Giulietta Masina

Without Pity aka Senza Pietà

by
Jerry and Angela at a funfair

Matter-of-fact neorealism meets its opposite, torrid melodrama, in Senza Pietà, aka Without Pity. Remarkably, it’s a successful meeting of equals, probably thanks to director Alberto Lattuada’s decision to go at his material at breakneck pace. Whatever else you can accuse this film of, it isn’t slow or lacking in incident. It throws its two main characters together early on. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, displaced Italian Angela (Carla Del Poggio) is hitching a ride when she first bumps into Jerry Jackson (John Kitzmiller), a black US sergeant who jumps onto the goods train Angela is on and winds up taking a bullet for his efforts. Because she’s a good … Read more

La Strada

by
Giulietta Masina as Gelsomina

The simple Italian led astray by an egotistical monster. Who could Federico Fellini have had in mind when he was making La Strada in 1954? This, according to all the books, is where Fellini the neorealist ends and Fellini the fantastical begins, in a movie about a strong man “buying” a halfwit daughter off a poor woman and then touring Italy with her as part of his act. It was Pope Francis’s favourite movie and directors as diverse as Peckinpah, Kurosawa, Konchalovsky and David Cronenberg have all sung its praises. Fascinatingly, both Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson have claimed it as an influence on key songs – on Hey, Mr Tambourine Man and … Read more

Europa ’51

by
Ingrid Bergman in dark coat

Often described as a neorealist film, Roberto Rossellini’s second collaboration with Ingrid Bergman, Europa ’51, is actually more a Hollywood melodrama with one breakaway neorealist moment. But more than that it’s a vehicle designed to rehabilitate Bergman by getting her to do what she was best at on screen – suffer. It’s the story of a high society woman who’s too busy drinking cocktails and exchanging chintzy chit-chat with her friends to notice that her son is in need of some love and affection. At a drinks party one night, son Michele attempts suicide by throwing himself down the stairs. He survives, only to die later of a complication. Irene (Bergman) is thrown … Read more

Juliet of the Spirits

by
Giulietta Masina

1965’s Juliet of the Spirits (Giulietta degli spiriti) was Federico Fellini’s first film in colour and he goes at it like a child whose Christmases have all come at once. Up comes a screen of opening credits so vividly blue that it’s shocking, followed by an opening scene where the quiet and mousey Juliet (played by Fellini’s own wife Giulietta Masina) is assailed on all sides by people, chatter, action. The quiet romantic evening she’d had planned with her husband Giorgio (Mario Pisu) has been upended. He’s brought home a gaggle of people, party animals who want to have fun. Fellini wants to have fun too, and he wants to fill the screen … Read more