L’amore in città (review)

L’amore in città (Love in the city, 1953) was conceived of by Cesare Zavattini, the theoretical sage of Italian neorealism, as the first issue of a six-monthly “film magazine” known as The Spectator. It was the first and last installment of the endeavor. Somewhat in the vein of Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Pravda series from the 1920s, though with a decidedly less political agenda, the project was dubbed a “film enquiry” by Zavattini and is a journalistic exposé of social situations captured cinematically, revealing the routine, pleasant, and tragic realities of everyday life. A documentary-based “neorealist experiment,”¹ L’amore in città is also a precursor to the omnibus film trend that would be especially fashionable during the next decade, with films generally built around loose themes with the ostensible goal of assembling a handful of popular young European filmmakers to direct separate stories collectively released.

The filmmakers for L’amore in città and their respective chapters include Carlo Lizzani (Love for Money), Michelangelo Antonioni (Attempted Suicide), Dino Risi (Paradise for Three Hours), Federico Fellini (Marriage Agency), Francesco Maselli and Cesare Zavattini (Story of Caterina), and Alberto Lattuada (Italians Turn Their Heads). Prior to this, Risi and Maselli had made several shorts and documentaries, as had Lizzani, who also had two features under his belt. Antonioni and Fellini, who would emerge as the most famous of the contributors, had not yet developed their distinctive cinematic styles. Only Lattuada had been consistently making features, since 1943, and only he and Fellini (codirectors of Variety Lights three years earlier) were not from a documentary background.

L’amore in città’s first appearance on Blu-ray features an audio–video transfer that, although not spectacular, is definitely an improvement over prior DVD versions.² Credit also goes to Raro Video for its inclusion of supplementary materials. Individual commentary tracks (in Italian with English subtitles) accompany each segment, and there are interviews with critics Paolo Mereghetti and Luca Bandirali and writer Angelo Pasquini. In addition, there is the theatrical trailer and a twenty-page booklet containing essays, critiques, and restoration notes.

Street prostitution greatly upset Lizzani, but of the themes proposed, it interested him most. There is a striking repetition of common drama with the women interviewed: pasts marred by abuse, usually an unwanted child, and, ultimately, abandonment. In his commentary for his own film (one of only two cases where this was possible), Lizzani compares the women to children, arguing they were weak girls succumbing to stronger individuals, and there is a degree of immaturity in their hobbies and their occasional naïveté. At the same time, there is no avoiding their resigned acceptance of a life they view as inescapable. As they discuss the trials of their trade—dealing with the cold, the police, the lack of sleep—they do so with a hollow detachment. Lizzani’s chronicle frequently casts the women in literal and symbolic shadows of despair and marginal existence.

Antonioni’s chapter examines the reasons behind, and results of, attempted suicide. For these women (interestingly, they are all women), love gone wrong is the chief catalyst. In the beginning of the segment, the suicidal subjects are gathered in a sort of abandoned warehouse and lined up in front of a massive white sheet. Guido Chiesa, who provides the commentary, likens this neutral surface to a laboratory setting, going on to note Antonioni’s near-clinical “observation of details and objects.” Although there is an appreciable sense of individual fragility as the nonactors take part in staged reenactments and contemporary interviews, Chiesa questions Antonioni’s humanity, his “apparent coldness,” and he condemns the director’s accusation of exhibitionism on the part of the suicidal individuals (which he also states in the accompanying booklet). It is somewhat of a stretch to pin down too many of Antonioni’s stylistic hallmarks in this short, but as Chiesa argues, there is at least a stress on “existential anguish” and a representation of the relationship between characters and space, both of which develop into crucial...