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0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 miserable loves misery Mar 28, 2009
I feel Umberto D is one of the more sad characters in cinematic history. Even the extreme handicap, society rejects of Stroszek and Quasimodo reached out to their fellow humanity showing affable and gentile souls. Umberto on the other hand seems to gleam nothing from his ever listing slide into the abyss. He garners no lessons learned, no wisdom gained, shuns any subtle insights, and holds to immoveable pride as his only salvation and station. He tries without fail to even find his trusty pet dog a suitable alternative.
As a character study he is well cast. The back drape of a pre-WW II Italy where factories and career blue collar workers are cast about like trinkets - the settings for this film couldn't be better. That the idea for the book and future script came about when our prodigy was 15 years old belies her youthful experience. This is more of a biblical parable, a philosophical apathy showing the folly of ignorance. Those who adhere and swear allegiance to a fool's lament. Hold thoughts as sticks and stones to paper and scissors.
I do love Criterion for their resurrection, discovery, and revival of lost and unseen celluloid treasures. They have certainly unearthed one here. I couldn't wait for the film to be over though since Umberto was set on being a victim, even one in silence, unacknowledged by himself. In the end there is no hope or salvation for his lot. They go largely unnoticed on their forever march as ghost lost in their dreams. These quiet soon-to-be six feet under whose selfishness is not enough to condemn them alone. It's just enough to keep them from ever connecting. The existential glimpse into the social conundrum of a western Europe readying to be torn asunder elects Umberto as their heir apparent clown. I was left with no apathy, hope, or well wish for this anti-hero, but I was darn impressed with the magnitude of the telling and the medium shown.
 Old People & Unwanted Dogs Dec 04, 2008
This was one of many European "Art House" films released in the U.S. in the middle to late 60's. It is a very simple B&W movie, with an easy plot, no surrealism or complicated, intellectual sub-themes. Vittorio De Sica is known today as one of the great neo-realistic directors.
The title UMBERTO, D (last name, first name reduced to initial only)refers to the main character, an aging male pensioner who shares a rented room with his small dog. The title sets up the backdrop of the unseen bureaucracy dealing with faceless "clients" ("victims" may be more apt) like Umberto.
The story opens with the end of a rally organized by elderly men (no one else bothers to attend) protesting pension cuts. The police arrive to break up the crowd (potentially breaking a few arms & legs in the process.) Umberto is one of a small group who hobble off together. It appears that he is also the only one without a shelter contingency plan. He can no longer continue to afford his rent.
He goes back to his room & chats with the young cleaning woman who also lives in the house. She is the only one who's nice to him & they share the easy friendship of two poor people outside the social loop. As it happens, they have to speak on the sly because the woman who owns the house doesn't want the maid to "waste her time". She constantly reminds Umberto that he is behind in his rent. Additionally she hints that she is getting married and will need to have the room back so she can renovate it. The woman is a singer & acts like a middle-age yuppie with no concern for the impact her gentrification will have on others. Later the maid finds out that she (the maid) is pregnant & arranges to move back to the country with an aunt before "the lady" she works for tosses her out.
One would expect the character of Umberto to be very sympathetic, but it's really not. He's neither positive or negative. He's just an old man. Sometimes nice, sometimes cranky, pretty much always tired. He's got a lot on his plate & needs to get organized, a lot to get gone, but without the energy to do it. Nonetheless, he tries. The only close relationship he has (other than with the young girl) is with his small dog.
One day he goes out to pawn his watch & try to line-up another place to live. When he returns (unsuccessful in his efforts), he discovers that his dog has gotton out (possibly deliberately engineered by the landlady). Umberto is naturally frantic & searches for his pet. Finally he winds up at the city dog pound (not even the euphemism of "shelter" in this case.) He witnesses a very disturbing scene illustrating how society deals with unwanted animals--in other words, pretty much the way it treats poor & unwanted elderly men (& women).
