Baron and Louise keeps fading into another, weeks disappearing in seconds as they fall in love.

Part of this restraint, I think, is down to the nature of the movie's setting. The home of the General and Louise and the places they visit are so lavish, so ostentatious, to further glam them up with lots of cameraplay would be too much. Instead, Ophuls frames the shots in such a way that shows off the grand sets and places his actors so that when he cuts between them, his compositions show the divisions that prevent them from being more intimate. Look at the scene where the Baron visits Louise in her home just before she receives the earrings, the point where neither of them can deny their feelings any longer. Ophuls places a painting of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo between them, hearkening back to a quip about the infamous military leader that the General made earlier. He told Louise that Napoleon wasn't only wrong at Waterloo, but also when he said, "The only victory in love is to flee" (foreshadowing of what was to come). When both actors are in the shot, the painting is perfectly visible between them, suggesting a certain danger that should be avoided; when Ophuls cuts to their close-ups, Ophuls uses perspective shots to make it look like they are each right next to the art, suggesting that the distance is not so great, that the danger is closer than it appears. Compare it to the scene in the carriage later, when they are in each other's arms at last, and where they treat the earrings practically as a sexual fetish. There is no longer any space between.

Just how this danger ultimately plays out is partially left to the imagination. Though there is no margin for debate at the end of Louise de Vilmorin's novel, Ophuls ends his movie of Madame de... on an ambiguous note, making for one of the best "did they or didn't they?" endings in cinema. We will never know the exact outcome of the duel or how Louise came through it (though we can make pretty good guesses about both, and I admit, I may be wanting the conclusion to be more vague than it is). Even Louise's prayer at the cathedral is ambiguous. She prays for one of the men to survive the duel, but she never says which. The only thing Ophuls does make clear is the sacrifice she is willing to make, his final shot showing what she will give up in order to find some kind of happiness at last.

For a full rundown on the special features, read the full article at DVD Talk.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 6/08

Given that I write more reviews than what you see here, below is a list of non-Criterion films I covered in the past month that may be of interest to Criterion fans.

IN THEATRES...

* Baghead, a conflicted indie comedy/drama/horror film that never quite gels.

* The Strangers, an underrated horror film with lots of style and a classic storytelling approach.

ON DVD...

* Cassandra's Dream, the most recent of Woody Allen's British period, a morality play that's substance is sometimes overshadowed by its familiarity.

* Catherine Deneuve 5-Film Collection, with the gorgeous star striking out four out of five times. Disappointing. Featuring films directed by Jean Aurel, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Alain Corneau, and Andre Techine, and co-starring Sami Frey, Claude Brialy, Gerard Depardieu, Yves Montand, and Alain Delon.

* Diva - Meridian Collection, the influential French thriller from the early '80s. Seems to me it mainly skates by on reputation, the actual product leaves something to be desired.

* High Noon: 2-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition presents a classic western that's a classic for a reason: it's awesome.

* Joy Division, an involving documentary about the influential Manchester band, directed by Grant Gee. Full of great music.

* Persepolis, the animated Marjane Satrapi adaptation gets an ultra-fine DVD release.

* Popeye the Sailor: 1938-1940, Vol. 2, the second collection of the hysterical Fleischer cartoons about the world's most famous brawling sailor.

* Sophia Loren 4-Film Collection, a 50/50 collection of films starring the actress ranging from 1954 to 1970. Of note are a musical extravaganza celebrating Naples and a Vittorio De Sica picture co-starring Marcello Mastroianni.

* The Sword in the Stone - 45th Anniversary Edition, a new release of the fun Disney Arthurian fantasy that doesn't appear to be that new at all.

BICYCLE THIEVES - #374

Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette) is one of those movies that I think more people have heard about than have necessarily seen it. More commonly known as The Bicycle Thief (the title of this Criterion edition is the accurate translation of the original), this 1948 Italian film is the most well-known entry in the Neorealist movement. De Sica and the other post-War directors in Italy were striving for a cinema that mattered, that used the common language of real life to say something about contemporary experience. Shot on the streets of Rome, it's not flashy or overly histrionic. Rather, its economy of style makes way for a complex morality play that illustrates what can happen to a man when he's pushed against the wall for too long.

I think I first caught Bicycle Thieves on PBS sometime in the early 1990s. The Player had already come out, and I knew it was the film that brings the Tim Robbins character's own moral quandary into stark relief. Its placement in that story was also a reminder to the hollow film executive that movies had a social power beyond the commercial trash his studio was prone to greenlight. The authentic feel of De Sica's vision plays in sharp contrast to Robert Altman's slick Hollywood thriller even as it indicts the same.

The story is simplicity itself. Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani), a struggling family man, finally gets a job after a long dry spell. The only catch is he needs his bicycle in order to perform his duties, and in an O. Henry-style twist, he pawned the bike to feed his family. Thanks to some quick thinking and self-sacrifice on the part of his wife (Lianelle Carell), he is able to get the bike out of hock and report for duty. Only, in yet another cruel machination of fate, the bike is stolen from him while he works.

Having the next day off, Antonio goes out into Rome to look for the stolen property himself. He takes his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) with him, because the young boy knows the bicycle like the back of his hand. As they search through the black market and pursue suspects into churches and bordellos, Bruno serves as a kind of Jiminy Cricket figure. His perplexed questioning of his father's actions spurs Antonio on through aggravation while also reminding him why it's so important that he keep his job. Finally, when it seems like there will be no justice for his family, Antonio must answer the age-old philosophical question: is it okay to steal a piece of bread when your family is starving?

Lamberto Maggiorani plays Antonio as a quiet, stoic man. There are many instances in Bicycle Thieves where you start to think he doesn't have the fortitude to see the given task through. When it comes to confronting other people, he really has to screw up his courage in order to not back down. De Sica uses the city as almost another character. Its wide open spaces feel desolate, and alternating images of poverty and opulence weigh on Antonio, never letting him forget the conundrum he is caught up in.

The climax of Bicycle Thieves is fraught with nervous tension and heartbreak. Once again, it's Bruno who is going to serve as the final commentator on the scene, his agony of seeing his father break being more painful than the break itself. Enzo Staiola is really quite good. For a first-time child actor, he seems just as comfortable with the emotional elements as he is joking around with his dad. Sometimes, you think the kid has more guts than the adult, but then Antonio gives him just the right look that says, "You really don't understand how the world works." By the end of the day, Bruno will understand, and Antonio's feelings of failure hurt all the more due to the realization that he can't protect his son from the onslaught of reality any more than he can the pangs of hunger. De Sica must have had some kind of magic touch to cultivate the chemistry of a father/son bond between the two; then again, he's got a knack for capturing the emotions that pass from person to person, because the chemistry between Antonio and his wife also comes across as effectively sincere.

Really, that's the true trick of Neorealism. Vittorio De Sica wasn't just trying to capture the reality of his surroundings, he was also drawing real human emotions out of his actors. It appears that the best route was just giving them a true-to-life scenario that doesn't flinch from the tough questions and letting the performers do their thing. It's the punch-to-the-gut of honest feelings that makes Bicycle Thieves so emotionally harrowing. The power of its conclusion hasn't dimmed at all in nearly sixty years, and the film is likely still going to be relevant in sixty more.

Originally written February 17, 2007. For technical specs and special features, read the full article at DVD Talk.