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.

Cesare Zavattini's slim story "Terminal Station" turned into somewhat-overblown star-vehicle for Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift, who manage to create romantic tension despite director Vittorio De Sica's insistence upon an overly-busy background. These indiscreet lovers (she a married housewife from Philadelphia and he the half-Italian professor who adores her) are consistently spied upon by accusing eyes while saying their reluctant farewells in Rome's railway station. De Sica appears to be just as interested in the central couple as he is in the woman's young nephew (Dick Beymer) who simply refuses to leave, happy party groups, another group of serious-faced priests, an elderly Italian and his apples, a pregnant woman, the overachievers on the police force, etc. Told in 'real time', the looming faces of the many clocks (reminding our couple of her impending trip home) become a red herring in the proceedings, which do have intriguing moments in spite of the fact Clift shows no signs of Italian blood (he barely seems to comprehend the language!). Jones, in a tidy Jane Wyman-ish hairdo, ably manages to convey the torn emotions of a woman with a family who has found passion at last, and her performances is certainly worth-seeing. Clift makes a fantastically dramatic exit from a moving train, but otherwise just fills the bill. David O. Selznick production has the requisite gloss, but could have used a bit more fire under its icy exterior. **1/2 from ****

Italian maestro Vittorio De Sica's Hollywood sortie, this ill-received co-production with David O. Selznick, starring Ms. Selznick, Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift as the star-crossed lovers, is built on a pellucid idea of condensing a doomed extramarital romance within a neat spatio- temporal structure: two hours inside the Terminal train station in Rome.

Jones plays Mary Forbes, the titular American wife, who strikes up a torrid affair with a bachelor Giovanni Doria (Clift, sporting a passable Italian and stays on autopilot as a careworn and distressed jilted lover) during her visit in Rome, impulsively decides to go back home and break off their liaison after declaring her utmost feelings for him the day before. Firstly, she must take the train from Rome to Paris, and Giovanni's timely advent botches Mary's plan to leave at 7 pm, and the next train leaves in one and half hour, during which time, the pair undergo an honest tête-à- tête, a badly-devised game-changer (encountering Mary's nephew Paul, a decent screen debut of Richard Beymer), a temporary separation then rekindle their passion in an empty compartment, which will cause a scene and their fate will be left at the mercy of the police commissioner (Cervi), can she manage to take the 20:30 train and how their affair will end?

First of all, the premise is very lax, there is absolutely no exigency for Mary to depart for Paris immediately, it is her whim out of the blue, which makes the entire scenario sound contrived, it is not helped by Jones' emotionally duelling but ultimately mushy incarnation, as demure and kind- hearted as her Mary is, clearly, it is her have the final say, but her conflict with moral compass swivels when the narrative is constantly hogtied by its essayist sidebar to extol the Termini station itself, a monumental presence buzzed with characters and egregious red tape, which feels tonally incompatible with the central story, which shows up the quintessential rift between Hollywood melodrama and Italian Neo-realism.

Lastly, if you are not dissuaded by this review and still want to watch it, don't watch the bluntly truncated 63-minute USA version, its 89-minute original version is unequivocally more cohesive and engaging for the viewing experience, still, it is a letdown among De Sica's corpus.

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.

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.