Umberto D.

Among the many collaborations of director Vittorio De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, Umberto D. (1952) - now available on DVD from The Criterion Collection - is generally regarded as their masterpiece and one of the last great works of neorealism. The film depicts a few days in the life of Umberto, a retired bureaucrat facing eviction from his apartment of 20 years. When government institutions and former friends fail him in his plight, he is forced to roam the streets; his only emotional connection to the real world is his beloved dog and his friendship with an uneducated maid who is in desperate straits herself. Although the film is De Sica's most relentlessly bleak film, its narrative about an elderly, poverty-stricken man and his struggle to maintain dignity in an uncaring society is just as powerful and relevant today as it was when it first premiered in Italy. In the title role, De Sica cast a non-professional actor - Carlo Battisti (a University of Florence professor in real life) - who delivers a heart-breaking performance without resorting to easy sentimentality or grand theatrics. Reportedly, De Sica first met Battisti on a Roman street where the latter was on his way to give a lecture and offered him the role. Critics and film scholars alike have noted the many similarities between Umberto D. and De Sica's earlier masterpiece, The Bicycle Thief (1948). The De Sica entry in the 1974 edition of Current Biography noted "there are many parallels to be drawn in the depiction of the central friendship: Ricci loses and refinds his son Bruno; Umberto loses his dog and eventually discovers it in the pound, destined for the gas chamber; Bruno hits his son and is temporarily estranged from him; Umberto loses his dog's trust when, having failed to find it a better home, he contemplates their double suicide under a passing train. All the incidents are seamlessly woven into a beautifully observed texture of simple lives..." In an October 1955 editorial in The New York Times, De Sica wrote "Umberto D. is the film that I prefer among all those I have made, because in it I have tried to be completely uncompromising in portraying characters and incidents that are genuine and true. I have sought with great humility to approach the true, poetic and limpid style of the great Robert Flaherty....What is the meaning of the film? It seeks to put on the screen the drama of man's inability to communicate with his fellow man. The economic condition of Umberto is not what concerns us. What concerns us is his moral and human relationship to society. What concerns us is the loneliness of an old man. Men do not communicate with one another, how then can they communicate with Umberto, who, moreover, is an old man?...This is the story of Umberto D., that is to say, of a man like ourselves." Unfortunately, Umberto D. was attacked in its own country by Giulio Andreotti, a junior Minister of Culture who accused the film of airing the country's "dirty laundry" in public and saw it as a personal attack on Italy's government. As a result, Umberto D. was withheld from distribution in the U.S. for three years and, for a while, all Italian films after Umberto D. which were deemed unflattering to Italian society were denied international distribution as well. It also didn't help that Umberto D. performed poorly at the box office in Italy. Nevertheless, the film went on to international acclaim including an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay and the New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film. In Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (My Voyage to Italy) (2002), Martin Scorsese's passionate documentary on Italian cinema, the director says, "As powerful as The Bicycle Thief was, for me, De Sica and Zavattini's greatest achievement together was Umberto D....a great movie about a hero of everyday life. That was De Sica's precious gift to his father. And to us." The Criterion DVD of Umberto D. will be a revelation to those who haven't seen this masterwork since repertory screenings of it prior to 2001. Featuring a new high-definition digital transfer, made from restored elements with new and improved English subtitling, De Sica's film has finally been given the showcase presentation it deserves. And as usual, Criterion doesn't disappoint with its array of extras; there is a new video interview with Maria Pia Casilo (in the film she plays Maria, the young maid, who befriends Umberto), a 55-minute documentary on the director made for Italian television in 2001 entitled That's Life: Vittorio De Sica, a new essay by film critic Stuart Klawans and articles by Umberto Eco, Luisa Alessandri, and Carlo Battisti. For more information about Umberto D., visit The Criterion Collection. To order Umberto D., go to TCM Shopping. by Jeff Stafford

