Viaggio in Italia [Journey to Italy] (1954)

(On Cable TV, September 2020) I’m going to keep this short—writer-director Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy is a good film, maybe even a great one, but not for me. Its depiction of a quarrelling couple well on its way to dissolution is depressing enough (although the film is working toward a better resolution), but the film’s loose, slow, episodic, almost improvisational quality isn’t the kind of thing I go out of my way to see. The black-and-white cinematography often stops the Italian scenery from being as impressive as it should be. I don’t quite dislike Journey to Italy—we get good performances out of Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, the intrusion of the Vesuvius eruption into the narrative is clever, and there’s a travelogue-to-1950s-Naples quality here that’s interesting. But it’s not the kind of film I get enthusiastic about.