La paura

Starts out pretty well with an intelligent and interesting examination of a woman in the throes of infidelity guilt who is being pestered by a blackmailer. But then Rossellini decides to go all Claude Chabrol on us and the plot starts twisting as credibility and its constant companion, interest, go flying out the window.

Is it just me or does Rossellini tend to do this in his films? Did you notice how "Rome, Open City" switched from gritty neo realism to Nazi porn about halfway through? And "Europa 51",in the last third, goes from being a study of a mother's lost soul after the death of her son to a womans prison pic. Really wish this good director wouldn't do this, especially as the directions he veers toward are much less compelling than the ones left behind.

Give this one a C plus.

Ingrid Bergman is "Irene" married to "Albert" (Mathias Wieman) but has been having an affair with the much younger "Erich" (Kurt Kreuger). The relentlessness of the secret-keeping takes it's toll and "Irene" tries to end it all. Her secret is not quite as safe as she had thought, though - and she soon discovers that opportunist "Johanna" (Renate Mannhardt) knows the score and wants 3,000 Marks to keep silent. Will that do the trick, or is that just the start of an even more slippery slope? This is short and sweet - reasonably paced, with decent characterisations from Bergman and her grasping nemesis Mannhardt, but the story itself it overly simple and lacks any sense of jeopardy. We always know what is going to happen - and although Roberto Rossellini does try to inject the merest hint of menace, Bergman is all just too "nice" to be convincing. She has the bad temper of a field mouse.

I viewed a copy of a copy on video of this film and so the video quality was not that great. First, what did I like and not like? I didn't like the beginning or ending, but the rest of the movie was very good. Ingrid Bergman does a very fine job as the wife who has a secret to hide and will go to great lengths out of fear, hence the title of the movie, to prevent her husband from finding out. As the husband, Mathias Wieman does an excellent job playing the part of the kind, understanding Professor Wagner who is not as he seems. Overall, the film is a fine psychological thriller in the manner of Hitchcock and I won't give away the film noirish plot twist or the problematic, to me, ending. This movie is little known but well worth a look.

In this film, Ingrid Bergman plays a woman who ends an affair she began when her husband was in prison. Her lover isn't too happy with the idea and she has her guilt to contend with, but her problems compound significantly when her lover's ex-girlfriend (Renate Mannhardt) turns up and begins blackmailing her. She thinks she can keep a lid on things, but naturally it isn't so easy.

The film is based on a novella from the marvelous author Stefan Zweig, which perhaps explains how well its escalation was crafted. Bergman and Mannhardt are both wonderful, and Rossellini tells the story with great restraint, avoiding unnecessary embellishment. We don't see flashbacks to the affair because while it set these events in motion, it isn't important to the drama. The plot twist is one that viewers can probably see coming, but it's revealed simply, with the sense of Rossellini respecting the viewer's intelligence.

Mathias Wieman plays the husband and he's strong here too; his character is fleshed out in a couple of fine subplots. In the first, he coolly experiments with drugs on lab animals which regularly causes them to suffer and die, and it's notable comparing his reaction to that of his wife early on. Later we see him dispatch stern punishment psychologically to his children over a disagreement involving a rifle that the boy got, but his younger sister wanted.

The film is taut at 78 minutes, which was a strength, but Rossellini finds the time to give us street scenes in Germany as well as the fantastic long shot with Bergman's shadow on the ceiling of the deserted lab at night. The dubbing, common to Italian films for decades, is unfortunate, but not overly so. The biggest issue was the ending, which felt too forced and convenient, especially after we had been led along a path with real cruelty and darkness in it. I considered knocking my review score down a bit because of it, but felt that maybe Rossellini and Bergman's personal life had caused him to end it this way, and in event, what had come before it carried the day for me.

Rossellini shot two versions of 'La Paura', one in German ('Angst') and an international version ('Fear'). The two differ in shots and editing. The first Italian version ('La Paura') corresponds to the international one. Later on another shorter version was distributed by the title 'Non credo più nell'amore'. This restoration is the reconstruction of the international version, 'Fear', and it started from the negative of 'Non credo più nell'amore' and by two vintage duplicates, a positive and a negative. The latter, with a number of vintage prints, were used as reference to reconstruct the editing. I watched the international 'Fear'.

I can't help but feel a film about a woman living in constant fear as a direct result of her own infidelity would have fit into the Rossellini + Bergman catalogue so brilliantly just 3 or 4 years prior when they both were living in fear as a direct result of their own sinful affair's scandalisation of America. As it is, I feel that 'Fear' is distant from all collaborating on it. Lack of thought becomes uncharacteristically apparent in the closing act, and the reason for that seems to be a lack of care for a project that could have been so special, so Kiarostami, in a weird, Rossellini kind of way.