UMBERTO D. - 50TH ANNIVERSITY RESTORATION OF VITTORIO DE SICA'S MASTERPIECE In a limited two-week run at The Film Forum in New York City, Umberto D. (1952), one of the key films of the Italian neo-realism movement, is being presented in a newly restored 50th anniversity print with a new translation and subtitles. Directed by Vittorio De Sica, the film depicts a few days in the life of Umberto, a retired bureaucrat facing eviction from his apartment of 20 years. When government institutions and former friends fail him in his plight, he is forced to roam the streets; his only emotional connection to the real world is his beloved dog and his friendship with an uneducated maid who is in desperate straits herself. Although the film arrived at the end of the neo-realism cycle, its narrative about an elderly, poverty-stricken man and his struggle to maintain his dignity in an uncaring society is just as powerful and relevant today as it was when it first premiered in Italy. In the title role, De Sica cast a non-professional actor - Carlo Battisti (a University of Florence professor in real life) - who delivers a heart-breaking performance without resorting to easy sentimentality or grand theatrics. And the film was truly a labor of love for the director (he often said it was his favorite film) and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, who collaborated on most of De Sica's important films including Shoeshine (1946) and The Bicycle Thief (1948). Unfortunately, Umberto D. was attacked in its own country by the Italian Minister of Culture who accused the film of airing the country's "dirty laundry" in public. Nevertheless, the film went on to international acclaim including an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay and the New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film. And today, it's universally recognized as a masterpiece of world cinema. This dazzling new restoration of Umberto D. is due to the efforts of Giuseppe Rotunno, the famous cinematographer of Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers & Fellini's Satyricon, and film stock expert Vincenzo Verzini, known as the "Little Giotto" of Italian movies. Verzini began his film career working for Roberto Rossellini on Open City (1945) and established his reputation as an expert in developing and printing the sophisticated lighting contrasts in films such as Luchino Visconti's White Nights (1957). In addition to Umberto D, he has restored such classics as Pasolini's Mamma Roma (1962), Rossellini's The Flowers of St. Francis (1950), Fellini's The White Sheik (1951) and I Vitelloni (1953), and Pietro Germi's Un Maledetto Imbroglio (1959) for Mediaset. In Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (My Voyage to Italy), Martin Scorsese's passionate new documentary on Italian cinema which airs on Turner Classic Movies in June, the director says, "As powerful as The Bicycle Thief was, for me, De Sica and Zavattini's greatest achievement together was Umberto D....a great movie about a hero of everyday life. That was De Sica's precious gift to his father. And to us." According to Peter Brunette in a New York Times article, the current print of Umberto D. showing at the Film Forum is a remarkable improvement over past prints: "Damaged or missing frames in the original negative of Umberto D. were replaced, the splicing between reels upgraded and the lighting improved. The soundtrack was also restored by transferring it to digital audio tape and filtering it with modern equipment." For more information about Umberto D., go to the Film Forum web site. For a listing of theatres where Umberto D. will be playing over the next few months, visit Rialto Pictures.Turner Classic Movies will also be airing De Sica's masterpiece on Friday, June 21 at 9:45 pm ET in conjunction with our premiere of the new Scorsese documentary on Italian cinema (Part One airs on Friday, June 7 at 8:00 pm ET, Part Two airs on Saturday, June 8 at 8:00 pm ET). Check back with us in May for more information on the entire Italian cinema series. By Jeff Stafford HAXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES One of the cinema's real curiosities is Haxan, a 1922 Danish film about witchcraft. Today it might be called a documentary but it appeared the same year as Nanook of the North when the term didn't yet exist. In Haxan director Benjamin Christensen presents several historical aspects of witchcraft and draw parallels to the modern day but with a lively, multilayered approach. He took the title Haxan from the Danish word for witch (the makers of The Blair Witch Project named their production company Haxan Entertainment). After being available for years in spotty, poor quality tapes, Haxan has now been released in a sterling DVD by the Criterion Collection with a full range of extra material. Haxan is divided into nine chapters. The first is mostly woodcuts and commentary presenting historical background but it's in the remaining