Can you identify some moments in Gallone’s movie in which you see an attempt to “aestheticize politics”? (Please time-mark the sequence for in-class discussion).
Scipio has been hailed as a hero for essentially the entire history of Italy. Even today, one of the first lines in Il Canto degli Italiani (National Anthem of the Republic) is “(italia) dell’elmo di Scipio, s’e cinta la testa.” So as a vessel for portraying fascist political aesthetics in a positive light, Gallone could not have chosen a better subject. An excellent example of this early in the film is at 9:59, when Scipio is first exiting the chamber. As he walks, he is preceded by several women carrying fascie, while hordes of adoring citizens cheer and salute him. The roman salute in particular, as we discussed in class, provides clear framing: literally pointing to Scipio. The fascie and Roman salute are arguably the two most defining symbols of Italian fascism, this scene directly ties the political aesthetics of fascism to the story of Scipio at the beginning of his journey. Another scene that left me with a similar impression was towards the end of the film, at 1:20:32. In this scene we see a sea of corpses, and yet, the roman eagle is held above it all as the legionnaire says “The Dead of Cannae are Avenged!” The eagle, another symbol of fascism, is elevated while acknowledging the immense struggle and suffering required for victory. This scene also explicitly ties the political aesthetics of fascism to the heroism of the legionnaires’ ultimate sacrifice.
In this scene Hannibal is welcomed back to Carthage by his people. Gallone makes politics look dramatic and powerful here by putting Hannibal above everyone else. He stays on the ship while the crowd and other military figures stand below him, which makes him seem more important and in control. The perspective of him looking downwards means he’s literally talking down to the people who failed to help him in Italy, and the shot also affirms that he understands the situation better than they do. It could also show Hannibal’s pride with him feeling he is physically separated from his own people and refuses to meet them as equals.
Starting with the opening of the film, Gallone shows the enormous scale of Rome, presenting it as a place of power and structure. He uses organised masses of people and large-scale camera tilts and pans to create a contrast between the small individual figures and the huge spaces they occupy. The architecture and mise-en-scene demonstrate the scale of Rome’s power, making the city appear unified and ordered from the very beginning of the film.
During Scipio’s address to his troops before the Battle of Zama (1:26:00), Scipio is positioned above the soldiers, looking down towards them. The soldiers are presented as one united mass rather than as individuals, which highlights Scipio’s power and authority in the scene. Their role is to demonstrate a willingness to listen to and follow his orders, creating an image of collective enthusiasm for following a powerful and respected leader.
During the Battle of Zama (1:30:00), Gallone also uses the large scale of the battle to make the Roman military power look impressive and almost spectacular. He uses large groups of soldiers, horses and elephants moving together, making the Roman army seem even more dominant. This aestheticises the violence of war by focusing on the scale and organisation of the military rather than just the destruction it causes.
I feel like the whole ending sequence of Gallone’s movie was for aesthetic purposes, to glorify war in a way. To me, the most blatant representation of this is at 1:05:48. In this specific frame, we can see an extremely long line of elephants, so long that you can’t see the end of the line. Apart from the war sequence, another aestheticization of politics that caught my eye was at 00:04:03, where Scipio is in the center of the screen; the triangle composition we discussed in class draws your eye to him. But I think what makes this aesthetic (and the scenes following the Senate forum at 00:11:20) is the scale of everything. I think the movie uses scale as a tool of grandeur to awe the audience and glorify its political views
Last class, we spoke about the frequency of scenes within Gallone’s Scipio Africanus in which war and military power are presented through visually striking patterns and formations. In terms of “aestheticizing politics,” Gallone aestheticizes war through the symmetry and geometric patterns of the Roman army’s formations. During the Battle of Zama (1:02:00-1:05:00), the physical organization of the Roman army creates a sense of beauty and order. Rather than presenting war as chaotic and destructive, Gallone makes military power appear unified and visually aesthetic.
Another example is when Scipio addresses his soldiers and holds up the Roman standard (20:40-21:23). By physically displaying this symbol of Rome while delivering an emotional speech, Gallone turns Scipio’s call for war into a dramatic and heroic spectacle. The use of a physical symbol makes the political message more visually powerful and gives the soldiers something tangible to associate with Roman identity and strength. The scene aestheticizes politics by using the standard and Scipio’s powerful presence to associate military action with Roman pride and the desire to avenge past defeat.
Gallone’s movie focuses entirely on the perceived parallel between Scipio in Africa and Mussolini in power in Italy. The movie takes existing power structures and seeks to mobilize masses of men, as suggested in Section 19 of Benjamin’s manifesto on technological reproduction. In “Scipio Africanus” this is most clear in scenes where war is viewed as a spectacle, masses of men are commanded by their so-called superiors, and particularly where they are commanded from above. The movie places a heavy emphasis on the beauty of war, instead of the brutality, as shapes of battalions move across the horizon and gather on piers. The order of the Roman troops is only matched by the chaos of the Carthaginians, again contrasting the role of fascist government against turbulent democracy.
One key example of this is the prayer before the troops set off for Carthage (28:20). The existing power structure of religion and command is maintained, but now complete with a willing proletariat. Also, at 1:13:38, Scipio maintains ranks and carefully orders the battle lines in formation. This sense of order and spectacle is precisely what makes war accessible as a tolerable concept to a new generation of fighters.
Both aestheticize fascist politics by encouraging ordinary citizens to back their leader in war. By showing a historical example of 1930s power dynamics, the film pushes the idea that to reclaim glory, one must commit even further to a system of tiered control and nationalism. “Scipio Africanus” lays out a clear tier list of “worthiness,” starting with Scipio, moving to his soliders, then Hannibal, with his Carthaginians last. It maintains an “us vs. them” fight while maintaining hierarchies.
At roughly 20:49-21:10, Gallone turns a political and military campaign into an emotionally powerful moment. At this point, Scipio presents the veterans with the military standard saved from the Roman defeat at Cannae and says that it has “waited for revenge”. Gallone connects the military campaign to Roman honor and the memory of the soldiers defeated at Cannae. The standard becomes a symbol for Rome and it makes the war feel like a heroic act rather than simply a military strategy.
One of the attempts to “aestheticize politics” in Scipio Africanus happens when Scipio meets the Senate and the people outside (7:35 and 10:02). Gallone shows a difference between two ways political power can be created. Inside the Senate, politics is confusing. People talk, stop, and wonder if Scipio’s campaign in Africa should take place. Outside, Gallone shows a huge group of people all focused on one person raising their hands together as Scipio comes down to them.
The main idea is not just that Scipio looks like Mussolini. Gallone makes the crowd into a message. The Senate has to talk about Scipio’s power. The mass of people seems to know it without debate. Size, balance, matching movements and Scipio’s high place make political power something we are supposed to see and feel, not think through.
This makes the scene telling for Fascist movies. Political disagreement looks broken and boring. Obeying a strong leader looks calm and almost nice. The speech before the battle of Zama (1:01:38)follows the same pattern but on a bigger scale with Scipio separate from thousands of soldiers who act as one body. Gallone makes not war or Rome look beautiful but the idea that a country is strongest when individual voices disappear into one group feeling.
This is convincing because experts who watched the movie at the time saw the Senate as a place of talk compared to Scipio’s almost holy look in front of a united crowd. The movie was also backed by the government and was seen as connecting Roman victory in Africa to Fascist goals of taking over other lands.
One of the attempts to aestheticize politics in Scipio Africanus is when Scipio walks down the stairs, and the massive crowd around him is doing the roman salute toward him. This makes him the triangular focal point of a mass amount of people, emphasizing his power and positioning above the Italian public. It also shows extreme unity and pride among the people, as they, physically, point their loyalty toward one great leader (04:00).
Another moment was the beautiful and orderly view that we get of The Battle of Zama. As Scipio gives a very bold and intense speech, we are shown the battle field formation from many angles. The sharp formations full of white horses and soldiers, give the battlefield an almost balletic quality. This visual glorification of the battle leaves the viewer connecting unity and strength with war (1:02:00 and 1:13:00). Similarly, at the end of the film we see a field covered in dead bodies. As prideful music plays, see the perfectly placed formation of these people. Through the placement and the score, the film creates a sense of pride around these people who have chosen to die for their country (1:20:00).
Discuss some of the differences between two cinematic characters: Scipio (in Gallone’s movie) and Pricó (in Camerini’s). What are the formal (cinematic) in which these two characters are portrayed?
Scipio and Pricò represent almost opposite ends of the character spectrum. Scipio is hardened and untroubled, embodying discipline and taking charge. He’s seen as a leader, and often takes control of the situation. Pricò on the other hand, is vulnerable and full of emotions. He is only a child, and doesn’t understand nor has control with what is going on with the adults around him. In Scipio, there are lots of wide shots displaying massive crowds and spectacled battle scenes, using symmetry and triangular staging to show Scipio’s level of idolization. Loud, orchestral music makes the movie feel like a glorified propaganda set, with little scenes showing Scipio’s personal feelings or emotions. Pricò is almost the complete opposite. Pricò often shares his emotions with the audience, and that’s communicated clearly through countless close-up shots, holding it on his face as he communicates his feelings through facial expressions rather than words. The camera is also frequently at his height, communicating how he feels powerless and is often excluded in the decisions of adults. Overall, these characters are portrayed as opposites: Scipio as a powerful, hardened leader, while Pricò is seen as a powerless, emotional child.
Scipio and Pricó are portrayed in very different ways, both as characters and through cinematic techniques. In Gallone’s movie, Scipio is presented as a heroic and monumental figure. As a character in the movie, he represents strength, authority, and leadership. This idea is also evident through cinematic techniques, as Gallone often uses wide shots, large crowds, impressive sets, and dramatic compositions to make Scipio appear powerful. The camera emphasizes his importance by placing him at the center of large historical events. His character therefore seems larger than an ordinary individual and becomes a symbol of Rome and its power.
Pricó, in contrast, is portrayed as an ordinary and relatable person. Camerini focuses on everyday life rather than historical spectacle. Pricó appears in familiar urban environments, and the camera often remains closer to the characters, making the film feel more intimate and personal. His personality is shown through conversations, misunderstandings, comments and small gestures rather than heroic actions. Then, while Scipio is represented as a character who has a lot of power, Pricó is a child who has no power over the situations that happen in his life (when his mother leaves, when his father left him to the priest, and when his father dies). Therefore, Pricó is portrayed as a very passive and innocent child.
While Scipio is defined by public achievement and collective history, Pricó is defined by his private emotions and relationships. Formally, this difference is reflected in Gallone’s spectacular, monumental style compared with Camerini’s lighter, more intimate and realistic cinematic approach. In particular, at 42:07 (in Camerini’s movie) we see a close up image of Pricó, as he listens to his mother Nina and Roberto fighting. The body language and the facial expression of Pricó is very important as he stares at them with fear and has his arms behind his back, to signify hopelessness. In contrast, at 9:40 (in Gallone’s movie) we see Scipio being welcomed by the crowd. Scipio has his arm lifted up and a straight posture to signify confidence and power.
Scipio is a historical-mythic adult figure with no real personal life (on film). He exists to embody a cause rather than to be explored. Created with the intent of promoting Fascist propaganda, he is a visual and rhetorical representation for Mussolini. All of the choices that went into making the film work to combine him with the nation. Most of all he has agency. He commands, persuades, and shapes the outcome of events, and his meaning is entirely collective and symbolic.
Pricò is the opposite kind of character. He is an ordinary kid with no historical or symbolic meaning, and his significance comes purely from his private experience of watching his parents’ marriage fall apart. He has no agency. Things are done to him and around him by adults, and he just exists. The film’s choices (close-ups, camera at his eye level) make the drama around him digestible through his perspective. Where Scipio is monumentalized to glorify a nation, Pricò is kept small to tell a personal story.
I find the framing of Prico very interesting in “The Children Are Watching Us” in comparison to Scipio. The two films are very different in plot structure and thematics, so the framing of their respective main characters are very different. As we discussed in Monday’s class, Scipio is often framed among the crowds, as one of the people, for the people. Furthermore, he is often times pushed above the crowds in the frame, as someone the people support and stand for.
“The Children Are Watching Us”, although a completely different genre and style of film, still promotes symbolism in its framing. Prico is often dragged into the frame by an adult or 3rd party, and then centered. For example, at 26:37, Price is framed in the center as he is the center of conversation regarding him tipping over the flower pot. However, the adults never address Prico as if he’s in the room with them. This allows Prico to blend into the scene as a background element. Although he may not be the main piece of the frame visually, he is almost always a major part of the plot thematically. Furthermore, Prico is often framed in the background, while the adults that control the tide of the story sit in the foreground. These framing devices reminded me of old kids cartoons, like “Tom and Jerry”, where adults were often framed from the waist down, and pictured as larger than life figures. In these cartoons, the adult figures would often have major implications on the plot, while the focus of the frame stayed on Tom and Jerry’s antics.
Gallone and Camerini portray their two characters very differently through each film’s cinematic style. Scipio is presented as a powerful public figure in Rome who is often surrounded by large crowds with a strong military presence and scenes which place him at the center of action. However, Prico is a vulnerable young child in a complex family situation and he is often left observing traumatic scenarios unfold around him whilst being helpless to do anything about it. I think one of the main differences between the two characters is the control they have in their lives. Scipio has control over the world around him whereas Prico is powerless and has almost no control over what happens to him. Camerini portrays Prico as an observer to the adult world and utlizes his reactions and limited understanding to shape our view of the story. An example of this is when we watch Prico see that his mother is crying but fail to understand why she is upset. Throughout the film he gains a better understanding of what is going on but he is still powerless. Gallone makes Scipio seem more powerful than the people around him whereas Camerini focuses on Prico’s vulnerability.
At 28:24, when Scipio is sending the fleet off to sea, he’s standing alone on top of a tall decorated tower with just white sky behind him. The camera is low, looking up at him, and the people he’s talking to aren’t even in the shot. He’s actually smaller than the tower he’s standing on, which makes him look like part of the monument. His arm is raised but there’s no one in the frame for him to be addressing, so it feels aimed at the audience instead. It’s pretty much what Benjamin means by aestheticizing politics.
Pricó is the opposite. At 1:06:49 he’s at the bottom of the frame with a bunch of adults crowded around him, two of them in uniform, all of them cut off by the edges and all of them taller than him. Everyone is talking at him and he doesn’t say anything back.
So Gallone empties out the frame to make a man look bigger, and De Sica fills it up to make a kid look small.
Gallone attempts to show the viewer Scipio as a symbol rather than a person, as an extension for Mussolini. The camera treats him accordingly. Gallone shoots him from below so that it appears as though the viewer is below Scipio, frames him dead center, and mostly keeps the camera still. Scipio is almost always placed in front of crowds and armies, which turns him into a focal point for all of the people of the state. He does not really converse, he declaims. The cutting keeps handing him back to spectacle, huge long shots, elephants, ranks of soldiers.
Pricò works the opposite way. He is a small boy who understands very little and can change nothing. De Sica puts the camera down at his height and builds scenes around what he sees, so we watch him watching. Doorways and adult bodies crowd him toward the edges of the frame. The light is ordinary and meaning arrives through silence and small gestures instead of speeches.
Scipio and Pricò are portrayed very differently, especially in the amount of power and control they have. Scipio is portrayed as being a strong and confident leader who has control over the people around him. He embodies strength, authority, and leadership. However, Prico is a young boy who has barely any control over what happens in his life. He is heavily affected by the decisions his parents have made because he has limited control over decisions.
The way that these two characters are filmed in the movies also shows this difference. Scipio is mostly in a large setting surrounded by soldiers and crowds. The scenes are taken in a wide shot scene which will tend to make Scipio look more important and powerful to the audience. He represents the power and greatness of Rome. On the other hand, in “The Children are Watching Us”, the camera is usually on Prico’s height and focused on what he sees and how people see him. He communicates his feelings through silent facial expressions which shows how he might not be able to explain his emotions with words.
This makes the audience feel that Scipio is someone to look up to and admire, but Prico is someone the audience should feel sympathy for and try to understand. Overall, these characters are portrayed extremely differently in these two movies. It shows that Scipio represents power, while Prico shows how someone without power is just vulnerable and someone that has no authority.
A scene where I see a “cinema of the seer” is that of the rebel attack (around 57:18). The scene shows characters who see a problem and act to fix it. There is also a clear antagonist and protagonist side (where the rebels are the heroes). They see the convoy carrying their captured friends and attack it, and their action directly changes the outcome, Francesco gets away.
Two scenes where I noticed “cinemas of the seer” would be that of the torture and execution (around 1:26:23 and 1:40:30 respectively). In both scenes, characters can only watch, they can’t do anything to change what’s happening. Don Pietro is brought in to watch Manfredi being tortured, and all he can do is watch. Later, Marcello and the other boys watch Don Pietro get executed from behind the fence, and again they’re just watching, powerless to help.
One example of the “cinema of the seer” is the scene in which Pina runs after Francesco after the Germans arrest him and is suddenly shot and killed [56:06]. The people around her, especially Don Pietro and the children, are forced to witness what happens. They cannot stop the violence or save her. This scene emphasizes the experience of seeing and reacting to a traumatic event rather than being able to control it. The characters become witnesses to the brutality of the occupation, and the audience is also placed in the position of witnessing Pina’s unexpected death.
A good example of the “cinema of the acting hero” is Giorgio Manfredi during his interrogation and torture by the Gestapo [1:31:09]. Although Manfredi is physically powerless and eventually dies, he still actively chooses not to reveal information about the Resistance. The Germans repeatedly torture him, but he refuses to betray the other members. His heroism therefore does not come from physically defeating his enemies, but from his deliberate decision to resist them. Unlike the helpless witnessing surrounding Pina’s death, Manfredi maintains a form of agency through his refusal to speak.
A scene where I see a “cinema of acting hero” is when Don Pietro agrees to help the resistance by delivering money to their men outside Rome. He does it even though he knows it will be dangerous to move through Rome after curfew under the German occupation. This is an example of a heroic moment because Don Pietro takes a huge risk to respond to the ongoing situation to try make it better.
On the other hand, an example of “cinema of the seer” is a scene closer to the end of the film where Don Pietro is forced to watch the Germans torture Manfredi for information. There is nothing he can do to stop the Germans so he has no choice but to sit and watch. Manfredi ultimately dies but without giving away any information so Don Pietro tells the Germans that they killed him but did not destroy his soul.
A “cinema of the action hero” scene that I noticed is when all the kids went and bombed the truck (even though it wasn’t explicitly shown) in rebellion against the Germans, although their actions led the Germans to connect the dots and find Francesco and Ferrari. Under the influence of Romeletto, the kids were taking action against the injustice they were seeing, while a lot of the population wasn’t able to because they were too scared to do anything, because it meant that they were most likely going to lose their lives.
Interestingly, the last scene is also with the kids, but here they are not the “action hero.” The ending sequence is a “cinema of the seer” as the kids witness the execution of the priest, Don Pietro, and couldn’t do anything.
A scene where I noticed a “cinema of acting hero” is when Don Pietro forced the old man to pretend he were dying in order to hide weapons from the German (54:57). Rather than reacting passively to the threat of discovery, Don Pietro perceives es the danger and immediately intervenes, improvising a ruse to protect the resistance.
