Umberto D. (1952)

(On Cable TV, April 2019) I may be indifferent to Italian neorealism after all: Umberto D, as a story of an old man sliding from poverty to despair, is very long and unsparing in its downward spiral. An ending that offers a temporary respite can’t keep up from imagining what’s coming up days later. It does share a lot of similarities with director Vittorio de Sica’s other best-known work—like Bicycle Thieves, it takes place in lower-class Rome, featuring desperate characters trying to secure a future for themselves and (spoiler, I guess, even though plotting isn’t the point of neorealism) not succeeding. The cinematography is often accidental, with non-professional actors playing most roles. While I may admire Italian neorealism for a few things (including showing another way of making movies compared to the glossy Hollywood standard), I don’t respond well to non-plot-driven material—and I suspect that watching two such movies on successive days did not do much for the second one.