La paura

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.

Whenever I see La Paura I think of it as a companion piece to Eyes Wide Shut, or maybe it is the other way around. Adultery makes both films tick but in different ways. I think Phillip French was right on the money when he pointed out a Wizard of Oz thing in Kubrick's last work. Like Dorothy, Tom and Nicole go through fantasies and nightmares and at the end Dorothy's reassuring childish motto "there's no place like home" is ironically updated to the adult circumstantial adage "there's no sex like marital sex". Kubrick's take is intellectual, he never leaves the world of ideas to touch the ground. He taunts the audience first with an erotic movie and then with a thriller and refuses to deliver either of them. He was married to his third wife for 40 years, until he died. Rossellini was still married to Ingrid Bergman when he directed La Paura; they had been adulterous lovers and their infidelity widely criticized La Paura is a tale, a noirish one. The noir intrigue is solved and the tale has a happy ending. The city is noir; the country is tale, the territory where childhood is possible. The transition is operated in the most regular way: by car, a long-held shot taken from the front of the car as it rides into the road, as if we were entering a different dimension. Irene (Bergman) starts the movie: we just see a dark city landscape but her voice-over narration tells us of her angst and informs us that the story is a flashback, hers. Bergman's been cheating on her husband. At first guilt is just psychological torture but soon expands into economic blackmail and then grows into something else. From beginning to end the movie focuses on what Bergman feels, every other character is there to make her feel something. Only when the director gives away the plot before the main character can find out does he want us to feel something Bergman still can't. When she finds out, we have already experienced the warped mechanics of the situation and we may focus once again on the emotional impact it has on Bergman's Irene. In La Paura treasons are not imagined but real, nightmares are deliberate and the couple's venom suppurates in bitter ways. Needless to say, Ingrid has another of her rough rides in the movies but Rossellini doesn't dare put her away as he did in Europa 51, nor does he abandon her to the inscrutable impassivity of nature (Stromboli). His gift is less transcendent and fragile than the conclusion of Viaggio in Italia. He just gives his wife as much of a fairy tale ending as a real woman can have, a human landscape where she can finally feel at home. Back to the country, a half lit interior scene where shadows suggest the comfort of sleep. After all, it's the "fairy godmother" who speaks the last words in the movie.

A simple story about a simple thing, blackmail. Ingrid Bergman and her husband work in a facility that is trying to work on medical issues, such as the destruction of heart tissue. Bergman, much younger than her husband, has a fling with a playboy type. In the process, an evil woman blackmails her and with each payoff, the amount increases. The film is full of tension as Bergman rushes to get more to this woman. Finally, a ring that means a great deal to the husband is taken. She has to get it back. The events that follow are rather hard to swallow and seem, for me, to diminish the story. Bergman does a slow burn when she gets to that "I've had enough" stage. Things become way too contrived. After seeing the ending, say to yourself, "Is this a real conclusion, even in a 1954 film drama. Bergman, as always, does a really nice job.

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.

Shades of Hitchcock in this somewhat atypical Ingrid Bergman - Roberto Rossellini collaboration. Most of the film appears simple and straightforward; there is an effective plot twist in the middle, but the ending is rather weak and anticlimactic. Bergman brings her customary class and consumate skill to the project; the little-known Renate Mannhardt is arguably even better as the kind of blackmailer I'd gladly give in to any of her demands! She certainly holds her own in their one-on-one confrontations, which are the best scenes in the film. Some of the English dubbing sounds a little awkward. **1/2 out of 4.