Journey To Italy Reviews

Original but dull

A very original movie about a marriage in trouble but I can’t say it drew me in - it seemed quite self conscious.

The Sanderson character is an arrogant bore and there doesn’t seem to be much complexity to the conflict other than that they’re bored with each other.

The environment plays an important role but that doesn’t come across very w ell in black and white on a small screen.

Stylish Drama

A study of alienation in a marriage set in 1950s Italy centred on Naples and Capri. Some good location photography. However, it is difficult to engage fully with the main characters and the ending is rather ambiguous. Worth watching though.

La Dreary Vita

What a bore! A flash sports car, plenty of good wine and Ingrid Bergman but George Sanders still moans and gripes all over the place. One of the most dyspeptic views of an Italian trip ever committed to film. Even Hannibal had a better time than these two. Admittedly it is winter but even so the views of the Gulf of Naples still negate any possible reason for being so damn grumpy. The kind of film that in its time was thought to be serious, considered and insightful but now looks superficial, pretentious and dull ; Rossellini showing off for his new girlfriend and giving her intellectual street-cred. A shame because neither of them needed any of that.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Stiff Upper Lips

This is an elegant and leisurely film in which a middle class couple travelling in Italy discover the sterility at the centre of their marriage whilst surrounded by the glories and wonders of a great civilisation. The sequences in Pompeii are particularly poignant.

Being a middle aged and middle-class couple in the 1950s, all disputes are low key and civilised, and the suppressed anguish is suggested better by Ingrid Bergman than George Sanders, whose customary urbanity makes his occasional displays of emotion seem rather petulant. The ending comes as a surprise, and whether or not its convincing will depend very much upon your response to the couple and to the world in which they're travelling.

Worth seeing, it aptly illustrates L.P Hartley's dictum about the past being a foreign country in which things are done differently.

Wonderful

Perhaps I was in the right mood for a film, but I found this really different. Some of the scenes looked like they had been taken from Milligan's book, when he was in Italy. A real study of human nature. Glad I rented this one. Worth watching.

Loved it, watched it twice.

I liked it so much that I watched it again with the commentary.

Surely not everybody's cup, though.

[Highly rated reviewer]

A genuine original

Roberto Rossellini had long been dissatisfied with conventional methods of cinema story-telling and had, in his films with his then-wife, Ingrid Bergman, (and those around them) been trying to experiment with something new. 'Viaggio in Italia' is the fruit of those experiments, a film which tells its story almost entirely by indirections.

On the face of it, it's a simple tale about an eight year old marriage which has reached its natural breaking point as each party realises their fundamental incompatability. But rather than simply state that, Rossellini elects to show it to us, with the husband trying to find sensual diversions (and failing), and the wife retreating into the history and culture of Napoli region (and being smothered by it all).

Rossellini clearly loves the area, and his camera positively swims in the locations, but he isn't so swept away not to realise that the past is just as mummified as the central marriage. It needs something more, something living and (to its participants) real to rekindle the spark.

The ending, which some find controversial, is much more ambiguous than just a rediscovery of romantic love, though. How many viewers think that these two will survive once back in the chillier climes of England?

A must for any fan of Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman is the centre of this trip to Italy. Rather slow but a very good film.

In the mood for ruins

Ingrid! Couple's breakdown triggered by a backdrop of ruins and the southern lifestyle of the Bay of Naples. Very interesting if seen as a sort of documentary and commentary by Laura Mulvey is particularly fascinating on this one- it will make a Roberty Rossellini fan out of you, that's for sure. And you might just want to see Stromboli and Europa 51 while you're at it- the wartime trilogy.

Excellent

Really enjoyed all the scenic and historic places in Italy that were visited in this film.