Stazione Termini

The concept of "Stazione Termini" has always been highly appealing to me. In the mode of "Brief Encounter," which director David Lean brought successfully to the screen earlier, "Stazione" potentially offers the same rewards.

The combination of director Vittorio De Sica and writer Cesare Zavattini was natural. Likewise, the pairing of Montgomery Clift and Jennifer Jones was intriguing.

Yet, the efforts of all these great talents failed to produce the monumental work expected. What went wrong?

The contribution of David O. Selznick, while thoroughly professional as always, may have strangely thrown off the delicate balance.

This was very much an Italian work. The American actors were portraying characters who were essentially visitors to a foreign land--guests and tourists operating within the cultural discretion of their Roman hosts. Where these characters failed to completely understand and operate with respect to the Italian sensibility and heritage, so Mr. Selznick may likewise have inadvertently intruded upon the proceedings by introducing his own distinctive American values and approaches to filmmaking.

In short, Selnick and De Sica did not mix well here. To this viewer, the production would have been much more viable had Selnick remained more in the background, allowing the proven creativity of the De Sica team to work its own magic.

Likewise, a more distinctive score could have made a considerable difference. While the music was most appropriate, it did not make a truly "classic" statement. Finally, the unfortunate editing paired the film down to so short a duration that the drama simply lacked the time to make a moving impression. "Stazione" seems as much a mood as character piece, and De Sica required footage to accomplish this.

Despite these shortcomings, "Stazione Termini" contains beautifully modulated performances by Clift and Jones, as the sad lovers who must part and go their separate ways. De Sica's direction is sensitive and compassionate, and the film remains a poignant moment in the lives of two lonely people clinging to one final opportunity to express forbidden love.

Coming after "ladri di biciclette"(1946)"miracolo a Milano"(1950) and the absorbing and rather unrecognized "Umberto D"(probably De Sica's masterpiece,1952),"Stazione Termini" cannot be put on a par with these former works.It is an interesting effort though.

Montgomery Clift and Jennifer Jones are par excellence the romantic couple ,but in an Italian environment,they look like extra-terrestrials.Do not get me wrong,I do enjoy these two actors' talent ,but I wonder why De Sica ,one of the neorealism high priests, has chosen Hollywood stars whereas ,for instance,he refused to engage Cary Grant for the "ladri di biciclette" lead,and he used rather obscure actors for "Umberto D".Besides,I wonder whether both Jones and Clift are dubbed (or not?) in Italian.I wonder too whether this actress was not influenced by Ingrid Bergman's coming to Italy.When she buys chocolate for the children and when she wants to help the poor family,Jones' character makes me think of Bergman's in Rossellini's "Europa 51" (1951) for a very short while

The plot is banal and the railway station becomes the star of the film.De Sica completely succeeds in showing the life of this hive,with its travelers,its priests,its soldiers,its poor families packed into 3rd class waiting rooms,its trains heading for darkness .The lovers' faces are nicely filmed as if they were the only lights of this obscure world.

A married American woman has an affair with an Italian man while visiting her sister in Rome. This short film (a longer director's cut now exists) focuses on the last few hours spent at a train station as the woman is returning home. De Sica creates some striking imagery but the script is too slight to let the characters or the plot develop. Apparently producer Selznick cut the film to stress the romance and to make Jones (his wife then) look good. Clift plays a brooding, hot-blooded Italian but isn't given much to do. Both Jones and Clift have quirky mannerisms that seem well suited to the roles of the angst-ridden lovers. An interesting curiosity piece.

This film is full of ironical metaphors. We have a running Joseph and Mary / Adam and Eve biblical subtext. The surface sentimentality can be misleading. Rome Termini Station contains enough iconography of Heaven and Hell to make up an ironic parable. I'm surprised that so many critics have not picked up the clever gags. I suspect that the butchering of the film down to 63 minutes has something to do with it. The serpent and the apple, seeking refuge in the manger, Dante's innocent descending into the purgatory of the police station, two passionate innocents caught up in orthodox role structure, it's all there, if rather clumsily re-edited. The film clearly belongs to an era where film language a la Welles or Hitchcock was more sophisticated than much of today's mainstream cinema.

This film will not appeal to everyone, but even with the ravages executed by Selznick on the American cut, Stazione Termini (Selznick's U.S. version: Indiscretion of an American Housewife) remains a powerful film for those who can appreciate it.

To be sure, there are faults, especially unfortunate in light of De Sica's credentials. Most striking are that Montgomery Clift as American-Italian is a spectacular error, not so much in casting, as in characterization (American expat would have worked); far too much English comes from the mouths of early-1950s Romans and other Italians; and the American housewife is perhaps overly oblivious to the italianità around her. Otherwise, mostly spot on, at least in the full version.

Jennifer Jones, beyond radiant in her prime-of-life womanhood, exudes a sensuality that both contrasts strikingly with her 1950s-prim exterior and celebrates the troubled woman within: proper well-brought-up ladies can have passions, too, a marriage ceremony is no guarantor that all will be well 'til death do them part, and she, like so many before her and after, struggles when smoldering embers flare and she senses that the 'groove' of her comfortable, uneventful marriage may actually be 'rut'.

As would be expected of De Sica, his rendition of the setting -- the newly rebuilt Stazione Termini itself, trains, travelers -- is so accurate as to pass for a recording, and protagonists as well as the concentrically-involved supporting cast embed within it void of staging, with total plausibility.

The arrest scene and its aftermath also verges on documentary in its genuinity. The strict proprieties of post-WWII Rome -- for some Romans very genuine, for others hypocritical sham even then -- may seem contrived to a young American or British viewer today, but the inevitable tension was very real at the time, and De Sica presents its effects honestly, and with éclat.

Give Stazione Termini a chance. Enter the time and place. De Sica managed to do a fine job of it, in spite of Selznick's ill-advised meddling, and he deserves far more more credit than he's normally given for this effort. So does Jennifer Jones, who is magnificent here.