One of the scenes in which I saw “a cinema of the seer” was when Pina rushes in saying she can’t find Marcello, and the men respond that the kids went out past curfew, then simply lock the door (35:30). Rather than acting to intervene, they retreat inside, and hear the explosion out the window. Perception doesn’t lead to effective action here, instead of shaping the event, the adults are reduced to hearing and watching it happen. That passive witnessing is what marks this as a “cinema of the seer” moment. Another scene in which I noticed “a cinema of the seer” is when Don Pietro is forced to watch Manfredi be tortured. He is not allowed to intervene, yet he has is forced by listen to Maniredi’s cries as he’s beaten (1:27:22).
One moment where I saw a “cinema of the seer” was at 01:01:06, where Francesco is listening to the mass through the wall, lighting a stove, and wandering around a closed-off room within the church. Here, he does not entirely know what to do. Nina has just been shot, and her son placed in his care. Other partisans are being tracked down across the city. Instead of acting in a heroic manner to fix the situation, he paces, unsure of a course of action. This applies the next day, as well, as he watches Don Pietro and Luigi get arrested by German officers deep in the shot, but hides in a doorway.
A heroic cinematic moment was with the children and the bomb at 35:51. The children, inspired by the adults in their life, rush back to the apartment building after a loud blast. Later, when the building is cleared, another child attempts to throw a bomb off of the roof. Most of the children are reprimanded, but they are actually doing something about a problem, unlike most of their parents.
Pina running after the truck was cinema of the hero. She sees Francesco being taken away and immediately does something about it — breaks away from the soldiers and runs down the middle of the street after him. It’s a straight line from seeing to acting, and the camera moves with her rather than watching from a distance. She gets shot doing it, but the point is that the film gives her something to do and lets her do it. The situation is still something a person can push against.
The ending, with the kids watching Don Pietro’s execution from behind the fence showed cinema of the seer. They can see all of it and can’t do anything about it. Nothing they do changes the outcome, so the scene stops being about action and becomes about looking, and then they just walk back toward the city. Earlier the film does the same thing to Don Pietro himself during Manfredi’s interrogation, keeping him next to something he can hear and see but can’t stop. He gets turned from a participant into a witness.
There is an instructive way to distinguish the cinema of the seer from the cinema of the acting hero in Pina’s movements. In the bread riot scene, for instance, one can see that movement still carries its weight. Pina and the other women go out into the street, make their way into the bakery and put their hands on the food, physically changing their circumstances. The camera is on them because they are bodies capable of doing something. A problem is identified and there is action to follow. This is the cinema of the acting hero.
All of that is undone with Pina’s death. When Francesco is led off she does not hesitate to run after the truck, as instinctively as she made for the bakery before. Yet her efforts come to nothing. The truck puts distance between them and she is left to be shot in the street. It is a telling moment. Rossellini takes what would be the stuff of a heroic movie and renders it all but useless. Pina may act the part, but the world around her has ceased to be a heroic film.
The point is driven home by the children looking on at Don Pietro’s execution over the fence. They most clearly embody the cinema of the seer. They are spectators to the event, unable to cross into the space where things are happening. Rossellini makes this powerlessness plain to the eye. By the time the film is done, the impulse to act has given way to seeing and remembering. The children cannot save Don Pietro, but their role is to witness what action can no longer change.
At around 49:00, when the children come running back to the church to report about the Germans coming, they begin to panick about the explosives they left on the roof. It is in this moment that Don Pietro embodies the “cinema of acting hero”, demanding the children stay out of harms way as he goes to recover the explosives before they are discovered.
A “cinema of the seer” moment is the very final scene of the film, when the boys walk away from Don Pietro’s execution with the town and church visible in the background at 1:41:40. The children do not react much, and simply walk back towards the town. While they are defeated and powerless to save Don Pietro, the dome of the church remains fixed in place, watching over the children and the rest of the town, unchanged.
In the scene around 56:00, Pina runs after the truck carrying Francesco, representing cinema of the acting hero. The camera following her movement as she breaks through the crowd accents how she thinks she has power in that situation to do something about Francesco being taken away. After being shot her body falls lifelessly into the street, making her attempted heroism feel tragic rather than victorious. This represents the cinema of the acting hero because Pina responds to the situation through immediate physical action rather than remaining passive. Even though she fails to save Francesco, her decision to run after the truck shows her courage and willingness to act against the forces controlling her.
Right after that scene, Manfredi, Francesco, and Don Pietro hide together and try to decide what to do next, representing the cinema of the seer. The camera focuses on them with tense faces having quiet conversations inside the confined space, emphasizing how they are forced to wait and observe rather than act freely. The limited movement visually contrasts with Pina’s frantic run through the street. This represents the cinema of the seer because the men are trapped in a situation they cannot control, watching and listening as they try to better understand the danger around them.
A “cinema of the acting hero” moment that stood out to me is the very opening raid . The Germans come up the stairs, Manfredi goes out the window and across the rooftops, and the whole sequence is built out of perception leading straight into movement. He hears them and immediate;y executes an escape. The editing is almost conventional thriller editing here: a threat appears and a body responds to it,. Not to mention the response works. Rossellini gives that grammar early on, possibly so he can take it away later.
The scene where I most clearly saw a “cinema of the seer” is the salon during Manfredi’s interrogation. While the torture is happening in the next room, Bergmann and Ingrid sit with drinks and cards, and Hartmann gets drunk and starts talking about how the Germans can only kill, how they’ll be hated across Europe and won’t win anything by it. He’s the one character in the room who perceives the situation in this light, and his perception produces nothing. He doesn’t actually do anything btu pour another drink. It’s a purely optical and verbal situation with no action. What makes it worse is the spatial arrangement: the door, the sounds coming through it, the officers arranged around a room where nothing is decided. Seeing has been completely severed from acting, and the film lets us sit in that space rather than cutting away to something being done about it.
One scene that shows the “cinema of the acting hero” is Pina’s death. When Francesco is arrested and taken away by the German soldiers, Pina does not just stand there and watch it happen. She frees herself from the men and runs after the truck to try and reach him, even though she is putting herself in a lot of danger. However, she is suddenly shot and killed as she was running. This scene shows that there are limits of the acting hero because even though she tries to take action she does not have enough control to change the situation.
This scene also connects to the “cinema of the seer” through Don Pietro and Pina’s son, Marcello. After Pina is shot, they are left to see exactly what happened but they can not do anything to save her. It feels as though they are left powerless. Therefore, this shows the difference between when someone is trying to take action and someone who is forced to watch something they have no power to change.
On De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves: What do you make of the fact that the film spends so much time on apparently ordinary activities—eating, walking, waiting, working, looking for addresses? Discuss one scene as an example.
Knowing that the film is neorealist, using real people rather than trained actors, the mundane everyday activities it shows give it a much more everyday feel, creating the effect that we are watching a father and son actually go through their day. It also gives us more time to focus on their reactions, highlighting the significance of their movements and the situations they are in. This also draws us to the characters’ frustration with poverty through the small, repetitive things they have to do. For example, the scene in the trattoria where they eat lunch (around 1:02:00) spends several minutes simply showing Antonio and Bruno eating. The scene is important because their ordinary meal becomes an escape from their search for the bicycle that has caused so much stress throughout the rest of the film. It also gives us a chance to see the warmth of their relationship, as Antonio and Bruno can briefly enjoy being together despite the stress of their situation. At the same time, Bruno also watches the wealthier boy eating a more elaborate meal, drawing focus to the economic differences between them. The film, therefore, uses these everyday activities to highlight the inequality between the classes through visual demonstration rather than just having the characters mention it verbally.
The film spends so much time on ordinary things because that’s the point, not because nothing important is happening. Most movies skip past the boring parts and go straight to the parts that move the story forward, but this film does the opposite. It lingers on waiting, walking, and searching. This shows that for Antonio, there’s no real difference between his everyday life and the crisis of losing the bike. His whole life has become the search, so these small, ordinary moments are actually where the movie’s meaning lives, not in some big dramatic scene. The scene right after the bike gets stolen shows this clearly (23:14). Before it was stolen, the bike gave Antonio real freedom, he didn’t have to wait in lines or rely on public transportation that clearly doesn’t work well for people like him, which we see the moment he tries to cut the bus line and can’t even get on. Once the bike is gone, he’s stuck back with everyone else, ordinary and powerless, just like before he had it. Walking home with his son afterward shows the same thing: it’s slow and tiring, but that’s exactly what his life goes back to without the bike (I presume), no shortcuts, no freedom, just walking like everyone else. The movie doesn’t need a big emotional scene to show this loss.
Many of the “mundane” scenes in Ladri di Biciclette actually give important context to Antonio’s actions. As would become iconic of neorealism, Antonio’s character is markedly not perfect and consistently fails to achieve his goals, and the mounting pressure of providing for his family leads him to take actions he would otherwise be able to resist. An example of this is around (39:23) when Antonio and Bruno get out of the truck, the scene of them trudging through the rain is very dragged out, they struggle with their jackets pulled over their heads. This scene is on its surface irrelevant and mundane, however it exemplifies the struggle of life in Antonio’s shoes. Just as the rain is unpredictable and unavoidable, so was the theft of Antonio’s bike. We are unable to change the weather or effectively avoid getting wet while we’re outside; rain and theft are ordinary phenomena, and especially in cases like Antonio’s, there’s no apparent escape or salvation.
In “Bicycle Thieves”, De Sica spends a lot of time showing ordinary activities because he wants the audience to experience Antonio’s life as something real rather than as a dramatic story that only focuses on major events (as his search for the job or his search for the bicycle). Walking through the streets, waiting, eating, working, and searching for addresses may seem unimportant, but they show how exhausting everyday life can become when someone is poor and desperate. This is also an important characteristic of Italian Neorealism: the film pays attention to ordinary people and the realities of daily life.
A good example is the scene in which Antonio and Bruno stop searching for the bicycle and go to a restaurant. [01:02:06] For a short time, the main plot almost disappears. We watch them sit down, eat, talk, and observe the people around them. Bruno notices a wealthier boy at another table who can eat much more freely than he can. Nothing particularly dramatic happens, but the scene tells us a lot about Antonio and Bruno’s economic situation and their relationship. Antonio tries to give Bruno a moment of happiness even though he can barely afford it, while the contrast with the wealthy family makes their poverty much more visible. The scene also reminds us that Bruno is still a child despite being involved in his father’s desperate search.
By spending so much time on moments like this, De Sica makes the eventual tragedy more powerful. Antonio’s stolen bicycle is not simply an object that moves the plot forward; it threatens his ability to work, support his family, and live an ordinary life. The film therefore suggests that, for people living in poverty, even the most ordinary activities are connected to larger questions of dignity, class, and survival.
This film focuses on ordinary activities to make the film feel more realistic to show exactly how difficult everyday life can be for the working class people. One example is when Antonio and Bruno search through the market for the stolen bike. They spend an unusually long time walking around and looking at different bicycles and individual bike parts hoping to find something that belongs to Antonio’s bike. This scene is very repetitive and there is not a lot of dramatic action, but that’s what makes it so important. The viewers experience how exhausting and frustrating the search is for the bike with Antonio and Bruno. It also shows how something as basic as a bicycle can become really important when a person’s job and need to support their family depends on it. De Sica makes Antonio’s struggle feel more realistic and personal by spending so much time on this part of the search.
From a purely emotional perspective, the film not skipping small details of the story made me feel more for Antonio. It sucked me into his world and his point of view because I am not just an omniscient observer; I am experiencing all the setbacks with him. I am walking, searching, losing hope, chasing old men, right along with him.
The scene after Antonio realizes he can’t have the kid arrested and can’t have his bike back: he walks out of town and goes to a busier side of the city. Once there, the film spends so much time on him either standing or sitting as he contemplates whether he should steal a bike or not. That sequence was probably way longer than it needed to be, but it made me feel like I decided along with him.
I would like to discuss the scene that occurs at 1:01:05-1:02:30, which depicts Antonio and Bruno taking a break from searching for the bicycle to sit down and eat at a restaurant. This scene spends time showing the two characters eating, and it focuses on Bruno not knowing how to cut his food with a fork and knife in contrast to a boy from a wealthier family who eats properly at another table. He also compares the family’s large meal to what little he and his father can afford. By focusing on something as ordinary as eating, De Sica highlights the class differences that shape Antonio and Bruno’s everyday lives. The scene also briefly allows them to act like a normal father and son, making their difficult situation feel even more human and showing how poverty affects even the simplest parts of daily life. The frequency of these ordinary scenes throughout the film reflects the style of Italian Neorealism, which emphasizes natural portrayals of everyday life rather than highly dramatic or staged action. By allowing the camera to linger on simple actions that might normally be cut from a film, De Sica makes the film feel like an observation of real life.
I think the “ordinary” time is what makes this film different. I think it represents the overall narrative of the movie, as it alludes to the feeling of having lost something. It is those moments that show the reality of Antonio’s life. He has lost his bike, and is forced to slow down, looking for it in those small, unremarkable moments. Whether he is walking block after block, waiting in lines, checking addresses that lead nowhere, the slowness we feel as a viewer is not wasted time, but emphasizing his loss. Without the bike, everything takes longer, everything is harder, and the film makes us sit in that difficulty instead of skipping past it. I think the scene right before the ending, around 1:19:30, captures this perfectly. Antonio and Bruno, after following leads, were unable to find the bike, and were confronted and threatened, with little help from the police. Having been the focus of the movie only to turn up empty-handed, they feel a strong sense of disappointment and purpose. The film communicates this, by letting them just walk. Several scenes of Antonio walking and Bruno struggling to keep up show us how the characters are feeling in this moment. Nothing is said, and nothing really happens, but I find this is the exact point. We’re watching Antonio confront, in real time, everything he’s lost and how far out of his grasp it still is. The stillness of these moments communicates this better than words ever could.
By spending so much time on ordinary activities, De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves allows the viewer to gain a better understanding of Antonio’s situation and a greater attachment to the characters. For example, in the scene where a sudden rainstorm hits while Antonio and Bruno are out searching for the bicycle, we see people all over the street reacting differently, some running for cover under archways, a group of seminarians huddling together, everyone just trying to get out of the rain (43:39). Through this scene, we are able to understand that Antonio and Bruno are just two people among many in this city, and their problem doesn’t really matter to anyone else around them. Additionally, once the rain stops, the street quickly goes back to normal, as if nothing happened at all, which makes Antonio’s situation feel even more small and isolating in comparison. Although this scene doesn’t really progress the plot, it reveals something about the world Antonio is living in. The city keeps moving whether or not he finds his bike, and that contrast makes his struggle feel even heavier.
The trattoria scene works because it lets the film stop moving (around 1:02). For most of the picture Antonio and Bruno are in motion as they walk, chase, and search. Therefore, the decision to sit down and eat registers as a deliberate break in rhythm. De Sica uses the pause to show that Antonio is actually trying to protect the ability to feed his son and sit across from him without shame. The class contrast seems to be handled through behavior. Bruno struggles with the stringy mozzarella while the boy at the next table manages his meal easily. The difference reads as learned habit rather than moral failing. Nothing is stated and the camera simply lets both children exist in the same frame. Rather than dramatizing poverty through crisis, these ordinary activities show this through engrained actions.
Within Bicycle Thieves, Antonio Ricci spends as much of the time looking for his bicycle as he does getting lost, getting a ride from a garbageman, looking for Bruno in the streets, and eating. In doing so, De Sica more accurately represented the experience of a working-class man in post-war Rome. The scene that most stood out to me was the trip from one bicycle market to another at roughly 39:22. Where a typical movie may have skipped over the trip entirely, Antonio and the driver’s conversation is included for around a minute. The scene is set up by Antonio’s friend telling the driver to take him to the other market. A director could then reasonably cut to them getting out of the truck or in the market without including the transit at all. In this scene, though, the viewer rides along with Antonio as the garbageman complains about the rain on his day off and his hatred of movies. We hear him gripe about being stuck at home on the one day he didn’t have to work afternoons because it rained every Sunday. For a high-stakes search, it was a mundane moment that slowed the pace down. This happened in other points throughout the movie, and I believe it helped build emotional depth and complexity within Antonio and Bruno, as well as help the movie’s contemporaries position themselves within the chase.
I found it particularly interesting when Bazin discusses the use of nonprofessional actors, explaining that they are “naturally chosen for their suitability for the part,” sometimes because “there is some parallel between the role and their lives.” I think this casting choice might add spontaneity and authenticity to the plot because the actors are not simply performing an unfamiliar character. Instead, aspects of their own lives and experiences may resemble those of the people they portray. This could make their reactions feel more natural and less rehearsed, contributing to the “extraordinary feeling of truth” that Bazin associates with Italian neorealist films. This approach also makes the boundary between fiction and reality less obvious. Viewers may feel that they are watching real people experiencing real situations rather than actors performing a carefully constructed story. For me, this helps explain why neorealist films can feel almost similar to documentaries while still telling fictional and emotionally powerful stories.
The idea that stuck with me is Bazin’s claim that the basic unit of these films isn’t the shot but the “fact”, a piece of reality that’s ambiguous by itself and only means something once your mind puts it next to other pieces. He describes watching them as leaping “from stone to stone in crossing a river.” Classical editing hands you the connections already made. Here you have to make them yourself as you watch. It’s a shift from the film explaining an event to the film just presenting it.
What I’m less sure about is his claim that this gets the director out of the way. He says it’s no longer the editing that selects what we see but the mind of the spectator. But someone still chose which stones to put in the river and how far apart. The gaps are arranged too. That doesn’t make him wrong, it just makes the control harder to see.
Bazin’s main argument is that Italian Neo-Realism creates the “realistic” elements of film through its usage of working-class actors, and the placement of those actors in real world environments. Instead of moving and directing the camera heavily, Bazin argues that Italian Neo-Realists let the scene unfurl in front of the camera. “Bicycle Thieves” was shot on location in post-war Rome for this specific reason. The poverty ridden areas and crowded streets we see feel like real locations that the father wanders through. For example, at the beginning of the film, we see the crowded streets of men looking for work, while the main character seems to drown into the sea of desperation. Bazin believes that here, the crowd is more important than the star himself. His criticism can also be applied to the rise of the Hollywood star system in America, which was occurring around the same time of “Bicycle Thieves” release. Bazin believes that realism comes from the idea of allowing audiences to experience the world surrounding the characters, not just the characters themselves.
One thing that Bazin says about neorealism that I find most fascinating is the idea that realism does not mean putting a camera in front of ordinary reality. In fact, Bazin claims that neorealism still involves construction of aesthetics. While the director can choose what he wants to film, the only difference is that in neorealist cinema he does not try to impose a moralistic or dramatic construction on reality.
This becomes evident when considering Bicycle Thieves. From the outset, the plot would be easy to turn into a sentimental melodrama about an innocent father victimized by both poverty and crime. However, the movie complicates this initial moral construct gradually through the development of the plot. While at first Antonio seems to be doing everything he can to catch the one who steals his bicycle, by the end of the movie he tries to steal a bike himself. The purpose here is not to imply that Antonio becomes an evil person but to demonstrate how poverty puts ordinary people into both roles of the moral dilemma.
This relates to Bazin’s argument that films belonging to the neorealism school do not allow people to be reduced to symbols where we have easy judgment. Antonio, Bruno, and even the crowd around them share the same social reality. I think this makes for a strong ending because it does not resolve the situation and point out who the culprit is, but rather, keeps Antonio’s embarrassment in the larger world.
