"Mommy, are you crying?
- No, why would I be?"
The drama of Vittorio de Sica's neorealistic (master)piece isn't "strong" enough if you compare it with some contemporary attitudinizing Hollywood or even European films. That's why my discreet brackets around the 'masterpiece': if you aren't interested in film history, more precise history of film style, or if you can't enjoy a simple nice story anymore, then change DVD immediately and watch those wannabes like Haggis' Crash or Jieho Lee's The Air I Breathe (here is my not so fawning opinion about the latter one).
This time the adjective 'simple' is a definite compliment. I felt something similar during watching PTA's sober There Will Be Blood - of course its simplicity is completely different, and according to 2007, but the way how their directors touched the different topics and styles is talking about some remote affinity. With even a microscopic amount of irony or cynicism you can easily identify this simplicity with sentimentalistic banality, and probably in some extent you have right (btw after all what you would expect from a European movie from 1943? Check your history books, now). Just sometimes, for your own sake, it is not worth to have right.
The beautifully simple story is about a family, or even more, the Family from some peaceful times. But if just there isn't a war to ruin the harmony, there are adults. Family members. In de Sica's film there is Nina, the beautiful mother, who struggles with her feelings between her family and a young lover, Roberto. Finally she makes a decision and leaves her family. The husband is left alone with his sensitive small child, Pricó (he must be a psychic relative of Rossellini's blond boy, Edmund from Germania Anno Zero). But what is more terrible? To leave them or to try coming back to your left family? The question contains the tragic, especially if Nina can't hide from her smouldering feelings, and when the children are not only looking at our directions but watching us...
Thanks to the Criterion Collection for the restaurated version (2000). Maybe without their quality contribution we wouldn't have a chance to see (recognise for a second) the last scene's literally carried out metaphor about the dissaffected, "cold" relationship between mother and child. Moreover, the icecold blew of Nina is more than an embodied metaphor; it is a perfect proof against those film historians who take too seriously the realistic film language/style of the Italian Neorealism.
8/10
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