Sorry it took me so long to post this.

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell" <rashomon82@...> wrote:

> Perhaps one reason there wasn't a ton of Rossellini discussion here, as
> prompted by the retrospective, is because NYC cinephiles (myself
> excepted) seemed to congegrate around the Rivette series instead?

The conflicts between the two series were unpleasant, but I wound up
seeing 17 of the Rossellini programs, and I think Fred Veith saw a whole
bunch of them as well.

> DESIDERIO was possibly the biggest surprise for me. It was not even
> finished by Rossellini. I don't know who did what, or even what
> percentages of the final product (full disclosure: I haven't read
> Tag Gallagher's book, but it's on my list).

Gallagher says, if I recall correctly, that the second half of the film is
Pagliero. I've heard other people say that Pagliero did most or all of
it. I certainly got a strong Rossellini vibe from the first part of the
film, and the vibe slipped away for me sometime after the heroine returned
to her family home (but not immediately - the scenes of her arrival were
striking).

> Who knows what Marcello Pagliero has done elsewhere in cinema (anyone
> seen his other work e.g. ROMA CITTA LIBERA?)

I don't think I've seen his other films. But he worked in France after
the war, and directed one of the key Tradition of Quality films, UN HOMME
MARCHE DANS LA VILLE. He was supposedly a friend of Sartre, and he
directed an adaptation of LA PUTAIN RESPECTUEUSE, and acted in LES JEUX
SONT FAITS.

> The "blandness" that marks
> late Rossellini, maybe sits over some of it like a veil, is really a
> certain reluctance to employ any strategy too heavily.

> BLAISE PASCAL and AGOSTINO D'IPPONA are both good examples (PASCAL
> struck me as aesthetically & intellectually stronger by several
> magnitudes) of Rossellini's subsequent forays into a kind of a 'pure
> space,'

I wondered sometimes during the series whether the late films are even
trying to do aesthetics. BLAISE PASCAL is a bit more aestheticized than
some of the others, but I wasn't sure that that was a plus in context: in
a film where performers deliver pure content under the flimsiest
conversational pretexts, why obscure the information channel with stylized
death scenes and such?

> As with Yoel I'd love to see more Rossellini discussion, and would
> particularly like to hear people's thoughts on this travelling
> retrospective.

A few random thoughts:

- A whole lot of the great shots in Rossellini have to do with putting
people in a geographical or social context via the image. It's even one
of the things that makes the first half of DESIDERIO feel different from
the second half; and the impulse carries through all the way to the
educational films, where a lot of the interest comes from a visualization
of, for instance, the kind of room that the Apostle Paul might have sat
in. So it's intriguing to see films like THE HUMAN VOICE and realize that
providing visual context is not part of Rossellini's mission statement,
that he doesn't seem to consider it an essential part of his art.

- The beautiful ending of STROMBOLI, upon which the entire film depends,
is all about stylization, aestheticizing the effect: Renzo's prominent
music is a crucial part of the mood, as are the otherworldly,
non-naturalistic images of a momentary paradise with stars, vistas, and
silence. Without this abstraction, Bergman's shift to a new form of
self-awareness would probably not work. It's a form of melodrama, really.

- Over and over again, big emotional effects are yanked away really
quickly by Rossellini's editing. I wrote about this a long time ago in
post #5510, with regard to THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS. PAISA was all
about hit-and-run emotionality - every episode ends abruptly. So many
famous Rossellini moments are pulled away too quickly: Magnani's famous
death scene in OPEN CITY, the boy's in GERMANY YEAR ZERO, the miracle in
VOYAGE TO ITALY. The impulse continues into the 60s - I'm thinking of
Giovanni Ralli's moving self-sacrifice in VIVA L'ITALIA. Music is often
but not always a part of the accelerated emotionality of these moments.

- VIVA L'ITALIA is an amazing convergence of things that fit together
well: the war film, big-budget landscapes full of extras, and the Pancinor
zoom. If there was any doubt about Rossellini's middle-aged zoom
addiction having real aesthetic value, the amazing action in this film
dispels it: how else could one integrate so much action and landscape into
a visual whole? The great location for that first battle in Sicily really
helps out: by finding the right place to put his camera, Rossellini could
look down and zoom around an entire valley, giving the space a weird,
flattened, disorienting aspect, as if it could unfold infinitely.

- I sometimes feel that Rossellini's overt attitude toward his subjects
isn't the most complex or interesting thing about his films. He can be a
little romantic and simple when he approves of something (Garibaldi, for
instance, or the vibe of India's culture).

- The Fascist-era films start really bad, to my mind, and get better. LA
NAVE BIANCA strikes me as totally devoid of interest; MAN OF THE CROSS is
hopeless, but starts to feature beautiful visuals and occasional strong
effects; DESIDERIO shows the mature Rossellini, at least in sections.
(MOMA hasn't yet screened A PILOT RETURNS - it's coming in the next few
months.)

- I'm sorry to see that almost every major commentator runs down GENERAL
DELLA ROVERE as a hack job. I guess people don't like seeing fakey sets
in Rossellini, when he's done so much with real locations. But I'm amazed
that Rossellini actually makes this subject matter psychologically
plausible: the idea of the actor transformed by his performance is handled
with nuance.

- Rossellini went out on a nice moment: the BEAUBOURG doc gave Rossellini
his most expensive set since VIVA L'ITALIA, and he uses the zoom in much
the same way, often tilting the camera down to turn a vertically organized
environment into a terrain in relief.

- Dan