Indiscretion

Hollywood in Rome or Romance from the Main Train Station. She is a housewife, but still: in 1953, an American housewife could float in the middle of the station hall like a princess (apparently, all American women in Italy at the time were like Audrey), simply because she was from a country that then constituted 60% of the world's GDP. She can give Italian children chocolate like G.I. Joe did in '45. Strange, just a year earlier, Sica's film about a starving pensioner premiered, and in 1956 a film called The Roof premiered, and wasn't this terrifying contrast worth exploring for De Sica/Zavattini? Perhaps because David O. Selznick and Truman Capote assured them. Yes, that Capote, who did the dialogue for this film. And what dialogues they are - they always have wistful music playing when they are heartbreaking and uplifting music plays when there is hope... basically, the film itself shows that their clichés, dullness, and predictability alone cannot produce an impact. But it may be unfair to criticize this fact because in the 50s that's just how things were mostly done. This is a film that today can only serve as an object of interest for cultural studies, film scholars, and film and non-film historians, particularly as a demonstration of the fact that Hollywood can transport itself anywhere on the planet, yesterday and today, and create a vacuum that negates the entire real world and the specific culture around it. (08/06/2015)