Germi’s Divorce Italian Style asks us (viewers) to root for a murder. Trace the specific techniques — voiceover, cross-cutting, music, casting… — that manufacture this complicity, and consider how these techniques conjure up an ethical stance different than the neorealist films we have watched.
Despite the techniques, I still found myself rooting for Ferdinando to be stopped and arrested, nevertheless there are some interesting shots that frame things in a positive light for Fefè. I think an excellent example of this the dichotomy between the two scenes at 20:10 and 22:15 respectively. When Angela is shown, (Ironically) Angelic lighting and sounds surround her, we can see just how strongly Ferdinando is drawn to Angela. In stark contrast, when the scene shows us Ferdinando’s daydream/fantasy, Rosalia is shown covered in dirt, screaming dreadfully, while goofy music plays. The techniques used in these two scenes convey the drastic difference in Ferdinando’s inner feelings without the need for the voiceover.
The techniques used in Divorzio all’Italiana differ from those used in the neorealist movies we’ve seen so far, scenes are more dramatized — we see into daydreams and hear inner monologues — as a whole there is much less of a “Show, don’t tell” philosophy. The ethical stance is much different than films like ladri di biciclette. Antonio was also planning to do morally condemnable actions, however the focus was on understanding why he was forced to do them. In Divorzio all’Italiana, we are not called to have genuine pity for Ferdinando but instead to laugh at his predicament and the ridiculous ways he tries to resolve it.
Germi’s Divorce Italian Style uses editing, close-ups, sound, and exaggerated characterization to make the audience complicit in Ferdinando’s desire to murder his wife, Rosalia. A particularly clear example occurs around minute 22, when Ferdinando brings Rosalia the flowers that he had actually gone to pick with Angela. Rosalia is sunbathing and almost completely covered in sand, and Ferdinando stares at her. The film first gives us a close-up of Ferdinando’s face as he looks at his wife and then cuts directly to his fantasy of murdering her. A very similar sequence occurs around minute 17. I think the close-up is especially important because it acts as a transition between reality and fantasy. In fact, by showing Ferdinando staring at Rosalia before cutting to the imagined murder, the film allows us to understand that what follows is taking place inside his mind rather than in reality. At the same time, this editing technique places us inside Ferdinando’s perspective. Instead of simply observing him from the outside, we are invited to see Rosalia through his eyes and then enter his fantasy. Because this pattern is repeated, the audience gradually becomes familiar with his murderous imagination, and the idea of killing Rosalia is transformed into a recurring comic joke.
This ethical stance is very different from that of the neorealist films we have watched. In Bicycle Thieves, for example, although Antonio is poor and desperate, the film does not morally justify his final attempt to steal a bicycle; instead, we are asked to understand the circumstances that push him toward the act while still recognizing that the act is wrong. Divorce Italian Style, by contrast, uses comedy and Ferdinando’s subjective perspective to make the audience almost root for his immoral plan, creating a much more uncomfortable form of complicity between the viewer and the protagonist.
One of the main ways this film makes us complicit in Fefè’s plan is through the voiceover, which gives us access to his thoughts and allows us to understand his reasoning. Even though his plan is disturbing and would definitely be seen as an exaggeration of the next steps to take, we begin to see the situation from his perspective. The anonymous letters are also important because he uses them to expose his wife’s affair while hiding his own involvement and plan. The film’s cross-cutting and music also help make us anticipate the murder rather than fear it. The editing creates suspense, while the music is much more comedic and playful, making the situation feel more lighthearted than a classic tragedy. Additionally, the casting of Fefè also plays an important role, as his charming and comic acting makes him appear more likeable than a classic stone-hearted villain.
This differs from the neorealist films we have seen, for example, ‘Bicycle Thieves’, where the film encourages us to empathise with Antonio and his desperate search for the bike. In ‘Divorce Italian Style’, we identify with the person causing the harm, which puts us on the other side of the situation through the use of more subtle comedy. Although we know that murder is a very drastic step and very wrong, the way the movie tells the story and builds anticipation helps us to want the act to be committed in order for the story to have a successful ending.
Germi’s primary strategy for making viewers justify the murder is to bring us inside Fefè’s mind. He desires Angela but believes he can’t pursue her because of his marriage, honor, law, catholicism, etc. His situation doesn’t necessarily make him a victim, but through his internal monologue, we’re made to believe that he is. The fact that his wife, Rosalia, is portrayed as extremely obnoxious and annoying helps with persuading the audience as well. His inner thoughts paint Rosalia as an obstacle in the way of his happiness with Angela.
I also noticed the music for when Fefè was imagining Rosalia dying on the beach was upbeat, if not silly. It kind of lightened the weight of her death. Then, again near the end of the movie, right after Carmelino’s wife had killed him and Fefè shoots his wife, the music isn’t somber or anything; rather, it is still a little whimsical.
I think overall that the movie paints Fefè as a fool, obviously, in the end, when it’s revealed that all of this trouble was essentially for nothing because Angela’s probably fooling around or has fallen in love with someone else, but because the movie made it extremely obvious to us that his problems were all self-created.
I think neorealist films show us how unjust the world is through suffering and the inability to change one’s situation, while Germi’s film leans the other way and shows how injustice can easily be justified. It implicitly communicates that injustice, in the end, will not end well, but also shows us how it can be pleasurable through Fefè’s “success.”
What makes it work is that we hear the whole plan from inside Fefè’s head. The voiceover lets him explain everything in a calm, reasonable tone, so by the time he’s plotting to kill his wife it almost sounds logical. The daydreams where he imagines getting rid of her are played for laughs, which makes the idea feel harmless before it’s real.
The casting does a lot too. Fefè is Mastroianni, who’s charming no matter what he’s doing, while his wife is made to look and act as unappealing as possible, so the film basically tells you whose side to be on. The upbeat music keeps everything light even when the plot is literally about murder.
That’s the opposite of the neorealist films. Bicycle Thieves wants you to sit with a character and understand his situation. Divorce Italian Style wants you to laugh along with someone doing something awful, and then realize the real joke is the law he’s using, which went easy on “honor” killings.
I think the voice over is the main instrument Germi uses to make the viewer complicit to Fefe’s plans. The many murder fantasies that we see throughout the film contribute to this, allowing us to envision how easy and satisfying it would be for him to just get rid of Rosalia.
One thing I noticed is how at the end of the courtroom scene, it hard cuts to Fefè sipping an espresso, making the three year minimum seem like nothing to him. A small price to pay for murder, this reinforces how the film is a comedy, and makes light of the situation. The film ends on Fefè looking completely satisfied as it seems he has gotten away with murder and married Angela, but in the final scene, we see her playing footsie with another man under the table. Ending the movie like this is almost comedic, as Fefè spent the whole movie convincing us that killing Rosalia and marrying Angela would finally give him control over his life, and everything would be perfect. But the ending shows he’s already losing control and things are not what they seem. Bicycle Thieves take the opposite approach, making us sit with Antonio’s suffering and his powerlessness, and question why the world is unfair. This film on the other hand, uses comedy, cuts, and a voice over, to make the viewer complicit with the criminal acts and injustice.
Germi makes us complicit in Fefè’s murder plot through layered techniques. The voiceover lets him explain his plan in a calm, reasonable tone, casting him as a victim of marriage, honor, and law, so murder comes to sound almost logical. Editing reinforces this: close-ups of Fefè staring at Rosalia cut straight into his fantasies of killing her, placing us inside his perspective and turning her death into a recurring joke. The contrast between Angela’s angelic lighting and Rosalia buried in sand makes his desire and disgust visible. The music stays playful and whimsical, even after the shooting, lifting the weight of death. Casting completes the effect: Mastroianni’s charm makes Fefè likeable, while Rosalia is made deliberately unappealing.
This stance differs sharply from neorealism. Bicycle Thieves asks us to understand Antonio’s desperation while still seeing his theft as wrong, and to sit with his powerlessness in an unjust world. Germi instead invites us to laugh alongside the person causing harm. Yet the complicity is a trap. The satire targets the “honor” killing law Fefè exploits, and the ending, with Angela flirting with another man, turns the joke back on him and on us for rooting for him.
Germi makes us weirdly sympathize with Fefè’s desire to kill his wife by presenting his violent thoughts almost like romantic fantasies— this helps justify his intentions. The music is often soft and sentimental, which clashes with what is actually happening and makes his obsession seem more playful than disturbing. After he stabs Rosalia, for example, the cutaway of her body being boiled into soap is so exaggerated that it becomes darkly funny instead of horrifying. Since we see the situation largely through Fefè’s imagination, we are meant to understand and even quietly root for him. This is very different from The Children Are Watching Us and Scipio Africanus, where the realistic style encourages us to focus on the suffering of ordinary people and the consequences of violence. Germi uses comedy to make us participate in Fefè’s warped way of thinking, forcing us to notice how easily we can accept something morally terrible when it is presented as entertaining/not serious.
The style of this film almost makes the audience root for Ferdinando even though what he is doing is clearly wrong. I also believe the casting of Ferdinando makes the character seem more likable even though he is planning a murder. His voiceover lets us hear his thoughts and understand his plan from his point of view which helps us understand his perspective of things. It made me feel more involved in the situation with him. The type of music and humor also make the situation seem that it’s not as serious but more entertaining. The way the scenes are cross-cutting builds a lot more tension because of the going back and forth between each part of his plan.
This is very different from the neorealist films where we watch normal people struggle with situations they have little to no control over. Those films make us feel more sympathy for the suffering of the characters. However, Germi tries to put us on the side of someone who is obviously doing something morally wrong. It made me question why I was eager for his plan to be successful even though I know it’s morally wrong.
My impression of this reading is that some movie types such as “commedia all’italiana” were much more than a form of entertainment. I found it interesting that comedy was used to discuss important changes happening in Italian society after World War II. These movies made people laugh, but at the same time they criticized social class, consumerism, gender roles, and the differences between northern and southern Italy. I was especially interested in this reading because I watched Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all’italiana). The relationship between Filumena and Domenico Soriano reflects some of the social class differences discussed in the reading. Soriano has more money and social power, while Filumena has a much less privileged position and has to fight to gain respect and security. I also found it interesting that women in these comedies are often presented as strong and intelligent. Overall, the reading helped me understand how Italian comedy uses humor and relationships to explore serious social problems.
The disturbing aspect of Divorce Italian Style is not just the fact that Fefè desires the death of his wife, but that Germi teaches us how to think the way he does. With the voiceover, murder becomes something like an intimate conversation between the character and the viewer. We do not watch him from a distance but learn to rationalize everything he does as he tries to solve a difficult problem in a smart manner. The constant cuts from looking at Rosalia to fantasizing about murdering her only help to make us feel that there is nothing criminal about the act.
The comedy in the film complicates this matter even further since we become involved emotionally in enjoying it. With the light background music, the fantasies, and the charisma of Marcello Mastroianni, we have all the reason to like him. The wife is represented as annoying and physically unattractive.
This produces a completely different ethical perspective than what is seen in neorealism. In Bicycle Thieves, Antonio’s attempt at stealing takes on a painful aspect due to the fact that the film requires us to understand Antonio without making the act moral. In the case of Germi, he does just about the opposite. He takes a morally reprehensible act and makes it enjoyable to watch, thereby showing the susceptibility of style to manipulating our sympathy.
Divorce, Italian Style plays on many of the developments in Italian cinema to create a palatable hit while shepherding in a deeper message about morality and several neorealist themes. The film uses Northern and foreign stereotypes about Southern Italy to enhance the comedy, hoping for wider distribution. While it was a hit in the South, it also reached farther. This reflected the goal of competing against American films domestically and reaching other European markets.
However, the film also describes in it’s own way the fall in sway of the Catholic Church as the priest commands his parish to avoid going to see “La Dolce Vita” and they do anyway. Also, the dueling main political parties are featured, one as the tool of the church, the other supporting the immoral affair of Rosalia. The communist, supporting Rosalia, admits to having never been this far south, and is completely out-of-step with the local Sicilians.
Celli and Cottino-Jones describe the early 1960s as a time where Italy was becoming more modern while many older social traditions remained in place. The economic period brought industrialization increased migration from the South to the North, but these changes also created major cultural changes. Italian cinema reflected this tension through the “commedia all’italiana” which used comedy to expose contradictions within Italian society.
Divorce Italian Style is a good example of this because Germi specifically focuses on the conflict between modern life and the traditional social tropes of Southern Italy. Celli and Cottino-Jones identify the film as one of the movies that examines the contrast between modernity and the older tropes of the South. Fefè wants to escape his marriage and pursue Angela, but he is trapped by ideas about honor, marriage, and masculinity. What makes this especially effective is that Germi turns these serious social problems into comedy. We laugh at Fefè’s ridiculous plan even though the system he is using allows him to get away with murder. Like the “commedia all’italiana” described in the reading, the film uses an entertaining story to expose the contradictions of a society caught between its traditional past and its modernizing present.
In addition to voiceover, cross-cutting, music, and casting, Germi uses close-ups, point-of-view shots, fantasy sequences, and quick editing to place the audience in Ferdinando’s perspective. The voiceover is especially important because it gives us direct access to Ferdinando’s private thoughts, making the audience feel like a confidant in his plan rather than an outside observer.
Close-ups of his reactions to Rosalia and scenes showing his imagined ways of killing her make his thoughts feel almost like a joke shared with the viewer. This is very different from the more realistic and observational style of neorealism because Germi actively manipulates our perspective, using comedy to make us go along with Ferdinando while also criticizing the society that makes his plan seem reasonable.
L’avventura was booed at its Cannes premiere in 1960 and then won a jury prize, later becoming a canonical work of modern cinema. Why might audiences at the time have found it frustrating?
I’d say the audience was frustrated by L’Avventura mainly because it refused to give them the story they thought they were watching. The film opens like a mystery, with a woman vanishing on a remote island, and viewers expect the usual finding of clues, a search, and ultimately finding out what happened to her. Instead, Antonioni lets the disappearance fade away as the characters lose interest and start an affair, and Anna is never found or explained. Long, quiet takes, unlikable characters, and an ambiguous ending with no clear resolution added to the sense that the film was aimless or unfinished.
I think audiences at the time found L’Avventura frustrating because the film sets up Anna’s disappearance as the main plot, making us expect that we will eventually find out what happened to her. However, as the film goes on, this becomes less important, and we never actually find out where she went, as we see the focus shift to Claudia and Sandro’s relationship and attraction to each other. This is especially frustrating because their relationship begins while Anna is still missing, making their actions feel uncomfortable and difficult to understand. The film is also very long, with lots of long shots and slower-paced scenes, which makes it feel less worth watching since there is no clear conclusion at the end. I think that having so many things left unexplained at the end of this movie is probably part of why the film became so influential, because it challenges the audience’s expectations of what a film should be and achieve.
I think that the audience may have found L’Avventura frustrating because the film does not give the viewers what they want. The main plot starts off with Anna’s disappearance so therefore the audience expects to eventually find out what happened to her. However, the search for anna slowly becomes less important and her disappearance is never fully explained. The film shifts its focus to the relationship between Anna’s boyfriend, Sandro, and Claudia. Instead of focusing on the main mystery the film focuses more on the characters relationship. This can be very confusing to the audience because it is left open ended which is not a satisfying ending for the audience.
I think audiences in 1960 were frustrated because L’avventura sets up a mystery and then never solves it. Anna disappears early in the film, and you expect the rest of the movie to be about finding her. Instead Sandro and Claudia search for a while, end up in a relationship, and Anna is never found. For people used to movies where a problem gets introduced and then resolved, that probably felt like a letdown.
The pacing is also slow. A lot of the film is people wandering, looking, and waiting, with long stretches where not much happens. Audiences expecting a normal plot would have gotten impatient.
So I get why people booed. The film doesn’t give the audience what it expects. But that’s probably also why it won the jury prize and became a classic, since it makes the unanswered question part of the point.
I think audiences in 1960 may have found L’Avventura frustrating because it goes against almost everything they expected a film to do. Anna’s disappearance seems like it will drive the story, but instead of building suspense, the film lets long moments play out where very little happens, like characters wandering through empty towns or staring at the landscape. These scenes can feel pointless at first, but they create a sense of emptiness that matches how disconnected the characters are from each other. Antonioni also often frames the characters as small against buildings or the rocky island, which makes the setting feel just as important as the people. At the time, Italian cinema was known for neorealism, which focused on everyday struggles and clear social messages, so a slow film about bored, wealthy people probably seemed strange. I think the same qualities that frustrated audiences are what made critics quickly recognize it as something new.
Audiences at the time may have found L’Avventura frustrating because it goes against the expectations of the traditional film. The film begins with Anna’s disseapearence which suggests the plot will follow that mystery as the chracters try to figure out what happened. But as the film goes on the search for Anna fades and is almost forgotten. Instead, the film shifts towards a plot focused on Claudia and Sandro and Antonioni focuses on the characters’ emotions and unstable relationships. We never find out what happens to Anna. Even the ending avoids closure when Sandro betrays Claudia but instead of a confrontation she simply places her hand on his head as he cries. For an audience expecting a mystery with answers, the slow pace of the film and the unresolved dissapearence with an ambiguous ending may have felt frsutrating.
I believe that audiences at the time may have found L’Avventura frustrating because the movie does not follow the structure of a traditional story. At the beginning, Anna is one of the main characters. She goes on a trip with her boyfriend Sandro, her friend Claudia, and other people, including Giulia. During the trip, Anna suddenly disappears. Normally, the audience would expect the rest of the movie to focus on finding Anna and discovering what happened to her. However, L’Avventura does not give us a clear answer. Anna’s disappearance slowly becomes less important to the characters and to the story.
Instead, the movie begins to focus more on Claudia and Sandro. As they search for Anna, they become attracted to each other and eventually begin a relationship. This can be uncomfortable because Anna is Claudia’s friend and Sandro’s girlfriend. The audience may keep waiting for Anna to return or for the mystery to be solved, but this never becomes the main point of the film again.
The movie is also slow and contains long scenes where very little happens. For audiences in 1960, this unusual storytelling style probably felt confusing and unsatisfying. However, these choices also made the film innovative because it focuses more on emotions, relationships, and uncertainty than on solving Anna’s disappearance.
Audiences may have found L’avventura frustrating because Antonioni makes it difficult to emotionally connect with the characters. Even after Anna disappears, the people closest to her often seem strangely detached, and Claudia and Sandro quickly become focused on their attraction to each other. Instead of showing strong grief or urgency, Antonioni presents characters who struggle to form meaningful connections and often seem bored or unsatisfied. This emotional coldness may have made their behavior feel uncomfortable or even unlikeable to audiences at the time, especially compared with films that gave viewers clear characters to sympathize with.
After watching “L’avventura”, I agree with the article that the movie has a very unusual relationship with time. The movie often feels extremely slow, and sometimes it seems like nothing important is happening. At first, I found this frustrating because I expected Anna’s disappearance to become the main mystery of the story. I thought Claudia and Sandro would continue searching for her and eventually discover what happened. Instead, as time passes, Anna becomes less important to the characters and to the story. I found the article’s idea of the “disappearance of the disappearance” especially interesting. Anna does not only physically disappear; slowly, people also stop focusing on the fact that she disappeared.
