Vittorio De Sica

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Classic DVD: Umberto D. (1952)

January 10, 2011 in Film | Permalink

Carlo Battisti was a linguistics professor. His turn in "Umberto D." was his only role.

Vittorio de Sica’s spare yet devastating 1952 drama about a post-war Italian pensioner who careers from stubborn to suicidal is a companion piece stylistically and thematically to his most famous neorealist classic, The Bicycle Thief, and its equal (or better) creatively, despite being a colossal bomb commercially at the time of its release.

Umberto Domenico Ferrari (Carlo Battisti, a non-professional actor) is a retired Italian government employee who spent 30 years in the Ministry of Public Works but can’t get by on his puny pension. The film opens as Umberto and his fellow elders stage an illegal protest about their treatment, but the police arrive and the seniors scurry. Owing his vituperative landlady back rent, Umberto sells his gold pocket watch for a pittance to raise some lire, but it increasingly appears like he’s a man out of time. Too dignified to beg and seemingly forgotten by old friends, Umberto and his beloved pet dog, Flike, are headed for eviction. The crestfallen gentleman determines to find his pooch a good place to stay before he voluntarily enters his final resting place.

Umberto is a self-described “broken-down old man,” but it isn’t only his coporeal crumbling or finacial fix that has him desperate. It’s also the fraying of the moral code he sees around him in a nation no longer chastened by war. The apartment’s teenage housemaid is pregnant but not sure which boy is the father. The landlady rents rooms by the hour to amorous couples. It’s no country for old men. At first Umberto is indignant about surviving such indignities. Early in the film, he says of his landlady, “She’s hoping I’ll die, but I’m not going to.” Pretty soon, however, he’s not so sure.

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New DVD: Ballast

December 7, 2009 in Film | Permalink

JimMyron Ross.

JimMyron Ross.

Lance Hammer’s excellent 2008 drama, Ballast, is a perfect complement to Charles Burnett’s deeply felt 1977 masterpiece Killer of Sheep, but not just because they’re both dramas about struggling African-American families. Hammer, like Burnett, has made an indie film that feels completely authentic, without any of the quirkiness or forced idiosyncrasy that marks such much of American indie filmmaking.

The film follows three members of a Mississippi Delta family as they attempt to inch their lives forward in the wake of tragedy. The trio is played by non-actors JimMyron Ross, Tarra Riggs and Michael J. Smith, Sr. with amazing skill. Smith, in particular, is overwhelming as a man trying to awaken himself from his worst nightmare. Hammer’s vision is uncompromising, and he succeeds not because of plot twists but due to a sheer lack of pretense. One passage near the end is every bit as moving as Vittorio De Sica’s legendarily touching conclusion to Umberto D. Read the rest of this entry »

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