With the notable exception of the crappy dubbing...you haven't lived until you've heard Giulietta Messina talk like Judy Holliday...I liked the first two thirds of this film about a mother trying to find some purpose to her life following the death of her son, for which she is more than partially responsible. I like the way director and co writer Roberto Rossellini avoids overly demonizing the bourgeoisie or enobling the lower/working classes. Both groups sound rather banal and offer little comfort to Ingrid Bergman's tortured, guilty mom. And through Bergman's usual powerful performance you feel how she is trapped in her misery with no clear path to redemption. Socialism? Religion? Altruism? None seem to offer an expiation for her sin of neglect toward her son that caused him physically and fatally to harm himself. So far, so searingly and bleakly good. But then, in the third act, things proceed to fall apart but not in an artistically satisfying way as, following the rather operatic death of a street walker, Bergman is suddenly and unconvincingly involved in an attempted armed robbery and then goes to jail for abetting the robber and then somehow ends up in a prison psychiatric hospital and we've gone from gripping neo realism (i.e. The great scene at the factory which is a chilling version of "Modern Times") to an Italian version of "The Snake Pit" meets "Caged"... with poor dubbing. My advice to the viewer: Bail on this thing when the hooker checks out. B minus.
Review of Europe '51
