What can one get out from a voyage to an unknown place? Other than immersing yourself in the scenery and culture of the undiscovered country, a spiritual awakening can be the most precious souvenir to the soul. If you are asking for such an experience, you are invited: Roberto Rossellini’s ‘Journey to Italy’ (1954) will certainly be a satisfying one!
‘Journey to Italy’ is an important film in the middle era of Rossellini’s directorial career, sandwiched between his Neo-Realist cinema of the 1940s and the clinical docudramas of the 1960s. This film is an acid test for distinguishing between contrasting beliefs and cinematic taste. When it premiered, it divided critics and audience alike. The traditional filmmakers and members of audience hated the style of the film, and the film performed poorly financially. Rather, it was the young generations of the filmmakers – in particular the French New Wave – that got the meaning of the film and lauded it as a masterpiece. Now ‘Journey to Italy’ is seen as one of Rossellini’s greatest achievement. Furthermore, the film illustrates the gradual evolution of Rossellini’s style. From his strong commitment to realism in his earliest days to the spiritual / transcendental style in his late films, ‘Voyage of Italy’ represents a combination of the two distinct style – with a consistent (albeit loosely told) storyline and the transcendental images such as a religious procession and natural landscape.
The story concerns an English couple, Alex Joyce (George Sanders) and Katherine Joyce (Ingrid Bergman), who travelled to Naples to deal with some business issues, and had an opportunity to do some sightseeing there. Yet, any fun in travelling soon gave way to domestic drama : Alex and Katherine had a strained relationship and throughout the journey that reached a breaking point. Both sides decided to keep some distance and therefore they parted way for a few days and did their own travelling instead. Alex spent his time, much like the characters in any 1960s films by Antonioni, and ended up achieving only emptiness in his soul. Katherine decided to immerse in the natural landscape and history of Naples and explored around the city. They eventually reached a common resolution though – a divorce was inevitable. Who would step in and save the day?
‘Journey of Italy’ is seen as a modernist film, a term much preferred by the forward-thinking filmmakers for the 1960s. Rossellini adopted a loose and episodic storyline for the film, and he also tried to enhance spontaneity by giving dialogues to the actors only shortly before shooting individual scenes. By eschewing rehearsal and preventing analysis, the actors could deliver an organic performance that resonated well with the episodic structure of the film.
Rossellini’s film not only influenced the young European filmmakers of the 1960s, it also exerted an observable influence on Michelangelo Antonioni’s films of the 1960s. The style and content of ‘Journey of Italy’ is very similar to Antonioni’s ‘L’Avventura’, and Rossellini’s use of landscapes to express transcendental or spiritual ideas was also emphasized by Antonioni in his work. Though the abandonment of a conventional story-telling approach, the usual peripheral landscape can be seen in a new light. The audience has to find active meanings through a new and unprecedented perspective, and that is the sentiment that gives the landscape an otherworldliness and ‘transcendence’, though not necessarily religious and spiritual by nature.
Speaking of perspective, ‘Journey of Italy’ is about a miracle that solved the English couple’s marriage problems. Alex and Katherine looked for alternatives for consolation of the soul. The film climaxed in a religious procession, where they miraculously reconciled and confirmed their love for each other. This is like a spiritual enlightenment for the couple, and the approach to show the scene is very similar to the miracle scene in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s ‘Ordet’, where the transcendental act is a portrayed like a spiritual black box. The final crane shot which showed the couple’s embrace testified their victory against a key problem in human relationships.
What a brilliant masterpiece from the husband-and-wife team, Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman!
by Ed Law
Film Analysis
