Cinema
The Tail-End
By ISABEL QUIGLY
11 Tetto. (International Film Theatre, West- bourne Grove.) De SicA is one of the bizarrest things in the Italian cinema, the kind of man (and of Italian) to divide one between scepticism and admira- tion:, as director and actor so varied, so im- possible to pin down, that just because of these , llifts and discrepancies, just because of the dual Images and incompatibilities, he is one of the nlost interesting barometers of the Italian mood, 4 reflector of what's what in the public mind, or, if You like, the Italian soul. (And since the itainto soul has been turning somersaults during the last two decades, and since the war, even. 81;nntl through a whole cycle of illusion- disillusion, which its art forms--and none more than the film, that indefatigable reflector—have all reflected, it takes some keeping up with.) A devastatingly inaccurate portrait in a French novel showed de Sica as 'Vittorio Vicaria' silver- hatred and distinguished director who7layed Iv. 1th the miseries of others for—well, if not tor fun, for its financial, professional and social e.cIMvalents; and, in spite of the unfairness, there Is still that devastating grain of satirical truth that makes one wonder. And yet just that grain ?f vicariousness, the very insincerity (yet what ts sincerity? Each country has its conventions) one feels about his occasional public utterances, tbe Manneredness and mannerisms of his acting style, the almost too conscious 'brilliance,' the flamboyance, the ocCasional Liberace ogling he goes in for in his less successful parts.: all these add up to an extraordinarily national image.
At his best, the wonderful best in which he, we, society, people and the set-up are all rather .desperately involved, in which 'happy endings' have no particular place, though sometimes things happen to go right (you never can tell), he gave neo-realism a new dimension by giving it, in Umberto D, so much more than it origin- ally was (a social view of life, a social slant on every problem). There he gave us an old man you could look at in all sorts of ways, an individual whose soul went right beyond his situation, who mattered in himself and could be criticised as a man. I still, after seeing it several times, can't make up my mind quite what de Sica was up to, how far we are meant to regard the old man as a victim of his own nature, as well as the society that lets him starve. The first time I saw- it I came out feeling (as perhaps one was meant to) full of indignant pity for him and anger that he should be treated so; whereas the person I saw it with (who knew much more than I did about the particular social conditions) was indignant with the old man himself. He deserved to be friendless and alone and miser- able, being so selfish; if you think of no one but your dog you'll find no one but your dog cares for you in the end;, even when the maid told him she was having a baby, he didn't listen or care, he just went on talking about himself; it wasn't lack of money, it was lack of heart that made him so wretched . . . and so on. And it's a way of looking at it. At any rate, the figure of the victim acquired a very personal and human dimension; he lived, a per- son far More than a case, and his tired, unknown, unactorish face was the perfect justification for what is so much more than a gimmick, so much a part of his beliefs—de Sica's use (very pro- fessional and 'directed' use) of non-actors.
Here is 11 Tetto (The Roof) ('U' certificate), the last film he directed (he's on another now), four years and many acting parts ago. With non-actors, a likely proletarian story (indeed a 'real' situation and event), an entirely neo-realist manner: what has gone wrong? Neo- realism? Us? 'Wrong,' of course, is only rela- tive—I mean wrong in comparison with, say, Umberto D: the film is charming, affecting, with all sorts of touching moments and a kindly but tough look at working-class life in Rome. It won a prize from a religious group that gives moral rather than zesthetic awards and well de- serves it; yet, though its policemen have hearts, there are still enough heartless folk about to keep an unsentimental balance; a fiend of a taxi- driver who refuses to let wedding-day sentiment stand in the way of his normal churlishness, and that (to an outsider) extremely depressing quick-temperedness of Latins living in a huddle, their refusal to 'keep smiling,' look on the bright side,' make the best of things,' etc. etc.—all such a national standby here. Oh, the sheer glumness of Italian domestic life, by our standards, and how well de Sica catches it! No wonder everyone goes outside, when life indoors is such a nightmare! What to us seems 'realism' in dark, emphatic, exaggerated quota- tion marks is just the ordinary homely tone of things. Why keep smiling? What's the point of cheerfulness? they ask, when things go wrong; or don't even bother to ask, it never enters any- one's head. And yet 11 Tetto'is a Story of hope and promise and all the domestic virtues too. It's a story about a home, four walls with a roof on it, built on the Roman waste land in a single night before the police can get there to knock it down. And it gets built; the ending is as happy as you could wish, in the circumstances. The child will be born in a home and no one can turn them out of it. A good story, but not a great film, and so a disappointment; an exter- nal view of people, though an inside view of a social problem.
And yet almost every moment is beautifully observed, the observation is so exact you wonder what there is to criticise about it, why that slightly superficial air (the impossible compari- sons, perhaps) seems to hang over it. Could you ever get a British film to see working-class people this way, so unselfconsciously? The wedding, the honeymoon, the search for a flat, the meetings at tram stop or building site; the time the wife visits her husband in his shack on the job (where he is living alone since they can't find a plaee together) to tell him she is pregnant; the two maids chatting in the middle-class household, and the faces, the unsmiling, jovvlish faces, so full of lowering life: how well it is all worth a visit! Minor de Sica, and the tail-end of a neo-realism that has somehow lost its force; but full of humanity, of people living, of proletarian problems about roofs and bread and children that concern us all and aren't made to look lite a tract for the times, thank heaven:
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