I also noticed how much empty space there is in the movie. The characters are often surrounded by large landscapes, buildings, or empty areas. This made them seem small and sometimes lonely. I think this also reflects their emotions and their difficulty connecting with each other. After reading the article, I understand better why the movie is so slow. The long scenes and lack of action are not necessarily unnecessary. They make the viewer experience time, waiting, and uncertainty together with the characters. Even though I sometimes found the movie frustrating, I think its unusual style makes it interesting.
I think audiences may have found L’Avventura frustrating because Antonioni sets up a story that seems like it will have a clear mystery, but then shifts attention away from Anna’s disappearance. Instead of focusing on finding her, the film becomes more interested in Claudia and Sandro’s relationship and the emptiness of their lives. The long shots, and lack of a clear resolution can make the film feel like nothing is really happening, especially for audiences expecting a traditional narrative. Hamish Ford’s article connects this to Deleuze’s idea of the “time-image,” where the film becomes less focused on action and more focused on showing waiting, and uncertainty. I think this helps explain why the film can feel frustrating, since Antonioni intentionally makes the audience experience the same sense of aimlessness as the characters.
Sarris’s auteur theory seems at first to be constructed around control. The director leaves a recognizable personality on the film, transforming technique and style into a kind of signature. But Ford’s account of L’Avventura hints at something. Perhaps Antonioni’s signature is his refusal to allow anyone, including the director, to fully master what is happening.
What makes L’Avventura “Antonioni” is not that he tells us what is happening in the world, but that he repeatedly refrains from imposing order on what a conventional filmmaker would. Anna disappears, the urgency of the search is lost, empty places outlive the people who inhabit them, and time goes on after the narrative usefulness seems to have run its course. This Ford does through Deleuze’s time-image, where characters are no longer agents who translate perception into action. You can see the film’s authorship in these acts of withdrawal, no solution, no stable center, no guarantee that what once seemed important will remain important.
I think audiences at Cannes found L’avventura frustrating because it looks like a mystery and then drops it after the audience had become familiar with a set of characters. Hamish Ford explains this through Deleuze’s concept of “time-image”. tThe film cares less about action and more about waiting, tiredness, and empty space, creating an anxious effect. The film also plays with what Pascal Bonitzer calls “the disappearance of the disappearance,” where we forget Anna almost as quickly as the characters do, as the film illustrates our tendency to forget, through the passage of time.
Moreover, Farber’s essay in Film Culture suggests the frustration wasn’t only about being unfamiliar with a new style. He criticizes Antonioni for stretching scenes and pushing significance on the viewer. While this is the same slowness Ford defends, based on the reaction of audience’s alike, it certainly does not make for an entertaining film.
Audiences at Cannes in 1960 may have found L’Avventura frustrating because it breaks the promise it seems to make at the start. The film opens with Anna vanishing on a barren island, which sets viewers up for a mystery. The search gradually loses urgency and Anna is simply forgotten, both by the characters and by the film. Her disappearance is never explained. In place of the mystery, Antonioni shifts attention to the affair between Sandro and Claudia, which begins while Anna is still missing. Their detachment and lack of grief make them hard to sympathize with, so viewers are denied both a satisfying plot and characters they can emotionally invest in. The long takes, slow pacing, and lingering shots of empty landscapes add to the sense that nothing is happening. Even the ending refuses closure, and after Sandro’s betrayal, Claudia silently places her hand on his head rather than confronting him. For an audience used to clear narratives with resolution, the film likely felt aimless or unfinished. However, this refusal of order is what made it influential. By making viewers experience the characters’ uncertainty and emptiness, Antonioni challenged assumptions about what a film should deliver.
L’avventura produces distress for the same reason as a college grad worries about leaving campus. It positions us in a wide world with little to no direction, simply following the whims of the main characters as Sandro moves from his wife to Claudia and beyond. The film leaves a viewer uncertain as any assumption they can make is thrown out. Under conventional plot structure, Sandro may have started seeing Claudia, but later Anna would find them and either follow the way of Divorce, Italian Style, or reconcile with Sandro.
This film instead follows the death of Anna and Sandro’s romance and picks up again with Claudia and Sandro, at first a tragic marital struggle for attention before being diverted to a new romance. It is also frustrating because none of the characters change or learn. Claudia watched Anna and Sandro and moved in at the first available opportunity. Sandro refused to sort out issues with Anna, and then flirted with another woman after Claudia (even if he felt regret). In a world where the average audience member sees consequences for their actions, none of the characters in l’Avventura ever will. Their wealth makes them untouchable by the real world, so they just go from one hedonistic desire to the next, not worrying about what may happen tomorrow. They quickly forget the past and rarely remember there will be a future.
There are many reasons I can think of that might have frustrated audiences at the time, and even now. As a lot of people have mentioned in their posts, the huge hole in the plot is one of the main points of frustration. Antonioni spends the beginning of the movie setting up a character and contextualizing her for the viewers just to act like she never existed for the rest of the movie and for the main character to be completely changed by the end. Another point of frustration, at least one I felt, was the ambiguity of time. The obvious cue of days passsing and time elapsing felt absent to me. It felt like the same day as Anna’s disappearnace but at the same time it also felt like years had passed because the characters seem so apathetic to her disappearance and presumed death. This was discussed in Hamish Ford’s article; he described Deleuze’s time-image cinema, where time is felt instead of communicated directly.
Sarris’s essay on auteur theory helps explain how audience expectations can collide with a director’s vision. In L’avventura, Antonioni’s lingering shots, empty spaces, and attention to bodies and surroundings make a distinctive directorial vision central to the experience.
Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 moves among at least four registers: the “real” present at the spa, memories of childhood, dreams, and waking fantasies. Choose one transition between registers and describe precisely how Fellini signals it (or refuses to signal it). Why might he blur these boundaries rather than mark them clearly? Please timestamp the scene you are discussing.
Around 1:01:44, Guido speaks with the Cardinal. Guido introduces a situation with his producer. The Cardinal points out a bird called the Diomedeo and tells Guido that, according to legend, the birds gather to mourn Diomedes. Guido looks toward the birds; then a woman comes down the hill. He watches her, adjusts his glasses, lowers his eyes, and smiles. A whistle sounds, and Fellini cuts to a priest’s whistle in the schoolyard: Guido is now a boy, and the other boys call him to go see Saraghina. The cut and whistle move us into memory, but the adult Guido’s smile provides the link rather than a clear announcement that we have entered a flashback. The woman and Guido’s smile provide a more immediate bridge into the childhood memory. Only after collecting the context does the transition piece come together. By letting the cues flow together, Fellini makes the transition feel like an association arising in Guido’s mind.
I would like to discuss the scene timestamped at 0:20:50–0:21:35. In this scene, Fellini moves from reality into memory/fantasy while Guido is sleeping in bed with a woman. An older woman, who we find out to be Guido’s mother, appears strangely waving her arms toward the wall, and instead of clearly signaling a transition, Fellini allows the setting to gradually transform into an outdoor space where Guido sees his mother and father. The shift feels fluid and almost unexplained, as though Guido’s surroundings are being reshaped by his thoughts. By refusing to clearly separate reality from memory or fantasy, Fellini places us inside Guido’s mind, where the past and present constantly overlap. This blurring shows how his memories, desires, and relationships with his parents remain part of how he experiences his present life.
The transition I picked is the opening dream into the “real” spa, which is the very first scene of the film (3:10-4:10). The movie starts with Guido stuck in his car in a traffic jam in a tunnel. It’s completely silent, the car fills with smoke, and he can’t get out, until he suddenly floats up out of the car and flies over the traffic and out over a beach. A man on the beach pulls him down by a rope tied to his leg like a kite, and right as he falls there’s a hard cut to Guido in bed at the spa with doctors around him.
What’s interesting is that Fellini never signals that we’re entering a dream. There’s no fade, no blur, nothing. The film just starts there, and we only figure out it was a dream when he wakes up. I think he blurs it on purpose because the whole movie is about being inside Guido’s head. For a director with creative block, his dreams and memories are just as real to him as the spa, so Fellini makes us experience them the same way instead of separating them.
At roughly 40:00-41:00, Fellini moves from the present at the spa to Guido’s childhood memories. He is reminded of the phrase “asa nisi masa” which is repeated aloud and in that moment the film cuts to scene of young Guido running around his house trying to escape having a bath. The scene shows his childhood and how he had many women around him caring for him in his home. Fellini signals this transition through the change in setting and Guido’s new appearance as a child. The phrase “asa nisi masa” also signals the transition but we only learn of its meaning later in the scene. By allowing a private association to a saying to interupt the present, Fellinsi demonstrates how Guido’s memory plays a prominent role in his mind. His childhood is very important to him, particularly the memory of being cared for when he feels overwhelmed in his adult life.
Guido waits in line at the spa’s mineral spring while an orchestra plays Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and attendants hand out glasses of water. As he reaches the front, Fellini cuts to Claudia, dressed in white, walking toward him through the trees. The orchestra fades out, the crowd seems to disappear, and soft, dreamy music takes over. She smiles and offers him a glass of water like a figure of pure innocence. Then the attendant’s voice cuts in, and we are back with the ordinary spa girl, who is actually handing him the glass. Fellini signals the shift mainly through sound and light rather than through any editing device. There is no dissolve or blur. Instead, the noisy public soundscape is replaced by private music, and the harsh daylight becomes soft and glowing. The return is abrupt and comes through a voice rather than an image. Fellini blurs the boundary because the fantasy grows directly out of the real moment, since a woman offering water becomes his ideal woman offering water. This shows how Guido constantly transforms reality into the images he wants. For a director searching for his film, reality and imagination are inseparable raw material.
Fellini doesn’t use the usual tricks and signals we expect when a scene transitions from “reality” to a different register, but there still are ways he communicates with us when the fantasies start. There are no ripples on the screen, no harp playing before a flashback, no soft crossfades, nothing. The main way I have noticed Fellini subtly lets us know is through Guido’s gaze and a gradual change in music. For example, at 1 hr and 33 minutes, when Luisa, her friend, and Guido are all sitting outside at a table, Luisa confronts him about never telling the truth and figures out that he’s been fooling around with his mistress. The camera shows just a close-up of his face as he gazes into nothing, and music slowly starts to play. I think Fellini chooses to blur these lines between registers to show that even Guido is having a hard time distinguishing his reality from fantasy and memory. He’s trying to make this film but cannot extract the important information from the noise of this disorganized mind. Even in this very serious moment between him and his wife, he is caught up in a fantasy.
Fellini’s unorthodox — and sometimes jarring — changes in register obfuscate the main plot of 8 1/2, but also leave a lasting impression on us and become a defining feature of Fellini’s “Auteur” influence. An interesting example of this is towards the end of the movie at 2:07:45. In quick succession, we see Guido trying to escape while wielding his gun, a quick cut to a flashback, then another cut to him bleeding out having shot himself. The sequence ends and returns to the main plotline. This scene stood out to me particularly because of the imagery of the blood spilling from Guido’s head only for him to abruptly return in the next scene. To me, this transition conveyed an immense feeling of desperation yet futility, especially with it’s place at the end of the film. In this sense, blurring or completely removing the boundaries give us a more visceral sense of Guido’s mentality.
At 4 minutes the film moves from Guido’s dream to the present at the spa. In the dream, Guido is stuck in a traffic jam, in which he escapes by flying, and then gets pulled back down by a rope by men on the beach. When he wakes in his hotel bed, Fellini makes it clear that the flight was a dream but the feeling of being trapped carries straight across the transition. Guido is still surrounded by people and expectations he can’t easily escape, much like the men who tugged him back to earth. The setting changes, but his anxiety doesn’t. I think Fellini connects the two scenes to show that the dream isn’t just a break from Guido’s waking life; it gives us a vivid picture of how that life feels to him. The rope pulling Guido down lingers after he wakes up. He is still lying in bed, unable to escape pressures waiting for him.
In tomorrow’s class (October 7), we will cover the following:
1. Final presentations. The last four class meetings, from November 18 through December 2, will be devoted to your final presentations. With 17 students enrolled, please form groups of three or four by October 28. Each group will present on an Italian film of its choice, which you should select in advance and discuss with me. Presentations are limited to 30 minutes. Divide the work within your group so that all relevant aspects of the film are covered, including its historical context, the director’s style, and a formal analysis of specific scenes.
2. Fellini’s 8½. We will conclude our discussion of Fellini’s film by analyzing some of the sequences you wrote about on the blog.
3. Pasolini’s Teorema. We will introduce the main themes of Pasolini’s film, and we will continue our discussion of Teorema on October 14. That day, our guest will be Professor Mauro Resmini, Associate Professor of Film Studies and Italian Studies at the University of Maryland. His essay is the assigned reading for that class. Please use the blog to post any questions you have for Professor Resmini about Pasolini and the “ethics of autonomy.”
Around 2:10:00-2:16:00, towards the end of the film, the final production leads into the circle dance. I found throughout this film Fellini had relied on harsher cuts or very unreasonable actions to indicate if this was a dream state or reality. This scene is unique I find, because it has no clear point of where reality stops. Guido is still in the unfinished set, surrounded by the wreckage of his film and he decides to accept everything around him. The people from his life begin dancing in, and there’s nothing really to distinguish who is really there from those that only exist in his dreams. We see a childhood version of Guido, and I think its a reflection that Guido has given up trying to distinguish what is real and what is a dream. To us, the audience, and Guido, it is all just cinema, and I think thats what the circle dance really encapsulates at the end.
At roughly 3:00, Fellini cuts from Guido plunging toward the sea to his arm shooting up from a hotel bed. The cut itself is a conventional signal as the falling dreamer jolts awake. Additionally, the sound makes the transition apparent as the dream is nearly silent while reality is noisy. Yet in the dream we never see Guido’s face, and Fellini keeps withholding it after he wakes. Strangers enter his bedroom, a doctor examines him while asking about his next film, and Guido remains a shadowed figure being questioned. We don’t see his face until the bathroom mirror. The mirror is an interesting choice since mirrors can symbolize illusion and self examination. Our first look at Guido is an image of him and not the man himself. I think Fellini blurs the boundary because for Guido, a director, dreams and “reality” are both made of images, and neither feels more real.
I thought “Teorema” was a very strange but interesting film. What I found most interesting was how the arrival of the mysterious guest completely changes every member of the family. At first, the family seems wealthy and comfortable, but after the guest leaves, it becomes clear that each person is unhappy or missing something important in their life. I interpreted the guest as more than just a real person. To me, he represents something that gives each character a new sense of desire, freedom, or meaning, even if only temporarily.
I was especially interested in how differently the characters react after he leaves. Lucia tries to recreate her experience through other men, Pietro turns to art, Odetta completely withdraws, and Paolo eventually abandons his possessions and his previous identity. Emilia’s reaction is very different because her experience becomes almost religious.
Therefore, my question for Professor Mauro Resmini is: How does the idea of the “ethics of autonomy” help us understand what happens to the family after the guest leaves? Are the characters becoming autonomous and free, or does Pasolini suggest that complete freedom can also lead to emptiness and loss of identity?
One of the most interesting transitions in 8½ happens around 1:45:00, when Guido’s fantasy of living with all of the women in his life at the same time begins to take over. The scene starts with Guido surrounded by the women, who all accept this arrangement as normal. Fellini does not clearly separate this fantasy from reality with a traditional dream transition. Instead, the scene simply develops into something increasingly impossible, with women from different parts of Guido’s life appearing together in the same space. The playful music, exaggerated behavior, and unrealistic situation eventually make it obvious that we are in Guido’s imagination. I think Fellini blurs the boundary because the fantasy reveals how Guido actually views the women in his life. His imagination is not completely separate from reality, but rather it is built from his memories, desires, and relationships. By making the fantasy feel almost like another part of his everyday life, Fellini shows how difficult it is to separate what Guido wants from what he actually experiences. The scene also fits the larger idea of the film because Guido is constantly turning his own life into material for his imagination and filmmaking.
The final transition is at the press conference around 2:06 when the real world, Claudia, and his private delusions/visions all come together in the mirrored table and his retreat from the journalists. The camera moves in a way that makes Guido look small and the journalists look like a rabid pack, moving quickly across them and hovering on him. The camera goes between the producer, the mirrored table, and Guido, mixing reality with a reflection of it. Eventually, Guido pictures a gun in his pocket, crawling under the table and fantasizing about using it on himself. This transition aggressively blurs the line between reality of the press conference, him finding the gun he may have put there himself (or is imagining it) and the yelling for him on the beach. He retreats from the chaos and confusion before realizing that the chaos and confusion is the most creative.
The transition from Guido’s present to the past where the figure of the Saraghina appears in Guido’s memory turns out to be one of the most illustrative in the film 8½. However, Fellini does not mark it as an flashback and does not make the scene seem different from other sequences in the movie. The beach, the boys and their play with Saraghina seem much more active in this sense, and it seems like the event is continuing to influence Guido even now.
The most significant aspect of this scene is the fact that punishment is combined with pleasure. The boys have some money and use it for paying Saraghina in order to get her to dance. There is no doubt that this scene is playful and ritualistic. In this case, the discipline of the Catholic school follows, and the young Guido does not only understand that sexual intercourse is “wrong”. Moreover, desire gets linked to performance, spectatorship, guilt and fantasy. These components become the key characteristics of Guido as an adult filmmaker.
As such, the process of becoming memories is about more than just explaining Guido on a psychological level. Fellini implies that Guido’s films, daydreams, and memories all stem from the same mental source. His past is not a thing of the past; it is being shaped in the present.
The transition I chose is from 3:10–4:10, when Guido is flying through the air before waking up at the spa. Fellini does not make it immediately clear that this is a dream, as there is no obvious transition into it, and we only really know for certain when Guido suddenly wakes up. There is no title or obvious visual effect separating the dream from reality, and Fellini uses a sudden cut when Guido wakes up rather than gradually transitioning back to the real world. While he is flying, he initially seems free and is able to escape everything below him, but then we see that there is a rope attached to his ankle and the people below begin pulling him back down. I think Fellini blurs the boundary between dreams and reality because it allows us to experience the film more from Guido’s perspective. The dream seems to show his desire to escape from the pressures of his real life, while the rope pulling him back down shows that he cannot fully escape them. I also think it is significant that this happens at the very beginning of the film, because it immediately establishes that the boundaries between Guido’s reality, dreams, and imagination are not always going to be clear. By not clearly separating these different parts of his mind from reality, we are able to experience some of the same confusion that Guido does, and it makes his waking up more impactful.
Around 4-5 minutes into the movie, Guido suddenly wakes up in his room at the spa after the opening dream sequence. In the dream, he is trapped inside his car in a traffic jam and cannot breathe. He eventually escapes from the car and begins floating above the traffic and into the sky. Fellini does not clearly tell us at the beginning that we are watching a dream, so at first the audience might think the traffic jam is actually happening. It is only when Guido suddenly wakes up that we understand that the entire opening sequence was a dream.
I think Fellini blurs the difference between the dream and reality because it immediately puts us inside Guido’s mind. The feeling of being trapped in the car represents how overwhelmed and stuck Guido feels in his real life, while flying away represents his want to escape from those pressures. By making the dream initially seem real, Fellini shows that Guido’s inner thoughts and emotions are just as important to the film as what is actually happening around him.