Umberto finds his little dog & takes him home--only to find that the walls of his room have literally been demolished. He bundles up his few belongings in an old suitcase, takes his dog & leaves, but with no place really to go.
The final scene finds him standing in the center of a train track, holding the dog tightly to his chest, the train rushing down with whistle blowing. You want to close your eyes because you think you know what's going to happen next.
But it doesn't.
What does happen is even more disturbing, more tragic because it's so true.
This movie has had a lasting influence on my life like no other film has. I've held back reviewing it because I wasn't sure about sharing its very personal & painful vision. Animal lovers will also find it difficult & wrenching, but they are the ones who will most appreciate what a great work of art this simple movie really is.
Mamma Roma - Criterion Collection
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Bicycle Thieves (Criterion Collection)
Roma Citta Libera
The Children Are Watching Us - Criterion Collection
The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie - Criterion Collection
Fanny and Alexander (Special Edition Five-Disc Set) - Criterion Collection
Autumn Sonata
Violette
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Great Sep 23, 2008
Lost between the glare of his earlier The Bicycle Thief, and his later films with Sophia Loren, Vittorio De Sica's 1952 film Umberto D. stands as an almost forgotten masterpiece of Italian Neo-Realism, and one of the last films that could claim to be of that movement alone. It was pilloried by myopic critics upon its opening- mostly Left Wing dilettantes who thought that the formerly middle class civil servant's tale was not `socially conscious' enough for the filmmaker to waste his talents on, and a few cineastes who felt it too maudlin and weepy. They simply did not understand the chasm between true sentiment and false sentimentality. The film flopped, but has steadily risen in De Sica's pantheon to being thought of as an equal to The Bicycle Thief, or right behind it. The truth is that it is very easy to portray the struggles of the impoverished, as De Sica did in The Bicycle Thief, and Shoeshine before it, as both were laden with struggling children, but to elicit the grandeur of feelings for an old man, Umberto (Carlo Battisti, non-professional actor and retired college professor from the University of Florence), alone in the world, takes a bit more. This is especially so since the lead character is not a particularly warm man. No, he's no Ebenezer Scrooge, but he's a proud and stubborn man who keeps himself emotionally withdrawn from life. He's an everyman, in that he was a civil servant, retired with a meager pension, and has lived in the same small room for decades, harried by a bitch of a bleached blond social climbing poseur of a landlady (Lina Garrari), who loathes him for unspecified reasons- she says he's behind on the rent, but how many people have never been in such a predicament, and are not treated the way she scorns this old gentleman? She even debases him by renting out his room to horny couples while he's away, and a scene of him returning to his soiled bed after strangers have copulated in it is precious- the look of disdain on Battisti's face is utterly priceless.
That some people have also misread the film to indict the old man for failing to prepare for the consequences of old age shows how out of touch with reality many critics, then and now, are. These are the same people who would deny Social Security to their grandparents who contributed to it for years, and claim the old are selfish for wanting their fair share. Yes, Umberto is behind on his rent- but he was also living in a time of runaway inflation, that would have eaten up any of his meager savings. And, despite the characterizations of Umberto as cold, at times, he is never disrespectful, not in the blatantly obvious ways the landlady is to him. Thus, when one reads criticism of the film that jab at Umberto's character, or defend the landlady's sadistic actions, one is misreading the very `realism' that this Neo-Realistic film purports. And the truth is, that just as the dilemma faced by another aging civil servant, in Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, made the same year as Umberto D., has not changed in half a century or more, and across continents, neither has the dilemma this film shows really changed, and therein lies the timelessness of this tale- which will likely still be as relevant in five hundred years, albeit unfortunately. Sadly, I've known too many real life people like Umberto D., and the foolish criticisms of the film manifest flaws in the critics more so than in the film.
