It's a tender, delicate beginning of a tentative romance that slowly loses its sentimentality as we learn more about the two would-be lovers, but for all the edged humor and eccentric characters of Pina's backwater village, The Visitor is neither satire nor romantic comedy. Director and co-writer Antonio Pietrangeli working from a script developed with Ettore Scola (who became a successful director in his own right) and frequent collaborator Ruggero Maccari (whose filmography includes the original Scent of a Woman), offers a much more layered and unexpected portrait in disappointment and resigned concession.
Milo's Pina, whose caboose is, shall we say, cartoonishly overpadded to add a comic imperfection to the actress' beauty (she practically waddles as she hustles about the streets), is a sweet, smart, accomplished woman in a provincial town who wants nothing more than to flee this prison of a home for the sophistication and opportunity of the city and the company of a husband. She bends over backwards to overlook her date's arrogance, gluttony, vulgarity, and unmotivated cruelty toward her helpless pets. Périer's Adolfo puts on a show of urban sophistication that evaporates in direct proportion to the amount of wine he knocks back, and he surreptitiously measures her home and even rearranges furniture to his liking, as if already taking residence as the man of the house. Hiding behind a brush mustache and insincere grin, Périer offers up Adolfo as a neat but unattractive man who imagines himself some kind of sophisticate gracing the provincial north with his cultured presence.
It's easy to look down on Adolfo and pity poor Pina, especially as flashbacks roll through the film, revealing her isolation and emotional need (only partially met by an affair, presented by without judgment or pity by Pietrangeli) and his discontent and underachieving resignation to life as a petty clerk. She's liked by all in the village, who are protective of her, but she's also apart from them. He's disliked by his co-workers and customers and arrives full of assumed worldliness and social arrogance that makes him almost insufferable. He's not imagining the hostility of the villagers. Though Pietrangeli never frames it so obviously, the regional tensions between the urban, modern culture of Rome and the rural, provincial North referenced in so many other Italian films of the fifties and the sixties are played out in Adolfo's unearned bravado, Pina's self-deluding acceptance of his uncouth behavior and racist comments, the suspicions of her neighbors (especially the rock-throwing child man Cucaracha, the film's answer to the village idiot), and the come-ons by a teenage neighbor. The way Adolfo leers at her while dancing with Pina only makes him more pathetic.
But Pietrangeli and the actors reveal so much more of these characters as we watch them play out their tentative courtship, insights that humanize the sometimes bitter humor of what seems to be turning into a portrait of a very bad date. Finally they do have something in common: an isolation from their lives that they want to escape. Is it love they want, companionship, or merely a ticket out? The sensitivity with which Pietrangeli brings their awkward date to a reckoning and ends the evening with an honest exchange doesn't offer any easy answers, but it does offer a bruised dignity and a bittersweet understanding between them, no longer caricatures but full-blooded characters grasping for happiness.
This is Raro's second stateside release of an Antonio Pietrangeli film (Adua and her Friends was released in 2011), who is otherwise fairly unknown stateside and, if the reviews in the DVD-ROM booklet are to be trusted, inconsistent as a filmmaker. If this that's the case, then we've started with his best, for the evidence of these films suggests an artist worth pursuing.
The black and white film is presented in a non-anamorphic 1.66:1 widescreen edition (though the box itself says it is in 1.85:1). The disc looks quite good, a fine digital master from a good looking print, sharp and with good contrasts, though it is frustrating to get a non-anamorphic presentation and the dimensions make it difficult to zoom out to fit the widescreen without cutting off a significant amount of the image. In Italian with English subtitles.
The disc features three video interviews: one with screenwriter (and future director) Ettore Scola (18 minutes), where he discusses developing the script and working with director Antonio Pietrangeli; one with composer Armando Trovajoli (9 minutes); and one with Paolo Pietrangeli (14 minutes), the son of director Antonio Pietrangeli and a filmmaker in his own right talking of his father's career. In place of a physical booklet of previous Raro releases, this features a pdf booklet accessible by DVD-ROM. I offers a short essay on the film, excerpts from interviews with director Antonio Pietrangeli and actress Sandra Milo, and excerpts from reviews of the film.
For more information about La Visita, visit RaroVideo. To order La Visita, go to TCM Shopping.
by Sean Axmaker