Can you identify some moments in Gallone’s movie in which you see an attempt to “aestheticize politics”? (Please time-mark the sequence for in-class discussion).
Scipio has been hailed as a hero for essentially the entire history of Italy. Even today, one of the first lines in Il Canto degli Italiani (National Anthem of the Republic) is “(italia) dell’elmo di Scipio, s’e cinta la testa.” So as a vessel for portraying fascist political aesthetics in a positive light, Gallone could not have chosen a better subject. An excellent example of this early in the film is at 9:59, when Scipio is first exiting the chamber. As he walks, he is preceded by several women carrying fascie, while hordes of adoring citizens cheer and salute him. The roman salute in particular, as we discussed in class, provides clear framing: literally pointing to Scipio. The fascie and Roman salute are arguably the two most defining symbols of Italian fascism, this scene directly ties the political aesthetics of fascism to the story of Scipio at the beginning of his journey. Another scene that left me with a similar impression was towards the end of the film, at 1:20:32. In this scene we see a sea of corpses, and yet, the roman eagle is held above it all as the legionnaire says “The Dead of Cannae are Avenged!” The eagle, another symbol of fascism, is elevated while acknowledging the immense struggle and suffering required for victory. This scene also explicitly ties the political aesthetics of fascism to the heroism of the legionnaires’ ultimate sacrifice.
Timestamp: 53:44
In this scene Hannibal is welcomed back to Carthage by his people. Gallone makes politics look dramatic and powerful here by putting Hannibal above everyone else. He stays on the ship while the crowd and other military figures stand below him, which makes him seem more important and in control. The perspective of him looking downwards means he’s literally talking down to the people who failed to help him in Italy, and the shot also affirms that he understands the situation better than they do. It could also show Hannibal’s pride with him feeling he is physically separated from his own people and refuses to meet them as equals.
Starting with the opening of the film, Gallone shows the enormous scale of Rome, presenting it as a place of power and structure. He uses organised masses of people and large-scale camera tilts and pans to create a contrast between the small individual figures and the huge spaces they occupy. The architecture and mise-en-scene demonstrate the scale of Rome’s power, making the city appear unified and ordered from the very beginning of the film.
During Scipio’s address to his troops before the Battle of Zama (1:26:00), Scipio is positioned above the soldiers, looking down towards them. The soldiers are presented as one united mass rather than as individuals, which highlights Scipio’s power and authority in the scene. Their role is to demonstrate a willingness to listen to and follow his orders, creating an image of collective enthusiasm for following a powerful and respected leader.
During the Battle of Zama (1:30:00), Gallone also uses the large scale of the battle to make the Roman military power look impressive and almost spectacular. He uses large groups of soldiers, horses and elephants moving together, making the Roman army seem even more dominant. This aestheticises the violence of war by focusing on the scale and organisation of the military rather than just the destruction it causes.
I feel like the whole ending sequence of Gallone’s movie was for aesthetic purposes, to glorify war in a way. To me, the most blatant representation of this is at 1:05:48. In this specific frame, we can see an extremely long line of elephants, so long that you can’t see the end of the line. Apart from the war sequence, another aestheticization of politics that caught my eye was at 00:04:03, where Scipio is in the center of the screen; the triangle composition we discussed in class draws your eye to him. But I think what makes this aesthetic (and the scenes following the Senate forum at 00:11:20) is the scale of everything. I think the movie uses scale as a tool of grandeur to awe the audience and glorify its political views
Last class, we spoke about the frequency of scenes within Gallone’s Scipio Africanus in which war and military power are presented through visually striking patterns and formations. In terms of “aestheticizing politics,” Gallone aestheticizes war through the symmetry and geometric patterns of the Roman army’s formations. During the Battle of Zama (1:02:00-1:05:00), the physical organization of the Roman army creates a sense of beauty and order. Rather than presenting war as chaotic and destructive, Gallone makes military power appear unified and visually aesthetic.
Another example is when Scipio addresses his soldiers and holds up the Roman standard (20:40-21:23). By physically displaying this symbol of Rome while delivering an emotional speech, Gallone turns Scipio’s call for war into a dramatic and heroic spectacle. The use of a physical symbol makes the political message more visually powerful and gives the soldiers something tangible to associate with Roman identity and strength. The scene aestheticizes politics by using the standard and Scipio’s powerful presence to associate military action with Roman pride and the desire to avenge past defeat.
Gallone’s movie focuses entirely on the perceived parallel between Scipio in Africa and Mussolini in power in Italy. The movie takes existing power structures and seeks to mobilize masses of men, as suggested in Section 19 of Benjamin’s manifesto on technological reproduction. In “Scipio Africanus” this is most clear in scenes where war is viewed as a spectacle, masses of men are commanded by their so-called superiors, and particularly where they are commanded from above. The movie places a heavy emphasis on the beauty of war, instead of the brutality, as shapes of battalions move across the horizon and gather on piers. The order of the Roman troops is only matched by the chaos of the Carthaginians, again contrasting the role of fascist government against turbulent democracy.
One key example of this is the prayer before the troops set off for Carthage (28:20). The existing power structure of religion and command is maintained, but now complete with a willing proletariat. Also, at 1:13:38, Scipio maintains ranks and carefully orders the battle lines in formation. This sense of order and spectacle is precisely what makes war accessible as a tolerable concept to a new generation of fighters.
Both aestheticize fascist politics by encouraging ordinary citizens to back their leader in war. By showing a historical example of 1930s power dynamics, the film pushes the idea that to reclaim glory, one must commit even further to a system of tiered control and nationalism. “Scipio Africanus” lays out a clear tier list of “worthiness,” starting with Scipio, moving to his soliders, then Hannibal, with his Carthaginians last. It maintains an “us vs. them” fight while maintaining hierarchies.
At roughly 20:49-21:10, Gallone turns a political and military campaign into an emotionally powerful moment. At this point, Scipio presents the veterans with the military standard saved from the Roman defeat at Cannae and says that it has “waited for revenge”. Gallone connects the military campaign to Roman honor and the memory of the soldiers defeated at Cannae. The standard becomes a symbol for Rome and it makes the war feel like a heroic act rather than simply a military strategy.
One of the attempts to “aestheticize politics” in Scipio Africanus happens when Scipio meets the Senate and the people outside (7:35 and 10:02). Gallone shows a difference between two ways political power can be created. Inside the Senate, politics is confusing. People talk, stop, and wonder if Scipio’s campaign in Africa should take place. Outside, Gallone shows a huge group of people all focused on one person raising their hands together as Scipio comes down to them.
The main idea is not just that Scipio looks like Mussolini. Gallone makes the crowd into a message. The Senate has to talk about Scipio’s power. The mass of people seems to know it without debate. Size, balance, matching movements and Scipio’s high place make political power something we are supposed to see and feel, not think through.
This makes the scene telling for Fascist movies. Political disagreement looks broken and boring. Obeying a strong leader looks calm and almost nice. The speech before the battle of Zama (1:01:38)follows the same pattern but on a bigger scale with Scipio separate from thousands of soldiers who act as one body. Gallone makes not war or Rome look beautiful but the idea that a country is strongest when individual voices disappear into one group feeling.
This is convincing because experts who watched the movie at the time saw the Senate as a place of talk compared to Scipio’s almost holy look in front of a united crowd. The movie was also backed by the government and was seen as connecting Roman victory in Africa to Fascist goals of taking over other lands.
One of the attempts to aestheticize politics in Scipio Africanus is when Scipio walks down the stairs, and the massive crowd around him is doing the roman salute toward him. This makes him the triangular focal point of a mass amount of people, emphasizing his power and positioning above the Italian public. It also shows extreme unity and pride among the people, as they, physically, point their loyalty toward one great leader (04:00).
Another moment was the beautiful and orderly view that we get of The Battle of Zama. As Scipio gives a very bold and intense speech, we are shown the battle field formation from many angles. The sharp formations full of white horses and soldiers, give the battlefield an almost balletic quality. This visual glorification of the battle leaves the viewer connecting unity and strength with war (1:02:00 and 1:13:00). Similarly, at the end of the film we see a field covered in dead bodies. As prideful music plays, see the perfectly placed formation of these people. Through the placement and the score, the film creates a sense of pride around these people who have chosen to die for their country (1:20:00).
Discuss some of the differences between two cinematic characters: Scipio (in Gallone’s movie) and Pricó (in Camerini’s). What are the formal (cinematic) in which these two characters are portrayed?
Scipio and Pricò represent almost opposite ends of the character spectrum. Scipio is hardened and untroubled, embodying discipline and taking charge. He’s seen as a leader, and often takes control of the situation. Pricò on the other hand, is vulnerable and full of emotions. He is only a child, and doesn’t understand nor has control with what is going on with the adults around him. In Scipio, there are lots of wide shots displaying massive crowds and spectacled battle scenes, using symmetry and triangular staging to show Scipio’s level of idolization. Loud, orchestral music makes the movie feel like a glorified propaganda set, with little scenes showing Scipio’s personal feelings or emotions. Pricò is almost the complete opposite. Pricò often shares his emotions with the audience, and that’s communicated clearly through countless close-up shots, holding it on his face as he communicates his feelings through facial expressions rather than words. The camera is also frequently at his height, communicating how he feels powerless and is often excluded in the decisions of adults. Overall, these characters are portrayed as opposites: Scipio as a powerful, hardened leader, while Pricò is seen as a powerless, emotional child.
Scipio and Pricó are portrayed in very different ways, both as characters and through cinematic techniques. In Gallone’s movie, Scipio is presented as a heroic and monumental figure. As a character in the movie, he represents strength, authority, and leadership. This idea is also evident through cinematic techniques, as Gallone often uses wide shots, large crowds, impressive sets, and dramatic compositions to make Scipio appear powerful. The camera emphasizes his importance by placing him at the center of large historical events. His character therefore seems larger than an ordinary individual and becomes a symbol of Rome and its power.
Pricó, in contrast, is portrayed as an ordinary and relatable person. Camerini focuses on everyday life rather than historical spectacle. Pricó appears in familiar urban environments, and the camera often remains closer to the characters, making the film feel more intimate and personal. His personality is shown through conversations, misunderstandings, comments and small gestures rather than heroic actions. Then, while Scipio is represented as a character who has a lot of power, Pricó is a child who has no power over the situations that happen in his life (when his mother leaves, when his father left him to the priest, and when his father dies). Therefore, Pricó is portrayed as a very passive and innocent child.
While Scipio is defined by public achievement and collective history, Pricó is defined by his private emotions and relationships. Formally, this difference is reflected in Gallone’s spectacular, monumental style compared with Camerini’s lighter, more intimate and realistic cinematic approach. In particular, at 42:07 (in Camerini’s movie) we see a close up image of Pricó, as he listens to his mother Nina and Roberto fighting. The body language and the facial expression of Pricó is very important as he stares at them with fear and has his arms behind his back, to signify hopelessness. In contrast, at 9:40 (in Gallone’s movie) we see Scipio being welcomed by the crowd. Scipio has his arm lifted up and a straight posture to signify confidence and power.
Scipio is a historical-mythic adult figure with no real personal life (on film). He exists to embody a cause rather than to be explored. Created with the intent of promoting Fascist propaganda, he is a visual and rhetorical representation for Mussolini. All of the choices that went into making the film work to combine him with the nation. Most of all he has agency. He commands, persuades, and shapes the outcome of events, and his meaning is entirely collective and symbolic.
Pricò is the opposite kind of character. He is an ordinary kid with no historical or symbolic meaning, and his significance comes purely from his private experience of watching his parents’ marriage fall apart. He has no agency. Things are done to him and around him by adults, and he just exists. The film’s choices (close-ups, camera at his eye level) make the drama around him digestible through his perspective. Where Scipio is monumentalized to glorify a nation, Pricò is kept small to tell a personal story.
I find the framing of Prico very interesting in “The Children Are Watching Us” in comparison to Scipio. The two films are very different in plot structure and thematics, so the framing of their respective main characters are very different. As we discussed in Monday’s class, Scipio is often framed among the crowds, as one of the people, for the people. Furthermore, he is often times pushed above the crowds in the frame, as someone the people support and stand for.
“The Children Are Watching Us”, although a completely different genre and style of film, still promotes symbolism in its framing. Prico is often dragged into the frame by an adult or 3rd party, and then centered. For example, at 26:37, Price is framed in the center as he is the center of conversation regarding him tipping over the flower pot. However, the adults never address Prico as if he’s in the room with them. This allows Prico to blend into the scene as a background element. Although he may not be the main piece of the frame visually, he is almost always a major part of the plot thematically. Furthermore, Prico is often framed in the background, while the adults that control the tide of the story sit in the foreground. These framing devices reminded me of old kids cartoons, like “Tom and Jerry”, where adults were often framed from the waist down, and pictured as larger than life figures. In these cartoons, the adult figures would often have major implications on the plot, while the focus of the frame stayed on Tom and Jerry’s antics.
Gallone and Camerini portray their two characters very differently through each film’s cinematic style. Scipio is presented as a powerful public figure in Rome who is often surrounded by large crowds with a strong military presence and scenes which place him at the center of action. However, Prico is a vulnerable young child in a complex family situation and he is often left observing traumatic scenarios unfold around him whilst being helpless to do anything about it. I think one of the main differences between the two characters is the control they have in their lives. Scipio has control over the world around him whereas Prico is powerless and has almost no control over what happens to him. Camerini portrays Prico as an observer to the adult world and utlizes his reactions and limited understanding to shape our view of the story. An example of this is when we watch Prico see that his mother is crying but fail to understand why she is upset. Throughout the film he gains a better understanding of what is going on but he is still powerless. Gallone makes Scipio seem more powerful than the people around him whereas Camerini focuses on Prico’s vulnerability.
At 28:24, when Scipio is sending the fleet off to sea, he’s standing alone on top of a tall decorated tower with just white sky behind him. The camera is low, looking up at him, and the people he’s talking to aren’t even in the shot. He’s actually smaller than the tower he’s standing on, which makes him look like part of the monument. His arm is raised but there’s no one in the frame for him to be addressing, so it feels aimed at the audience instead. It’s pretty much what Benjamin means by aestheticizing politics.
Pricó is the opposite. At 1:06:49 he’s at the bottom of the frame with a bunch of adults crowded around him, two of them in uniform, all of them cut off by the edges and all of them taller than him. Everyone is talking at him and he doesn’t say anything back.
So Gallone empties out the frame to make a man look bigger, and De Sica fills it up to make a kid look small.
Gallone attempts to show the viewer Scipio as a symbol rather than a person, as an extension for Mussolini. The camera treats him accordingly. Gallone shoots him from below so that it appears as though the viewer is below Scipio, frames him dead center, and mostly keeps the camera still. Scipio is almost always placed in front of crowds and armies, which turns him into a focal point for all of the people of the state. He does not really converse, he declaims. The cutting keeps handing him back to spectacle, huge long shots, elephants, ranks of soldiers.
Pricò works the opposite way. He is a small boy who understands very little and can change nothing. De Sica puts the camera down at his height and builds scenes around what he sees, so we watch him watching. Doorways and adult bodies crowd him toward the edges of the frame. The light is ordinary and meaning arrives through silence and small gestures instead of speeches.
Scipio and Pricò are portrayed very differently, especially in the amount of power and control they have. Scipio is portrayed as being a strong and confident leader who has control over the people around him. He embodies strength, authority, and leadership. However, Prico is a young boy who has barely any control over what happens in his life. He is heavily affected by the decisions his parents have made because he has limited control over decisions.
The way that these two characters are filmed in the movies also shows this difference. Scipio is mostly in a large setting surrounded by soldiers and crowds. The scenes are taken in a wide shot scene which will tend to make Scipio look more important and powerful to the audience. He represents the power and greatness of Rome. On the other hand, in “The Children are Watching Us”, the camera is usually on Prico’s height and focused on what he sees and how people see him. He communicates his feelings through silent facial expressions which shows how he might not be able to explain his emotions with words.
This makes the audience feel that Scipio is someone to look up to and admire, but Prico is someone the audience should feel sympathy for and try to understand. Overall, these characters are portrayed extremely differently in these two movies. It shows that Scipio represents power, while Prico shows how someone without power is just vulnerable and someone that has no authority.
Comment a couple of scenes from Rome Open City in which you see a “cinema of the seer” and a “cinema of acting hero”
A scene where I see a “cinema of the seer” is that of the rebel attack (around 57:18). The scene shows characters who see a problem and act to fix it. There is also a clear antagonist and protagonist side (where the rebels are the heroes). They see the convoy carrying their captured friends and attack it, and their action directly changes the outcome, Francesco gets away.
Two scenes where I noticed “cinemas of the seer” would be that of the torture and execution (around 1:26:23 and 1:40:30 respectively). In both scenes, characters can only watch, they can’t do anything to change what’s happening. Don Pietro is brought in to watch Manfredi being tortured, and all he can do is watch. Later, Marcello and the other boys watch Don Pietro get executed from behind the fence, and again they’re just watching, powerless to help.
One example of the “cinema of the seer” is the scene in which Pina runs after Francesco after the Germans arrest him and is suddenly shot and killed [56:06]. The people around her, especially Don Pietro and the children, are forced to witness what happens. They cannot stop the violence or save her. This scene emphasizes the experience of seeing and reacting to a traumatic event rather than being able to control it. The characters become witnesses to the brutality of the occupation, and the audience is also placed in the position of witnessing Pina’s unexpected death.
A good example of the “cinema of the acting hero” is Giorgio Manfredi during his interrogation and torture by the Gestapo [1:31:09]. Although Manfredi is physically powerless and eventually dies, he still actively chooses not to reveal information about the Resistance. The Germans repeatedly torture him, but he refuses to betray the other members. His heroism therefore does not come from physically defeating his enemies, but from his deliberate decision to resist them. Unlike the helpless witnessing surrounding Pina’s death, Manfredi maintains a form of agency through his refusal to speak.
A scene where I see a “cinema of acting hero” is when Don Pietro agrees to help the resistance by delivering money to their men outside Rome. He does it even though he knows it will be dangerous to move through Rome after curfew under the German occupation. This is an example of a heroic moment because Don Pietro takes a huge risk to respond to the ongoing situation to try make it better.
On the other hand, an example of “cinema of the seer” is a scene closer to the end of the film where Don Pietro is forced to watch the Germans torture Manfredi for information. There is nothing he can do to stop the Germans so he has no choice but to sit and watch. Manfredi ultimately dies but without giving away any information so Don Pietro tells the Germans that they killed him but did not destroy his soul.
A “cinema of the action hero” scene that I noticed is when all the kids went and bombed the truck (even though it wasn’t explicitly shown) in rebellion against the Germans, although their actions led the Germans to connect the dots and find Francesco and Ferrari. Under the influence of Romeletto, the kids were taking action against the injustice they were seeing, while a lot of the population wasn’t able to because they were too scared to do anything, because it meant that they were most likely going to lose their lives.
Interestingly, the last scene is also with the kids, but here they are not the “action hero.” The ending sequence is a “cinema of the seer” as the kids witness the execution of the priest, Don Pietro, and couldn’t do anything.
A scene where I noticed a “cinema of acting hero” is when Don Pietro forced the old man to pretend he were dying in order to hide weapons from the German (54:57). Rather than reacting passively to the threat of discovery, Don Pietro perceives es the danger and immediately intervenes, improvising a ruse to protect the resistance.