The camera movements by Aldo Graziati never intrude on the simple tale penned by longtime De Sica collaborator and novelist Cesare Zavattini, which has some minor things in common with the more recent American film My Dog Skip, another great man and dog film. The DVD by The Criterion Collection is very crisp, and the white subtitles never are obscured, although, like the DVD release of The Bicycle Thief, an English language dubbed soundtrack should have been made, as well as a film commentary by some historian or scholar. The disk does come with a 55 minute Italian tv documentary called This is Life: Vittorio De Sica, a 12 minute interview with Maria Pia Casilio, and writings by Umberto Eco, Luisa Alessandri, and Carlo Battisti. Memories of the film by De Sica, and a new essay by film critic Stuart Klawans, are in the insert.
Umberto D. is a great film, and like its kissing cousin, Ikiru, it shows that films on old people can be every bit as engaging as those about the young and beautiful, and not just run of the mill crap like the Grumpy Old Men fare Hollywood spews. Those who criticize this film and its ending are likely the same sort of cretins who find Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard films to be deep and/or moving. Neo-Realism was a movement that should never have flagged, and the world would be better off if a younger wave of filmmakers picked up the banner dropped over half a century ago, for it showed new ways to tell tales and core at the thing that is human in all things- even in the will of a small dog to live with his master, and what that will generates in return.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Crushingly Sad. Jun 05, 2008
I don't know what to say. I don't recall ever crying from a movie and I cried when I saw this picture. I'm almost sorry I saw it, but it is indeed a masterpiece.
The sadness I felt surprised me; this movie seemed to strike a nerve with its simplicity: just life as it is. Buddha taught that the first truth is that "life is suffering," and here we see it shot in black-and-white.
I'm not familiar with the film concept of 'neo-realism,' but 'real' is the pointed word for this movie. This movie is set in Italy more than fifty years ago but it seemed a stark and current documentary. Director Vittorio De Sica created that effect without scene-setting, back-grounding or character development. We immediately arrive on the street and take part in the lives of others as we would would in any city of the World: watching, listening and trying to put a context to what we see and hear. As the day fades we go to sleep with the characters and wake up with them the next morning in a continuous timeline: watching, I felt that I had slept the night too, awakening as unrelieved of Mr. Ferrari's dilemma as he is.
Perhaps this movie bothered me so because I too have a little dog who, like Flike, is obedient, devoted and believes I bring up the sun in the morning. Or possibly it is my dawning understanding of why Mr. Ferrari is treated so cruelly by seemingly anyone who crosses his path, even a lady on a park bench who gives a disgusted look at this neatly-dressed and dignified gentleman. It isn't the post-war Italian economy that has caused Mr. Ferrari's problems either, it is the astounding lack of empathy and pity that human beings sometimes have for a person who can not service them or society anymore. His landlady, for example, (who Mr. Ferrari helped and got meat for during the War: she called him 'Grandpa' then) has now ruined him financially by raising his rent until he can't pay it, and only to add his tiny room of twenty years to a parlor for her new socialite friends. She would kill his body if the law would allow but instead kills him body and soul by taking his last worldly resources and mocking him for his debt in a public spectacle. Mr. Ferrari fights as he can for his dignity, citing his 30 years of Ministry service to a crowd that ultimately turns away from him with contempt.
I've watched the ending several times trying to see hope there. Like life, sometimes hope runs out. I've thought, perhaps, that Mr. Ferrari moved to a new town with Flike, a town where his pension could support them; I've worked very hard to find a way for them to go on. But perhaps the children running into the final scene is to mean that we must all go on when our time comes so that youth can bloom in our place. I don't know. I just know I'm very sad from this movie and worse yet, I think I know why.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
De Sica`s greatest work Sep 28, 2007
This is one of the greatest works of Italian cinema.It is a lamentable chronicle of a poor retiree trying to maintain his dignity and hold on to his dog.There are some depressing elements here,but those who can really feel for it`s protagonist will not find it "too depressing " or "boring "as some reveiwers have said;and while a few dramatic devices may be used ;I think this movie gives a faithful account of social conditions in postwar Italy,and is a good neorealist effort.If you want to see a real powerhouse of a drama,this movie is for you.
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