Journey to Italy

Composite Score: 85.73

Starring: Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders, Maria Mauban, Anna Proclemer, Paul Muller, Anthony La Penna, Natalia Ray, and Jackie Frost

Director: Roberto Rossellini

Writers: Vitaliano Brancati and Roberto Rossellini

Genres: Drama, Romance

MPAA Rating: Not Rated

Box Office: $20,072 worldwide

Why should you Watch This Film?

                Journey to Italy is Roberto Rossellini’s loose film adaptation of Colette’s novel Duo, the film following an English couple who travel to Italy to sell a villa that they have recently inherited and, in the process, work through the dysfunctions of their marriage. The film stars Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders as the central figures Katherine and Alex Joyce. It follows the two as they process the lack of warmth and seeming incompatibility that has brought them to this point, each exploring the offerings of the region around Naples in an effort to find what has been missing in their marriage. The film is considered to be one of Rossellini’s best films and is cited as an inspiration for the French New Wave movement and a transitionary point for Italian cinema and a key point in the development of drama that focuses on the inner lives of its characters rather than focusing on their situations.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                As a turning point in cinematic history, Journey to Italy’s place is unquestioned, but there have been plenty of films that have come since that surpass it in both style and substance. Watching a couple process their failing marriage without talking to each other isn’t all that new to most cinephiles (and even probably quite a few casual movie watchers), so, while the acting is superb and the scenery is nice, the film itself doesn’t feel like the most innovative romantic drama ever made any more. That’s not to say that the film isn’t without merit, and I believe that the message about marriage and love that it delivers remains powerful, poignant, and true, but if I were recommending romantic dramas about mildly dysfunctional relationships, this probably wouldn’t be my first recommendation.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                At the end of the day, it’s a mix of Bergman, Sanders, and Rossellini that make this film work. Bergman and Sanders execute Rossellini’s vision of a film about the reality of marriage and “lost” love in such a way that the film cements itself as a solid, easily watchable classic. With a story that’s all about a married couple suddenly grappling with the possibility that they don’t actually enjoy one another’s company, let alone love each other, you need actors who can capture that intricacy and subtlety of emotion in a way that feels real but is just big enough to be noticeable onscreen, and this couple does that quite well. George Sanders plays the jaded, cynical, longing-for-the-wild-days-of-youth husband as just that, giving audiences an authentic look at the post-honeymoon phase of marriage and the reality that often sets in. Likewise, Ingrid Bergman plays Katherine with that combination of artsy history-lover and strait-laced housewife that contrasts just so with her husband. Neither character is deplorable, and neither character is perfectly upstanding. It takes the two of them realizing that love is more than merely liking the other person or doing everything together to be true in a marriage, and that journey to a potentially happy or tragic ending that Rossellini takes us on with these two characters makes the film worth its while.

                Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders are the ideal leads to bring Rossellini’s film about the more mundane side of marriage and holding it together or watching it fall apart to the big screen, and together the team makes a film that stands the test of time and earns a spot among the greats. While it might not feel overly innovative in an era populated by plentiful romantic dramas about dysfunction, marital struggles, and the realities of life, the simplicity and earnestness with which this particular film is told makes it worth checking out. You can currently stream this film on Max if you’d like to check it out.