One of the scenes in which I saw “a cinema of the seer” was when Pina rushes in saying she can’t find Marcello, and the men respond that the kids went out past curfew, then simply lock the door (35:30). Rather than acting to intervene, they retreat inside, and hear the explosion out the window. Perception doesn’t lead to effective action here, instead of shaping the event, the adults are reduced to hearing and watching it happen. That passive witnessing is what marks this as a “cinema of the seer” moment. Another scene in which I noticed “a cinema of the seer” is when Don Pietro is forced to watch Manfredi be tortured. He is not allowed to intervene, yet he has is forced by listen to Maniredi’s cries as he’s beaten (1:27:22).
One moment where I saw a “cinema of the seer” was at 01:01:06, where Francesco is listening to the mass through the wall, lighting a stove, and wandering around a closed-off room within the church. Here, he does not entirely know what to do. Nina has just been shot, and her son placed in his care. Other partisans are being tracked down across the city. Instead of acting in a heroic manner to fix the situation, he paces, unsure of a course of action. This applies the next day, as well, as he watches Don Pietro and Luigi get arrested by German officers deep in the shot, but hides in a doorway.
A heroic cinematic moment was with the children and the bomb at 35:51. The children, inspired by the adults in their life, rush back to the apartment building after a loud blast. Later, when the building is cleared, another child attempts to throw a bomb off of the roof. Most of the children are reprimanded, but they are actually doing something about a problem, unlike most of their parents.
Pina running after the truck was cinema of the hero. She sees Francesco being taken away and immediately does something about it — breaks away from the soldiers and runs down the middle of the street after him. It’s a straight line from seeing to acting, and the camera moves with her rather than watching from a distance. She gets shot doing it, but the point is that the film gives her something to do and lets her do it. The situation is still something a person can push against.
The ending, with the kids watching Don Pietro’s execution from behind the fence showed cinema of the seer. They can see all of it and can’t do anything about it. Nothing they do changes the outcome, so the scene stops being about action and becomes about looking, and then they just walk back toward the city. Earlier the film does the same thing to Don Pietro himself during Manfredi’s interrogation, keeping him next to something he can hear and see but can’t stop. He gets turned from a participant into a witness.
There is an instructive way to distinguish the cinema of the seer from the cinema of the acting hero in Pina’s movements. In the bread riot scene, for instance, one can see that movement still carries its weight. Pina and the other women go out into the street, make their way into the bakery and put their hands on the food, physically changing their circumstances. The camera is on them because they are bodies capable of doing something. A problem is identified and there is action to follow. This is the cinema of the acting hero.
All of that is undone with Pina’s death. When Francesco is led off she does not hesitate to run after the truck, as instinctively as she made for the bakery before. Yet her efforts come to nothing. The truck puts distance between them and she is left to be shot in the street. It is a telling moment. Rossellini takes what would be the stuff of a heroic movie and renders it all but useless. Pina may act the part, but the world around her has ceased to be a heroic film.
The point is driven home by the children looking on at Don Pietro’s execution over the fence. They most clearly embody the cinema of the seer. They are spectators to the event, unable to cross into the space where things are happening. Rossellini makes this powerlessness plain to the eye. By the time the film is done, the impulse to act has given way to seeing and remembering. The children cannot save Don Pietro, but their role is to witness what action can no longer change.
At around 49:00, when the children come running back to the church to report about the Germans coming, they begin to panick about the explosives they left on the roof. It is in this moment that Don Pietro embodies the “cinema of acting hero”, demanding the children stay out of harms way as he goes to recover the explosives before they are discovered.
A “cinema of the seer” moment is the very final scene of the film, when the boys walk away from Don Pietro’s execution with the town and church visible in the background at 1:41:40. The children do not react much, and simply walk back towards the town. While they are defeated and powerless to save Don Pietro, the dome of the church remains fixed in place, watching over the children and the rest of the town, unchanged.
In the scene around 56:00, Pina runs after the truck carrying Francesco, representing cinema of the acting hero. The camera following her movement as she breaks through the crowd accents how she thinks she has power in that situation to do something about Francesco being taken away. After being shot her body falls lifelessly into the street, making her attempted heroism feel tragic rather than victorious. This represents the cinema of the acting hero because Pina responds to the situation through immediate physical action rather than remaining passive. Even though she fails to save Francesco, her decision to run after the truck shows her courage and willingness to act against the forces controlling her.
Right after that scene, Manfredi, Francesco, and Don Pietro hide together and try to decide what to do next, representing the cinema of the seer. The camera focuses on them with tense faces having quiet conversations inside the confined space, emphasizing how they are forced to wait and observe rather than act freely. The limited movement visually contrasts with Pina’s frantic run through the street. This represents the cinema of the seer because the men are trapped in a situation they cannot control, watching and listening as they try to better understand the danger around them.
A “cinema of the acting hero” moment that stood out to me is the very opening raid . The Germans come up the stairs, Manfredi goes out the window and across the rooftops, and the whole sequence is built out of perception leading straight into movement. He hears them and immediate;y executes an escape. The editing is almost conventional thriller editing here: a threat appears and a body responds to it,. Not to mention the response works. Rossellini gives that grammar early on, possibly so he can take it away later.
The scene where I most clearly saw a “cinema of the seer” is the salon during Manfredi’s interrogation. While the torture is happening in the next room, Bergmann and Ingrid sit with drinks and cards, and Hartmann gets drunk and starts talking about how the Germans can only kill, how they’ll be hated across Europe and won’t win anything by it. He’s the one character in the room who perceives the situation in this light, and his perception produces nothing. He doesn’t actually do anything btu pour another drink. It’s a purely optical and verbal situation with no action. What makes it worse is the spatial arrangement: the door, the sounds coming through it, the officers arranged around a room where nothing is decided. Seeing has been completely severed from acting, and the film lets us sit in that space rather than cutting away to something being done about it.
One scene that shows the “cinema of the acting hero” is Pina’s death. When Francesco is arrested and taken away by the German soldiers, Pina does not just stand there and watch it happen. She frees herself from the men and runs after the truck to try and reach him, even though she is putting herself in a lot of danger. However, she is suddenly shot and killed as she was running. This scene shows that there are limits of the acting hero because even though she tries to take action she does not have enough control to change the situation.
This scene also connects to the “cinema of the seer” through Don Pietro and Pina’s son, Marcello. After Pina is shot, they are left to see exactly what happened but they can not do anything to save her. It feels as though they are left powerless. Therefore, this shows the difference between when someone is trying to take action and someone who is forced to watch something they have no power to change.
On De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves: What do you make of the fact that the film spends so much time on apparently ordinary activities—eating, walking, waiting, working, looking for addresses? Discuss one scene as an example.
Knowing that the film is neorealist, using real people rather than trained actors, the mundane everyday activities it shows give it a much more everyday feel, creating the effect that we are watching a father and son actually go through their day. It also gives us more time to focus on their reactions, highlighting the significance of their movements and the situations they are in. This also draws us to the characters’ frustration with poverty through the small, repetitive things they have to do. For example, the scene in the trattoria where they eat lunch (around 1:02:00) spends several minutes simply showing Antonio and Bruno eating. The scene is important because their ordinary meal becomes an escape from their search for the bicycle that has caused so much stress throughout the rest of the film. It also gives us a chance to see the warmth of their relationship, as Antonio and Bruno can briefly enjoy being together despite the stress of their situation. At the same time, Bruno also watches the wealthier boy eating a more elaborate meal, drawing focus to the economic differences between them. The film, therefore, uses these everyday activities to highlight the inequality between the classes through visual demonstration rather than just having the characters mention it verbally.
The film spends so much time on ordinary things because that’s the point, not because nothing important is happening. Most movies skip past the boring parts and go straight to the parts that move the story forward, but this film does the opposite. It lingers on waiting, walking, and searching. This shows that for Antonio, there’s no real difference between his everyday life and the crisis of losing the bike. His whole life has become the search, so these small, ordinary moments are actually where the movie’s meaning lives, not in some big dramatic scene. The scene right after the bike gets stolen shows this clearly (23:14). Before it was stolen, the bike gave Antonio real freedom, he didn’t have to wait in lines or rely on public transportation that clearly doesn’t work well for people like him, which we see the moment he tries to cut the bus line and can’t even get on. Once the bike is gone, he’s stuck back with everyone else, ordinary and powerless, just like before he had it. Walking home with his son afterward shows the same thing: it’s slow and tiring, but that’s exactly what his life goes back to without the bike (I presume), no shortcuts, no freedom, just walking like everyone else. The movie doesn’t need a big emotional scene to show this loss.
Many of the “mundane” scenes in Ladri di Biciclette actually give important context to Antonio’s actions. As would become iconic of neorealism, Antonio’s character is markedly not perfect and consistently fails to achieve his goals, and the mounting pressure of providing for his family leads him to take actions he would otherwise be able to resist. An example of this is around (39:23) when Antonio and Bruno get out of the truck, the scene of them trudging through the rain is very dragged out, they struggle with their jackets pulled over their heads. This scene is on its surface irrelevant and mundane, however it exemplifies the struggle of life in Antonio’s shoes. Just as the rain is unpredictable and unavoidable, so was the theft of Antonio’s bike. We are unable to change the weather or effectively avoid getting wet while we’re outside; rain and theft are ordinary phenomena, and especially in cases like Antonio’s, there’s no apparent escape or salvation.
In “Bicycle Thieves”, De Sica spends a lot of time showing ordinary activities because he wants the audience to experience Antonio’s life as something real rather than as a dramatic story that only focuses on major events (as his search for the job or his search for the bicycle). Walking through the streets, waiting, eating, working, and searching for addresses may seem unimportant, but they show how exhausting everyday life can become when someone is poor and desperate. This is also an important characteristic of Italian Neorealism: the film pays attention to ordinary people and the realities of daily life.
A good example is the scene in which Antonio and Bruno stop searching for the bicycle and go to a restaurant. [01:02:06] For a short time, the main plot almost disappears. We watch them sit down, eat, talk, and observe the people around them. Bruno notices a wealthier boy at another table who can eat much more freely than he can. Nothing particularly dramatic happens, but the scene tells us a lot about Antonio and Bruno’s economic situation and their relationship. Antonio tries to give Bruno a moment of happiness even though he can barely afford it, while the contrast with the wealthy family makes their poverty much more visible. The scene also reminds us that Bruno is still a child despite being involved in his father’s desperate search.
By spending so much time on moments like this, De Sica makes the eventual tragedy more powerful. Antonio’s stolen bicycle is not simply an object that moves the plot forward; it threatens his ability to work, support his family, and live an ordinary life. The film therefore suggests that, for people living in poverty, even the most ordinary activities are connected to larger questions of dignity, class, and survival.
This film focuses on ordinary activities to make the film feel more realistic to show exactly how difficult everyday life can be for the working class people. One example is when Antonio and Bruno search through the market for the stolen bike. They spend an unusually long time walking around and looking at different bicycles and individual bike parts hoping to find something that belongs to Antonio’s bike. This scene is very repetitive and there is not a lot of dramatic action, but that’s what makes it so important. The viewers experience how exhausting and frustrating the search is for the bike with Antonio and Bruno. It also shows how something as basic as a bicycle can become really important when a person’s job and need to support their family depends on it. De Sica makes Antonio’s struggle feel more realistic and personal by spending so much time on this part of the search.
From a purely emotional perspective, the film not skipping small details of the story made me feel more for Antonio. It sucked me into his world and his point of view because I am not just an omniscient observer; I am experiencing all the setbacks with him. I am walking, searching, losing hope, chasing old men, right along with him.
The scene after Antonio realizes he can’t have the kid arrested and can’t have his bike back: he walks out of town and goes to a busier side of the city. Once there, the film spends so much time on him either standing or sitting as he contemplates whether he should steal a bike or not. That sequence was probably way longer than it needed to be, but it made me feel like I decided along with him.
I would like to discuss the scene that occurs at 1:01:05-1:02:30, which depicts Antonio and Bruno taking a break from searching for the bicycle to sit down and eat at a restaurant. This scene spends time showing the two characters eating, and it focuses on Bruno not knowing how to cut his food with a fork and knife in contrast to a boy from a wealthier family who eats properly at another table. He also compares the family’s large meal to what little he and his father can afford. By focusing on something as ordinary as eating, De Sica highlights the class differences that shape Antonio and Bruno’s everyday lives. The scene also briefly allows them to act like a normal father and son, making their difficult situation feel even more human and showing how poverty affects even the simplest parts of daily life. The frequency of these ordinary scenes throughout the film reflects the style of Italian Neorealism, which emphasizes natural portrayals of everyday life rather than highly dramatic or staged action. By allowing the camera to linger on simple actions that might normally be cut from a film, De Sica makes the film feel like an observation of real life.
I think the “ordinary” time is what makes this film different. I think it represents the overall narrative of the movie, as it alludes to the feeling of having lost something. It is those moments that show the reality of Antonio’s life. He has lost his bike, and is forced to slow down, looking for it in those small, unremarkable moments. Whether he is walking block after block, waiting in lines, checking addresses that lead nowhere, the slowness we feel as a viewer is not wasted time, but emphasizing his loss. Without the bike, everything takes longer, everything is harder, and the film makes us sit in that difficulty instead of skipping past it. I think the scene right before the ending, around 1:19:30, captures this perfectly. Antonio and Bruno, after following leads, were unable to find the bike, and were confronted and threatened, with little help from the police. Having been the focus of the movie only to turn up empty-handed, they feel a strong sense of disappointment and purpose. The film communicates this, by letting them just walk. Several scenes of Antonio walking and Bruno struggling to keep up show us how the characters are feeling in this moment. Nothing is said, and nothing really happens, but I find this is the exact point. We’re watching Antonio confront, in real time, everything he’s lost and how far out of his grasp it still is. The stillness of these moments communicates this better than words ever could.
By spending so much time on ordinary activities, De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves allows the viewer to gain a better understanding of Antonio’s situation and a greater attachment to the characters. For example, in the scene where a sudden rainstorm hits while Antonio and Bruno are out searching for the bicycle, we see people all over the street reacting differently, some running for cover under archways, a group of seminarians huddling together, everyone just trying to get out of the rain (43:39). Through this scene, we are able to understand that Antonio and Bruno are just two people among many in this city, and their problem doesn’t really matter to anyone else around them. Additionally, once the rain stops, the street quickly goes back to normal, as if nothing happened at all, which makes Antonio’s situation feel even more small and isolating in comparison. Although this scene doesn’t really progress the plot, it reveals something about the world Antonio is living in. The city keeps moving whether or not he finds his bike, and that contrast makes his struggle feel even heavier.
The trattoria scene works because it lets the film stop moving (around 1:02). For most of the picture Antonio and Bruno are in motion as they walk, chase, and search. Therefore, the decision to sit down and eat registers as a deliberate break in rhythm. De Sica uses the pause to show that Antonio is actually trying to protect the ability to feed his son and sit across from him without shame. The class contrast seems to be handled through behavior. Bruno struggles with the stringy mozzarella while the boy at the next table manages his meal easily. The difference reads as learned habit rather than moral failing. Nothing is stated and the camera simply lets both children exist in the same frame. Rather than dramatizing poverty through crisis, these ordinary activities show this through engrained actions.
Within Bicycle Thieves, Antonio Ricci spends as much of the time looking for his bicycle as he does getting lost, getting a ride from a garbageman, looking for Bruno in the streets, and eating. In doing so, De Sica more accurately represented the experience of a working-class man in post-war Rome. The scene that most stood out to me was the trip from one bicycle market to another at roughly 39:22. Where a typical movie may have skipped over the trip entirely, Antonio and the driver’s conversation is included for around a minute. The scene is set up by Antonio’s friend telling the driver to take him to the other market. A director could then reasonably cut to them getting out of the truck or in the market without including the transit at all. In this scene, though, the viewer rides along with Antonio as the garbageman complains about the rain on his day off and his hatred of movies. We hear him gripe about being stuck at home on the one day he didn’t have to work afternoons because it rained every Sunday. For a high-stakes search, it was a mundane moment that slowed the pace down. This happened in other points throughout the movie, and I believe it helped build emotional depth and complexity within Antonio and Bruno, as well as help the movie’s contemporaries position themselves within the chase.
I found it particularly interesting when Bazin discusses the use of nonprofessional actors, explaining that they are “naturally chosen for their suitability for the part,” sometimes because “there is some parallel between the role and their lives.” I think this casting choice might add spontaneity and authenticity to the plot because the actors are not simply performing an unfamiliar character. Instead, aspects of their own lives and experiences may resemble those of the people they portray. This could make their reactions feel more natural and less rehearsed, contributing to the “extraordinary feeling of truth” that Bazin associates with Italian neorealist films. This approach also makes the boundary between fiction and reality less obvious. Viewers may feel that they are watching real people experiencing real situations rather than actors performing a carefully constructed story. For me, this helps explain why neorealist films can feel almost similar to documentaries while still telling fictional and emotionally powerful stories.
The idea that stuck with me is Bazin’s claim that the basic unit of these films isn’t the shot but the “fact”, a piece of reality that’s ambiguous by itself and only means something once your mind puts it next to other pieces. He describes watching them as leaping “from stone to stone in crossing a river.” Classical editing hands you the connections already made. Here you have to make them yourself as you watch. It’s a shift from the film explaining an event to the film just presenting it.
What I’m less sure about is his claim that this gets the director out of the way. He says it’s no longer the editing that selects what we see but the mind of the spectator. But someone still chose which stones to put in the river and how far apart. The gaps are arranged too. That doesn’t make him wrong, it just makes the control harder to see.
Bazin’s main argument is that Italian Neo-Realism creates the “realistic” elements of film through its usage of working-class actors, and the placement of those actors in real world environments. Instead of moving and directing the camera heavily, Bazin argues that Italian Neo-Realists let the scene unfurl in front of the camera. “Bicycle Thieves” was shot on location in post-war Rome for this specific reason. The poverty ridden areas and crowded streets we see feel like real locations that the father wanders through. For example, at the beginning of the film, we see the crowded streets of men looking for work, while the main character seems to drown into the sea of desperation. Bazin believes that here, the crowd is more important than the star himself. His criticism can also be applied to the rise of the Hollywood star system in America, which was occurring around the same time of “Bicycle Thieves” release. Bazin believes that realism comes from the idea of allowing audiences to experience the world surrounding the characters, not just the characters themselves.
One thing that Bazin says about neorealism that I find most fascinating is the idea that realism does not mean putting a camera in front of ordinary reality. In fact, Bazin claims that neorealism still involves construction of aesthetics. While the director can choose what he wants to film, the only difference is that in neorealist cinema he does not try to impose a moralistic or dramatic construction on reality.
This becomes evident when considering Bicycle Thieves. From the outset, the plot would be easy to turn into a sentimental melodrama about an innocent father victimized by both poverty and crime. However, the movie complicates this initial moral construct gradually through the development of the plot. While at first Antonio seems to be doing everything he can to catch the one who steals his bicycle, by the end of the movie he tries to steal a bike himself. The purpose here is not to imply that Antonio becomes an evil person but to demonstrate how poverty puts ordinary people into both roles of the moral dilemma.
