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Down and Out In Post-War Italy

A Certain Bibliophile | 09/02/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If the Italian neo-realist movement could be said to have a definite endpoint, it would probably be Vittorio De Sica's 1952 film Umberto D., a huge international flop that was initially greeted with hostility at home and indifference abroad, but which has since resurfaced as a masterpiece. But apart from any fiscal reasons, the film may have ended neo-realism because it is arguably its greatest example, taking the movement to a point of aesthetic purity from which it had nowhere else to go. Unlike other landmark De Sica films, such as 1946's Shoeshine or 1948's The Bicycle Thief, Umberto D. doesn't press hard for sentiment or sweeping emotional crescendos, but simply embraces an old man's often-mundane attempts to survive another month and hold on to what little he has."