chapters that you can see why the film has endured through the decades. Christensen's live-action recreations have an intense, almost hallucinated quality with shards of light piercing the darkness of old women's hovels, diffused sunlight covering the treacherous movements of inquisitors and most memorably a genuinely bizarre Witches' Sabbath. The longest sequence follows the progress of a witch trial from a simple illness through a falling-domino series of tragic events; in other hands it might be dark comedy but here it's a moving look at intolerance and superstition. Through most of the film, Christensen points out how naive people were in the past until he throws out his surprising (and convincing) twist that connects persecution of witches to modern (or at least early 20th century) treatment of mental illness. Haxan proved to be a success in its time and Christensen would later have a short stint in the U.S. at MGM where he directed an adaptation of Abraham Merritt's novel Seven Footprints to Satan (1929). His first wife, Karen Winther, plays Anna in Haxan. The DVD's image is crisp, serving the imagery well. The accompanying music is a recreation of what was probably played at the film's premiere, mixing Mozart, Schubert, Wagner and Beethoven. English subtitles translating the Danish intertitles can be turned off. One of the more interesting extras is the entire film Witchcraft Through the Ages, a shortened 1968 reworking of Haxan by avant-garde filmmaker Anthony Balch and writer Byron Gysin with wonderfully dry narration by novelist William Burroughs over a musical score by Daniel Humair, Jean-Luc Ponty and others. More extras fill out the background to Haxan including a section about the historical woodcuts, several minutes of "outtakes" (mislabelled since it's actually all test footage) and a filmed introduction Christensen prepared for the 1941 rerelease. There's also an audio commentary by Danish scholar Casper Tybjerg that's a fascinating mix of information on the actual production, artistic appreciation and even corrections of some of the film's historical errors. By Lang Thompson Jacques Demy's BAY OF ANGELS Often overlooked in studies of the French 'New Wave' movement that usually focus on Jean-Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut, Jacques Demy clearly deserves a retrospective of his own. While his visually elegant style of filmmaking was distinctly different from the realistic, take-it-to-the-streets approach of the other "New Wave" filmmakers, his preoccupation with romantic longing, chance encounters, and the role of fate in human lives gives his work a timeless quality that was once criticized by French critics as being too facile. Now, one of his finest films, Bay of Angels (1963), is enjoying a revival at the Film Forum in New York where it is being screened in a sparkling new black and white 35mm print from Winstar Cinema. Bay of Angels, filmed in the picturesque resort of Nice, stars Jeanne Moreau as a platinum blonde who haunts the local casinos, having long ago abandoned her husband and child for her obsession with the gaming tables. In it's current revival, the film has elicted rave reviews from such critics as Armond White of The New York Press: "May be Moreau's most dazzling performance..an immediate confirmation of why she was an emblematic 60s European actress." The late critic Pauline Kael once called it, "a lyrical study in compulsion and luck, a passionate comedy...This is a magical, whirling little film, a triumph of style." In a recent interview with Dave Kehr of The New York Times, actress Jeanne Moreau admitted that Bay of Angels is about "gambling and gambling is a very special way of handling one's life. The same as alcohol or bulimia, it is a way of refusing to face the facts of life and giving yourself up to an addiction. But I don't think of it as a disease. Gambling can be exciting, like everything, as long as you can get hold of it. It's like riding a wild horse. You have to be very, very strong. If you are incapable of riding a wild horse, don't jump on it. Everything that has to do with human passion is fascinating, as long as it doesn't make you a prisoner." With any luck, Bay of Angels will win a new audience of admirers and encourage the restoration and release of other Jacques Demy films. Just a few years ago, his critically acclaimed romance, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which all the dialogue is sung (a startling new concept in 1964), resurfaced in a beautiful new color print. And just this past year saw the VHS and DVD release of his homage to the MGM musical, The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) starring Catherine Deneuve, Francoise Dorleac, and Gene Kelly. So maybe someone will re-release Demy's delightful first film, Lola (1961) which he dedicated to Max Ophuls and stars Anouk Aimee as a cabaret singer in Nantes. By Jeff Stafford