This relates to Bazin’s argument that films belonging to the neorealism school do not allow people to be reduced to symbols where we have easy judgment. Antonio, Bruno, and even the crowd around them share the same social reality. I think this makes for a strong ending because it does not resolve the situation and point out who the culprit is, but rather, keeps Antonio’s embarrassment in the larger world.
Germi’s Divorce Italian Style asks us (viewers) to root for a murder. Trace the specific techniques — voiceover, cross-cutting, music, casting… — that manufacture this complicity, and consider how these techniques conjure up an ethical stance different than the neorealist films we have watched.
Despite the techniques, I still found myself rooting for Ferdinando to be stopped and arrested, nevertheless there are some interesting shots that frame things in a positive light for Fefè. I think an excellent example of this the dichotomy between the two scenes at 20:10 and 22:15 respectively. When Angela is shown, (Ironically) Angelic lighting and sounds surround her, we can see just how strongly Ferdinando is drawn to Angela. In stark contrast, when the scene shows us Ferdinando’s daydream/fantasy, Rosalia is shown covered in dirt, screaming dreadfully, while goofy music plays. The techniques used in these two scenes convey the drastic difference in Ferdinando’s inner feelings without the need for the voiceover.
The techniques used in Divorzio all’Italiana differ from those used in the neorealist movies we’ve seen so far, scenes are more dramatized — we see into daydreams and hear inner monologues — as a whole there is much less of a “Show, don’t tell” philosophy. The ethical stance is much different than films like ladri di biciclette. Antonio was also planning to do morally condemnable actions, however the focus was on understanding why he was forced to do them. In Divorzio all’Italiana, we are not called to have genuine pity for Ferdinando but instead to laugh at his predicament and the ridiculous ways he tries to resolve it.
Germi’s Divorce Italian Style uses editing, close-ups, sound, and exaggerated characterization to make the audience complicit in Ferdinando’s desire to murder his wife, Rosalia. A particularly clear example occurs around minute 22, when Ferdinando brings Rosalia the flowers that he had actually gone to pick with Angela. Rosalia is sunbathing and almost completely covered in sand, and Ferdinando stares at her. The film first gives us a close-up of Ferdinando’s face as he looks at his wife and then cuts directly to his fantasy of murdering her. A very similar sequence occurs around minute 17. I think the close-up is especially important because it acts as a transition between reality and fantasy. In fact, by showing Ferdinando staring at Rosalia before cutting to the imagined murder, the film allows us to understand that what follows is taking place inside his mind rather than in reality. At the same time, this editing technique places us inside Ferdinando’s perspective. Instead of simply observing him from the outside, we are invited to see Rosalia through his eyes and then enter his fantasy. Because this pattern is repeated, the audience gradually becomes familiar with his murderous imagination, and the idea of killing Rosalia is transformed into a recurring comic joke.
This ethical stance is very different from that of the neorealist films we have watched. In Bicycle Thieves, for example, although Antonio is poor and desperate, the film does not morally justify his final attempt to steal a bicycle; instead, we are asked to understand the circumstances that push him toward the act while still recognizing that the act is wrong. Divorce Italian Style, by contrast, uses comedy and Ferdinando’s subjective perspective to make the audience almost root for his immoral plan, creating a much more uncomfortable form of complicity between the viewer and the protagonist.
One of the main ways this film makes us complicit in Fefè’s plan is through the voiceover, which gives us access to his thoughts and allows us to understand his reasoning. Even though his plan is disturbing and would definitely be seen as an exaggeration of the next steps to take, we begin to see the situation from his perspective. The anonymous letters are also important because he uses them to expose his wife’s affair while hiding his own involvement and plan. The film’s cross-cutting and music also help make us anticipate the murder rather than fear it. The editing creates suspense, while the music is much more comedic and playful, making the situation feel more lighthearted than a classic tragedy. Additionally, the casting of Fefè also plays an important role, as his charming and comic acting makes him appear more likeable than a classic stone-hearted villain.
This differs from the neorealist films we have seen, for example, ‘Bicycle Thieves’, where the film encourages us to empathise with Antonio and his desperate search for the bike. In ‘Divorce Italian Style’, we identify with the person causing the harm, which puts us on the other side of the situation through the use of more subtle comedy. Although we know that murder is a very drastic step and very wrong, the way the movie tells the story and builds anticipation helps us to want the act to be committed in order for the story to have a successful ending.
Germi’s primary strategy for making viewers justify the murder is to bring us inside Fefè’s mind. He desires Angela but believes he can’t pursue her because of his marriage, honor, law, catholicism, etc. His situation doesn’t necessarily make him a victim, but through his internal monologue, we’re made to believe that he is. The fact that his wife, Rosalia, is portrayed as extremely obnoxious and annoying helps with persuading the audience as well. His inner thoughts paint Rosalia as an obstacle in the way of his happiness with Angela.
I also noticed the music for when Fefè was imagining Rosalia dying on the beach was upbeat, if not silly. It kind of lightened the weight of her death. Then, again near the end of the movie, right after Carmelino’s wife had killed him and Fefè shoots his wife, the music isn’t somber or anything; rather, it is still a little whimsical.
I think overall that the movie paints Fefè as a fool, obviously, in the end, when it’s revealed that all of this trouble was essentially for nothing because Angela’s probably fooling around or has fallen in love with someone else, but because the movie made it extremely obvious to us that his problems were all self-created.
I think neorealist films show us how unjust the world is through suffering and the inability to change one’s situation, while Germi’s film leans the other way and shows how injustice can easily be justified. It implicitly communicates that injustice, in the end, will not end well, but also shows us how it can be pleasurable through Fefè’s “success.”
What makes it work is that we hear the whole plan from inside Fefè’s head. The voiceover lets him explain everything in a calm, reasonable tone, so by the time he’s plotting to kill his wife it almost sounds logical. The daydreams where he imagines getting rid of her are played for laughs, which makes the idea feel harmless before it’s real.
The casting does a lot too. Fefè is Mastroianni, who’s charming no matter what he’s doing, while his wife is made to look and act as unappealing as possible, so the film basically tells you whose side to be on. The upbeat music keeps everything light even when the plot is literally about murder.
That’s the opposite of the neorealist films. Bicycle Thieves wants you to sit with a character and understand his situation. Divorce Italian Style wants you to laugh along with someone doing something awful, and then realize the real joke is the law he’s using, which went easy on “honor” killings.
I think the voice over is the main instrument Germi uses to make the viewer complicit to Fefe’s plans. The many murder fantasies that we see throughout the film contribute to this, allowing us to envision how easy and satisfying it would be for him to just get rid of Rosalia.
One thing I noticed is how at the end of the courtroom scene, it hard cuts to Fefè sipping an espresso, making the three year minimum seem like nothing to him. A small price to pay for murder, this reinforces how the film is a comedy, and makes light of the situation. The film ends on Fefè looking completely satisfied as it seems he has gotten away with murder and married Angela, but in the final scene, we see her playing footsie with another man under the table. Ending the movie like this is almost comedic, as Fefè spent the whole movie convincing us that killing Rosalia and marrying Angela would finally give him control over his life, and everything would be perfect. But the ending shows he’s already losing control and things are not what they seem. Bicycle Thieves take the opposite approach, making us sit with Antonio’s suffering and his powerlessness, and question why the world is unfair. This film on the other hand, uses comedy, cuts, and a voice over, to make the viewer complicit with the criminal acts and injustice.
Germi makes us complicit in Fefè’s murder plot through layered techniques. The voiceover lets him explain his plan in a calm, reasonable tone, casting him as a victim of marriage, honor, and law, so murder comes to sound almost logical. Editing reinforces this: close-ups of Fefè staring at Rosalia cut straight into his fantasies of killing her, placing us inside his perspective and turning her death into a recurring joke. The contrast between Angela’s angelic lighting and Rosalia buried in sand makes his desire and disgust visible. The music stays playful and whimsical, even after the shooting, lifting the weight of death. Casting completes the effect: Mastroianni’s charm makes Fefè likeable, while Rosalia is made deliberately unappealing.
This stance differs sharply from neorealism. Bicycle Thieves asks us to understand Antonio’s desperation while still seeing his theft as wrong, and to sit with his powerlessness in an unjust world. Germi instead invites us to laugh alongside the person causing harm. Yet the complicity is a trap. The satire targets the “honor” killing law Fefè exploits, and the ending, with Angela flirting with another man, turns the joke back on him and on us for rooting for him.
Germi makes us weirdly sympathize with Fefè’s desire to kill his wife by presenting his violent thoughts almost like romantic fantasies— this helps justify his intentions. The music is often soft and sentimental, which clashes with what is actually happening and makes his obsession seem more playful than disturbing. After he stabs Rosalia, for example, the cutaway of her body being boiled into soap is so exaggerated that it becomes darkly funny instead of horrifying. Since we see the situation largely through Fefè’s imagination, we are meant to understand and even quietly root for him. This is very different from The Children Are Watching Us and Scipio Africanus, where the realistic style encourages us to focus on the suffering of ordinary people and the consequences of violence. Germi uses comedy to make us participate in Fefè’s warped way of thinking, forcing us to notice how easily we can accept something morally terrible when it is presented as entertaining/not serious.
The style of this film almost makes the audience root for Ferdinando even though what he is doing is clearly wrong. I also believe the casting of Ferdinando makes the character seem more likable even though he is planning a murder. His voiceover lets us hear his thoughts and understand his plan from his point of view which helps us understand his perspective of things. It made me feel more involved in the situation with him. The type of music and humor also make the situation seem that it’s not as serious but more entertaining. The way the scenes are cross-cutting builds a lot more tension because of the going back and forth between each part of his plan.
This is very different from the neorealist films where we watch normal people struggle with situations they have little to no control over. Those films make us feel more sympathy for the suffering of the characters. However, Germi tries to put us on the side of someone who is obviously doing something morally wrong. It made me question why I was eager for his plan to be successful even though I know it’s morally wrong.
My impression of this reading is that some movie types such as “commedia all’italiana” were much more than a form of entertainment. I found it interesting that comedy was used to discuss important changes happening in Italian society after World War II. These movies made people laugh, but at the same time they criticized social class, consumerism, gender roles, and the differences between northern and southern Italy. I was especially interested in this reading because I watched Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all’italiana). The relationship between Filumena and Domenico Soriano reflects some of the social class differences discussed in the reading. Soriano has more money and social power, while Filumena has a much less privileged position and has to fight to gain respect and security. I also found it interesting that women in these comedies are often presented as strong and intelligent. Overall, the reading helped me understand how Italian comedy uses humor and relationships to explore serious social problems.
The disturbing aspect of Divorce Italian Style is not just the fact that Fefè desires the death of his wife, but that Germi teaches us how to think the way he does. With the voiceover, murder becomes something like an intimate conversation between the character and the viewer. We do not watch him from a distance but learn to rationalize everything he does as he tries to solve a difficult problem in a smart manner. The constant cuts from looking at Rosalia to fantasizing about murdering her only help to make us feel that there is nothing criminal about the act.
The comedy in the film complicates this matter even further since we become involved emotionally in enjoying it. With the light background music, the fantasies, and the charisma of Marcello Mastroianni, we have all the reason to like him. The wife is represented as annoying and physically unattractive.
This produces a completely different ethical perspective than what is seen in neorealism. In Bicycle Thieves, Antonio’s attempt at stealing takes on a painful aspect due to the fact that the film requires us to understand Antonio without making the act moral. In the case of Germi, he does just about the opposite. He takes a morally reprehensible act and makes it enjoyable to watch, thereby showing the susceptibility of style to manipulating our sympathy.
Divorce, Italian Style plays on many of the developments in Italian cinema to create a palatable hit while shepherding in a deeper message about morality and several neorealist themes. The film uses Northern and foreign stereotypes about Southern Italy to enhance the comedy, hoping for wider distribution. While it was a hit in the South, it also reached farther. This reflected the goal of competing against American films domestically and reaching other European markets.
However, the film also describes in it’s own way the fall in sway of the Catholic Church as the priest commands his parish to avoid going to see “La Dolce Vita” and they do anyway. Also, the dueling main political parties are featured, one as the tool of the church, the other supporting the immoral affair of Rosalia. The communist, supporting Rosalia, admits to having never been this far south, and is completely out-of-step with the local Sicilians.
Celli and Cottino-Jones describe the early 1960s as a time where Italy was becoming more modern while many older social traditions remained in place. The economic period brought industrialization increased migration from the South to the North, but these changes also created major cultural changes. Italian cinema reflected this tension through the “commedia all’italiana” which used comedy to expose contradictions within Italian society.
Divorce Italian Style is a good example of this because Germi specifically focuses on the conflict between modern life and the traditional social tropes of Southern Italy. Celli and Cottino-Jones identify the film as one of the movies that examines the contrast between modernity and the older tropes of the South. Fefè wants to escape his marriage and pursue Angela, but he is trapped by ideas about honor, marriage, and masculinity. What makes this especially effective is that Germi turns these serious social problems into comedy. We laugh at Fefè’s ridiculous plan even though the system he is using allows him to get away with murder. Like the “commedia all’italiana” described in the reading, the film uses an entertaining story to expose the contradictions of a society caught between its traditional past and its modernizing present.
In addition to voiceover, cross-cutting, music, and casting, Germi uses close-ups, point-of-view shots, fantasy sequences, and quick editing to place the audience in Ferdinando’s perspective. The voiceover is especially important because it gives us direct access to Ferdinando’s private thoughts, making the audience feel like a confidant in his plan rather than an outside observer.
Close-ups of his reactions to Rosalia and scenes showing his imagined ways of killing her make his thoughts feel almost like a joke shared with the viewer. This is very different from the more realistic and observational style of neorealism because Germi actively manipulates our perspective, using comedy to make us go along with Ferdinando while also criticizing the society that makes his plan seem reasonable.
L’avventura was booed at its Cannes premiere in 1960 and then won a jury prize, later becoming a canonical work of modern cinema. Why might audiences at the time have found it frustrating?
I’d say the audience was frustrated by L’Avventura mainly because it refused to give them the story they thought they were watching. The film opens like a mystery, with a woman vanishing on a remote island, and viewers expect the usual finding of clues, a search, and ultimately finding out what happened to her. Instead, Antonioni lets the disappearance fade away as the characters lose interest and start an affair, and Anna is never found or explained. Long, quiet takes, unlikable characters, and an ambiguous ending with no clear resolution added to the sense that the film was aimless or unfinished.
I think audiences at the time found L’Avventura frustrating because the film sets up Anna’s disappearance as the main plot, making us expect that we will eventually find out what happened to her. However, as the film goes on, this becomes less important, and we never actually find out where she went, as we see the focus shift to Claudia and Sandro’s relationship and attraction to each other. This is especially frustrating because their relationship begins while Anna is still missing, making their actions feel uncomfortable and difficult to understand. The film is also very long, with lots of long shots and slower-paced scenes, which makes it feel less worth watching since there is no clear conclusion at the end. I think that having so many things left unexplained at the end of this movie is probably part of why the film became so influential, because it challenges the audience’s expectations of what a film should be and achieve.
I think that the audience may have found L’Avventura frustrating because the film does not give the viewers what they want. The main plot starts off with Anna’s disappearance so therefore the audience expects to eventually find out what happened to her. However, the search for anna slowly becomes less important and her disappearance is never fully explained. The film shifts its focus to the relationship between Anna’s boyfriend, Sandro, and Claudia. Instead of focusing on the main mystery the film focuses more on the characters relationship. This can be very confusing to the audience because it is left open ended which is not a satisfying ending for the audience.
I think audiences in 1960 were frustrated because L’avventura sets up a mystery and then never solves it. Anna disappears early in the film, and you expect the rest of the movie to be about finding her. Instead Sandro and Claudia search for a while, end up in a relationship, and Anna is never found. For people used to movies where a problem gets introduced and then resolved, that probably felt like a letdown.
The pacing is also slow. A lot of the film is people wandering, looking, and waiting, with long stretches where not much happens. Audiences expecting a normal plot would have gotten impatient.
So I get why people booed. The film doesn’t give the audience what it expects. But that’s probably also why it won the jury prize and became a classic, since it makes the unanswered question part of the point.
I think audiences in 1960 may have found L’Avventura frustrating because it goes against almost everything they expected a film to do. Anna’s disappearance seems like it will drive the story, but instead of building suspense, the film lets long moments play out where very little happens, like characters wandering through empty towns or staring at the landscape. These scenes can feel pointless at first, but they create a sense of emptiness that matches how disconnected the characters are from each other. Antonioni also often frames the characters as small against buildings or the rocky island, which makes the setting feel just as important as the people. At the time, Italian cinema was known for neorealism, which focused on everyday struggles and clear social messages, so a slow film about bored, wealthy people probably seemed strange. I think the same qualities that frustrated audiences are what made critics quickly recognize it as something new.
Audiences at the time may have found L’Avventura frustrating because it goes against the expectations of the traditional film. The film begins with Anna’s disseapearence which suggests the plot will follow that mystery as the chracters try to figure out what happened. But as the film goes on the search for Anna fades and is almost forgotten. Instead, the film shifts towards a plot focused on Claudia and Sandro and Antonioni focuses on the characters’ emotions and unstable relationships. We never find out what happens to Anna. Even the ending avoids closure when Sandro betrays Claudia but instead of a confrontation she simply places her hand on his head as he cries. For an audience expecting a mystery with answers, the slow pace of the film and the unresolved dissapearence with an ambiguous ending may have felt frsutrating.
I believe that audiences at the time may have found L’Avventura frustrating because the movie does not follow the structure of a traditional story. At the beginning, Anna is one of the main characters. She goes on a trip with her boyfriend Sandro, her friend Claudia, and other people, including Giulia. During the trip, Anna suddenly disappears. Normally, the audience would expect the rest of the movie to focus on finding Anna and discovering what happened to her. However, L’Avventura does not give us a clear answer. Anna’s disappearance slowly becomes less important to the characters and to the story.
Instead, the movie begins to focus more on Claudia and Sandro. As they search for Anna, they become attracted to each other and eventually begin a relationship. This can be uncomfortable because Anna is Claudia’s friend and Sandro’s girlfriend. The audience may keep waiting for Anna to return or for the mystery to be solved, but this never becomes the main point of the film again.
The movie is also slow and contains long scenes where very little happens. For audiences in 1960, this unusual storytelling style probably felt confusing and unsatisfying. However, these choices also made the film innovative because it focuses more on emotions, relationships, and uncertainty than on solving Anna’s disappearance.
Audiences may have found L’avventura frustrating because Antonioni makes it difficult to emotionally connect with the characters. Even after Anna disappears, the people closest to her often seem strangely detached, and Claudia and Sandro quickly become focused on their attraction to each other. Instead of showing strong grief or urgency, Antonioni presents characters who struggle to form meaningful connections and often seem bored or unsatisfied. This emotional coldness may have made their behavior feel uncomfortable or even unlikeable to audiences at the time, especially compared with films that gave viewers clear characters to sympathize with.
After watching “L’avventura”, I agree with the article that the movie has a very unusual relationship with time. The movie often feels extremely slow, and sometimes it seems like nothing important is happening. At first, I found this frustrating because I expected Anna’s disappearance to become the main mystery of the story. I thought Claudia and Sandro would continue searching for her and eventually discover what happened. Instead, as time passes, Anna becomes less important to the characters and to the story. I found the article’s idea of the “disappearance of the disappearance” especially interesting. Anna does not only physically disappear; slowly, people also stop focusing on the fact that she disappeared.
I also noticed how much empty space there is in the movie. The characters are often surrounded by large landscapes, buildings, or empty areas. This made them seem small and sometimes lonely. I think this also reflects their emotions and their difficulty connecting with each other. After reading the article, I understand better why the movie is so slow. The long scenes and lack of action are not necessarily unnecessary. They make the viewer experience time, waiting, and uncertainty together with the characters. Even though I sometimes found the movie frustrating, I think its unusual style makes it interesting.
I think audiences may have found L’Avventura frustrating because Antonioni sets up a story that seems like it will have a clear mystery, but then shifts attention away from Anna’s disappearance. Instead of focusing on finding her, the film becomes more interested in Claudia and Sandro’s relationship and the emptiness of their lives. The long shots, and lack of a clear resolution can make the film feel like nothing is really happening, especially for audiences expecting a traditional narrative. Hamish Ford’s article connects this to Deleuze’s idea of the “time-image,” where the film becomes less focused on action and more focused on showing waiting, and uncertainty. I think this helps explain why the film can feel frustrating, since Antonioni intentionally makes the audience experience the same sense of aimlessness as the characters.
Sarris’s auteur theory seems at first to be constructed around control. The director leaves a recognizable personality on the film, transforming technique and style into a kind of signature. But Ford’s account of L’Avventura hints at something. Perhaps Antonioni’s signature is his refusal to allow anyone, including the director, to fully master what is happening.
What makes L’Avventura “Antonioni” is not that he tells us what is happening in the world, but that he repeatedly refrains from imposing order on what a conventional filmmaker would. Anna disappears, the urgency of the search is lost, empty places outlive the people who inhabit them, and time goes on after the narrative usefulness seems to have run its course. This Ford does through Deleuze’s time-image, where characters are no longer agents who translate perception into action. You can see the film’s authorship in these acts of withdrawal, no solution, no stable center, no guarantee that what once seemed important will remain important.
I think audiences at Cannes found L’avventura frustrating because it looks like a mystery and then drops it after the audience had become familiar with a set of characters. Hamish Ford explains this through Deleuze’s concept of “time-image”. tThe film cares less about action and more about waiting, tiredness, and empty space, creating an anxious effect. The film also plays with what Pascal Bonitzer calls “the disappearance of the disappearance,” where we forget Anna almost as quickly as the characters do, as the film illustrates our tendency to forget, through the passage of time.
Moreover, Farber’s essay in Film Culture suggests the frustration wasn’t only about being unfamiliar with a new style. He criticizes Antonioni for stretching scenes and pushing significance on the viewer. While this is the same slowness Ford defends, based on the reaction of audience’s alike, it certainly does not make for an entertaining film.
Audiences at Cannes in 1960 may have found L’Avventura frustrating because it breaks the promise it seems to make at the start. The film opens with Anna vanishing on a barren island, which sets viewers up for a mystery. The search gradually loses urgency and Anna is simply forgotten, both by the characters and by the film. Her disappearance is never explained. In place of the mystery, Antonioni shifts attention to the affair between Sandro and Claudia, which begins while Anna is still missing. Their detachment and lack of grief make them hard to sympathize with, so viewers are denied both a satisfying plot and characters they can emotionally invest in. The long takes, slow pacing, and lingering shots of empty landscapes add to the sense that nothing is happening. Even the ending refuses closure, and after Sandro’s betrayal, Claudia silently places her hand on his head rather than confronting him. For an audience used to clear narratives with resolution, the film likely felt aimless or unfinished. However, this refusal of order is what made it influential. By making viewers experience the characters’ uncertainty and emptiness, Antonioni challenged assumptions about what a film should deliver.
L’avventura produces distress for the same reason as a college grad worries about leaving campus. It positions us in a wide world with little to no direction, simply following the whims of the main characters as Sandro moves from his wife to Claudia and beyond. The film leaves a viewer uncertain as any assumption they can make is thrown out. Under conventional plot structure, Sandro may have started seeing Claudia, but later Anna would find them and either follow the way of Divorce, Italian Style, or reconcile with Sandro.
This film instead follows the death of Anna and Sandro’s romance and picks up again with Claudia and Sandro, at first a tragic marital struggle for attention before being diverted to a new romance. It is also frustrating because none of the characters change or learn. Claudia watched Anna and Sandro and moved in at the first available opportunity. Sandro refused to sort out issues with Anna, and then flirted with another woman after Claudia (even if he felt regret). In a world where the average audience member sees consequences for their actions, none of the characters in l’Avventura ever will. Their wealth makes them untouchable by the real world, so they just go from one hedonistic desire to the next, not worrying about what may happen tomorrow. They quickly forget the past and rarely remember there will be a future.
There are many reasons I can think of that might have frustrated audiences at the time, and even now. As a lot of people have mentioned in their posts, the huge hole in the plot is one of the main points of frustration. Antonioni spends the beginning of the movie setting up a character and contextualizing her for the viewers just to act like she never existed for the rest of the movie and for the main character to be completely changed by the end. Another point of frustration, at least one I felt, was the ambiguity of time. The obvious cue of days passsing and time elapsing felt absent to me. It felt like the same day as Anna’s disappearnace but at the same time it also felt like years had passed because the characters seem so apathetic to her disappearance and presumed death. This was discussed in Hamish Ford’s article; he described Deleuze’s time-image cinema, where time is felt instead of communicated directly.
Sarris’s essay on auteur theory helps explain how audience expectations can collide with a director’s vision. In L’avventura, Antonioni’s lingering shots, empty spaces, and attention to bodies and surroundings make a distinctive directorial vision central to the experience.
Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 moves among at least four registers: the “real” present at the spa, memories of childhood, dreams, and waking fantasies. Choose one transition between registers and describe precisely how Fellini signals it (or refuses to signal it). Why might he blur these boundaries rather than mark them clearly? Please timestamp the scene you are discussing.
Around 1:01:44, Guido speaks with the Cardinal. Guido introduces a situation with his producer. The Cardinal points out a bird called the Diomedeo and tells Guido that, according to legend, the birds gather to mourn Diomedes. Guido looks toward the birds; then a woman comes down the hill. He watches her, adjusts his glasses, lowers his eyes, and smiles. A whistle sounds, and Fellini cuts to a priest’s whistle in the schoolyard: Guido is now a boy, and the other boys call him to go see Saraghina. The cut and whistle move us into memory, but the adult Guido’s smile provides the link rather than a clear announcement that we have entered a flashback. The woman and Guido’s smile provide a more immediate bridge into the childhood memory. Only after collecting the context does the transition piece come together. By letting the cues flow together, Fellini makes the transition feel like an association arising in Guido’s mind.
I would like to discuss the scene timestamped at 0:20:50–0:21:35. In this scene, Fellini moves from reality into memory/fantasy while Guido is sleeping in bed with a woman. An older woman, who we find out to be Guido’s mother, appears strangely waving her arms toward the wall, and instead of clearly signaling a transition, Fellini allows the setting to gradually transform into an outdoor space where Guido sees his mother and father. The shift feels fluid and almost unexplained, as though Guido’s surroundings are being reshaped by his thoughts. By refusing to clearly separate reality from memory or fantasy, Fellini places us inside Guido’s mind, where the past and present constantly overlap. This blurring shows how his memories, desires, and relationships with his parents remain part of how he experiences his present life.
The transition I picked is the opening dream into the “real” spa, which is the very first scene of the film (3:10-4:10). The movie starts with Guido stuck in his car in a traffic jam in a tunnel. It’s completely silent, the car fills with smoke, and he can’t get out, until he suddenly floats up out of the car and flies over the traffic and out over a beach. A man on the beach pulls him down by a rope tied to his leg like a kite, and right as he falls there’s a hard cut to Guido in bed at the spa with doctors around him.
What’s interesting is that Fellini never signals that we’re entering a dream. There’s no fade, no blur, nothing. The film just starts there, and we only figure out it was a dream when he wakes up. I think he blurs it on purpose because the whole movie is about being inside Guido’s head. For a director with creative block, his dreams and memories are just as real to him as the spa, so Fellini makes us experience them the same way instead of separating them.
At roughly 40:00-41:00, Fellini moves from the present at the spa to Guido’s childhood memories. He is reminded of the phrase “asa nisi masa” which is repeated aloud and in that moment the film cuts to scene of young Guido running around his house trying to escape having a bath. The scene shows his childhood and how he had many women around him caring for him in his home. Fellini signals this transition through the change in setting and Guido’s new appearance as a child. The phrase “asa nisi masa” also signals the transition but we only learn of its meaning later in the scene. By allowing a private association to a saying to interupt the present, Fellinsi demonstrates how Guido’s memory plays a prominent role in his mind. His childhood is very important to him, particularly the memory of being cared for when he feels overwhelmed in his adult life.
Guido waits in line at the spa’s mineral spring while an orchestra plays Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and attendants hand out glasses of water. As he reaches the front, Fellini cuts to Claudia, dressed in white, walking toward him through the trees. The orchestra fades out, the crowd seems to disappear, and soft, dreamy music takes over. She smiles and offers him a glass of water like a figure of pure innocence. Then the attendant’s voice cuts in, and we are back with the ordinary spa girl, who is actually handing him the glass. Fellini signals the shift mainly through sound and light rather than through any editing device. There is no dissolve or blur. Instead, the noisy public soundscape is replaced by private music, and the harsh daylight becomes soft and glowing. The return is abrupt and comes through a voice rather than an image. Fellini blurs the boundary because the fantasy grows directly out of the real moment, since a woman offering water becomes his ideal woman offering water. This shows how Guido constantly transforms reality into the images he wants. For a director searching for his film, reality and imagination are inseparable raw material.
Fellini doesn’t use the usual tricks and signals we expect when a scene transitions from “reality” to a different register, but there still are ways he communicates with us when the fantasies start. There are no ripples on the screen, no harp playing before a flashback, no soft crossfades, nothing. The main way I have noticed Fellini subtly lets us know is through Guido’s gaze and a gradual change in music. For example, at 1 hr and 33 minutes, when Luisa, her friend, and Guido are all sitting outside at a table, Luisa confronts him about never telling the truth and figures out that he’s been fooling around with his mistress. The camera shows just a close-up of his face as he gazes into nothing, and music slowly starts to play. I think Fellini chooses to blur these lines between registers to show that even Guido is having a hard time distinguishing his reality from fantasy and memory. He’s trying to make this film but cannot extract the important information from the noise of this disorganized mind. Even in this very serious moment between him and his wife, he is caught up in a fantasy.
Fellini’s unorthodox — and sometimes jarring — changes in register obfuscate the main plot of 8 1/2, but also leave a lasting impression on us and become a defining feature of Fellini’s “Auteur” influence. An interesting example of this is towards the end of the movie at 2:07:45. In quick succession, we see Guido trying to escape while wielding his gun, a quick cut to a flashback, then another cut to him bleeding out having shot himself. The sequence ends and returns to the main plotline. This scene stood out to me particularly because of the imagery of the blood spilling from Guido’s head only for him to abruptly return in the next scene. To me, this transition conveyed an immense feeling of desperation yet futility, especially with it’s place at the end of the film. In this sense, blurring or completely removing the boundaries give us a more visceral sense of Guido’s mentality.
At 4 minutes the film moves from Guido’s dream to the present at the spa. In the dream, Guido is stuck in a traffic jam, in which he escapes by flying, and then gets pulled back down by a rope by men on the beach. When he wakes in his hotel bed, Fellini makes it clear that the flight was a dream but the feeling of being trapped carries straight across the transition. Guido is still surrounded by people and expectations he can’t easily escape, much like the men who tugged him back to earth. The setting changes, but his anxiety doesn’t. I think Fellini connects the two scenes to show that the dream isn’t just a break from Guido’s waking life; it gives us a vivid picture of how that life feels to him. The rope pulling Guido down lingers after he wakes up. He is still lying in bed, unable to escape pressures waiting for him.
In tomorrow’s class (October 7), we will cover the following:
1. Final presentations. The last four class meetings, from November 18 through December 2, will be devoted to your final presentations. With 17 students enrolled, please form groups of three or four by October 28. Each group will present on an Italian film of its choice, which you should select in advance and discuss with me. Presentations are limited to 30 minutes. Divide the work within your group so that all relevant aspects of the film are covered, including its historical context, the director’s style, and a formal analysis of specific scenes.
2. Fellini’s 8½. We will conclude our discussion of Fellini’s film by analyzing some of the sequences you wrote about on the blog.
3. Pasolini’s Teorema. We will introduce the main themes of Pasolini’s film, and we will continue our discussion of Teorema on October 14. That day, our guest will be Professor Mauro Resmini, Associate Professor of Film Studies and Italian Studies at the University of Maryland. His essay is the assigned reading for that class. Please use the blog to post any questions you have for Professor Resmini about Pasolini and the “ethics of autonomy.”
Around 2:10:00-2:16:00, towards the end of the film, the final production leads into the circle dance. I found throughout this film Fellini had relied on harsher cuts or very unreasonable actions to indicate if this was a dream state or reality. This scene is unique I find, because it has no clear point of where reality stops. Guido is still in the unfinished set, surrounded by the wreckage of his film and he decides to accept everything around him. The people from his life begin dancing in, and there’s nothing really to distinguish who is really there from those that only exist in his dreams. We see a childhood version of Guido, and I think its a reflection that Guido has given up trying to distinguish what is real and what is a dream. To us, the audience, and Guido, it is all just cinema, and I think thats what the circle dance really encapsulates at the end.
At roughly 3:00, Fellini cuts from Guido plunging toward the sea to his arm shooting up from a hotel bed. The cut itself is a conventional signal as the falling dreamer jolts awake. Additionally, the sound makes the transition apparent as the dream is nearly silent while reality is noisy. Yet in the dream we never see Guido’s face, and Fellini keeps withholding it after he wakes. Strangers enter his bedroom, a doctor examines him while asking about his next film, and Guido remains a shadowed figure being questioned. We don’t see his face until the bathroom mirror. The mirror is an interesting choice since mirrors can symbolize illusion and self examination. Our first look at Guido is an image of him and not the man himself. I think Fellini blurs the boundary because for Guido, a director, dreams and “reality” are both made of images, and neither feels more real.
I thought “Teorema” was a very strange but interesting film. What I found most interesting was how the arrival of the mysterious guest completely changes every member of the family. At first, the family seems wealthy and comfortable, but after the guest leaves, it becomes clear that each person is unhappy or missing something important in their life. I interpreted the guest as more than just a real person. To me, he represents something that gives each character a new sense of desire, freedom, or meaning, even if only temporarily.
I was especially interested in how differently the characters react after he leaves. Lucia tries to recreate her experience through other men, Pietro turns to art, Odetta completely withdraws, and Paolo eventually abandons his possessions and his previous identity. Emilia’s reaction is very different because her experience becomes almost religious.
Therefore, my question for Professor Mauro Resmini is: How does the idea of the “ethics of autonomy” help us understand what happens to the family after the guest leaves? Are the characters becoming autonomous and free, or does Pasolini suggest that complete freedom can also lead to emptiness and loss of identity?
One of the most interesting transitions in 8½ happens around 1:45:00, when Guido’s fantasy of living with all of the women in his life at the same time begins to take over. The scene starts with Guido surrounded by the women, who all accept this arrangement as normal. Fellini does not clearly separate this fantasy from reality with a traditional dream transition. Instead, the scene simply develops into something increasingly impossible, with women from different parts of Guido’s life appearing together in the same space. The playful music, exaggerated behavior, and unrealistic situation eventually make it obvious that we are in Guido’s imagination. I think Fellini blurs the boundary because the fantasy reveals how Guido actually views the women in his life. His imagination is not completely separate from reality, but rather it is built from his memories, desires, and relationships. By making the fantasy feel almost like another part of his everyday life, Fellini shows how difficult it is to separate what Guido wants from what he actually experiences. The scene also fits the larger idea of the film because Guido is constantly turning his own life into material for his imagination and filmmaking.
The final transition is at the press conference around 2:06 when the real world, Claudia, and his private delusions/visions all come together in the mirrored table and his retreat from the journalists. The camera moves in a way that makes Guido look small and the journalists look like a rabid pack, moving quickly across them and hovering on him. The camera goes between the producer, the mirrored table, and Guido, mixing reality with a reflection of it. Eventually, Guido pictures a gun in his pocket, crawling under the table and fantasizing about using it on himself. This transition aggressively blurs the line between reality of the press conference, him finding the gun he may have put there himself (or is imagining it) and the yelling for him on the beach. He retreats from the chaos and confusion before realizing that the chaos and confusion is the most creative.
The transition from Guido’s present to the past where the figure of the Saraghina appears in Guido’s memory turns out to be one of the most illustrative in the film 8½. However, Fellini does not mark it as an flashback and does not make the scene seem different from other sequences in the movie. The beach, the boys and their play with Saraghina seem much more active in this sense, and it seems like the event is continuing to influence Guido even now.
The most significant aspect of this scene is the fact that punishment is combined with pleasure. The boys have some money and use it for paying Saraghina in order to get her to dance. There is no doubt that this scene is playful and ritualistic. In this case, the discipline of the Catholic school follows, and the young Guido does not only understand that sexual intercourse is “wrong”. Moreover, desire gets linked to performance, spectatorship, guilt and fantasy. These components become the key characteristics of Guido as an adult filmmaker.
As such, the process of becoming memories is about more than just explaining Guido on a psychological level. Fellini implies that Guido’s films, daydreams, and memories all stem from the same mental source. His past is not a thing of the past; it is being shaped in the present.
The transition I chose is from 3:10–4:10, when Guido is flying through the air before waking up at the spa. Fellini does not make it immediately clear that this is a dream, as there is no obvious transition into it, and we only really know for certain when Guido suddenly wakes up. There is no title or obvious visual effect separating the dream from reality, and Fellini uses a sudden cut when Guido wakes up rather than gradually transitioning back to the real world. While he is flying, he initially seems free and is able to escape everything below him, but then we see that there is a rope attached to his ankle and the people below begin pulling him back down. I think Fellini blurs the boundary between dreams and reality because it allows us to experience the film more from Guido’s perspective. The dream seems to show his desire to escape from the pressures of his real life, while the rope pulling him back down shows that he cannot fully escape them. I also think it is significant that this happens at the very beginning of the film, because it immediately establishes that the boundaries between Guido’s reality, dreams, and imagination are not always going to be clear. By not clearly separating these different parts of his mind from reality, we are able to experience some of the same confusion that Guido does, and it makes his waking up more impactful.
Around 4-5 minutes into the movie, Guido suddenly wakes up in his room at the spa after the opening dream sequence. In the dream, he is trapped inside his car in a traffic jam and cannot breathe. He eventually escapes from the car and begins floating above the traffic and into the sky. Fellini does not clearly tell us at the beginning that we are watching a dream, so at first the audience might think the traffic jam is actually happening. It is only when Guido suddenly wakes up that we understand that the entire opening sequence was a dream.
I think Fellini blurs the difference between the dream and reality because it immediately puts us inside Guido’s mind. The feeling of being trapped in the car represents how overwhelmed and stuck Guido feels in his real life, while flying away represents his want to escape from those pressures. By making the dream initially seem real, Fellini shows that Guido’s inner thoughts and emotions are just as important to the film as what is actually happening around him.