Teresa

This movie launched the feature film debut of four actors that would later go on to reach some success: Pier Angeli, John Ericson, Ralph Meeker, and Rod Steiger. It was also the first of three films for Bill Mauldin, a famous illustrator for "The Stars & Strips" (the military's newspaper during World War II). The only known actors in the movie were Patricia Collinge (The Little Foxes) and Peggy Ann Garner (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn).

The movie begins with Philip Cass (John Ericson) in a session with his VA psychologist, Frank (Rod Steiger), after returning from the war in Italy. He is having trouble fitting in with civilian life.

His story is related to us in flashback— While serving in Italy, Philip is clearly scared and unable to fight the German enemy until Sgt Dobbs (Ralph Meeker) steps in to guide him to fight. During a battle with the Germans, Philip's assignment is to hide in the bushes and let the Germans pass him by and then shoot up a flare for US soldiers to be ready to fight them down steam Unable to do even this, he is sent to a local hospital with battle fatigue. There he learns that Dobbs had been killed in the fight. Filled with guilt and shame, he hides his head in the pillow and cries.

While in Italy, he and a group of US soldiers are assigned to bivouac in an Italian home. There, he meets, dates, and falls in love with a young Italian girl, Teresa (Pier Angeli). They get married and have a honeymoon in Rome. When he ships out for the US, he must leave his war bride behind until she is authorized to join him.

This brings us back to his private battle in the US: He must find a job and make his own home. But, to do this, he must face his possessive mother, Patricia Collinge, and spineless father, Richard Bishop. There are some fine scenes in this movie, especially between, John Ericson and Pier Angeli. However, there is nothing subtle about the story, which "hits us over the head" rather than simply indicating its meaning.

Fred Zinnemann's attempt at Neo-Realism is a drab story about a soldier who brings his war bride back to America to live with his disappointment of a father and his overbearing mother. Pier Angeli, as the bride, is lovely, but John Ericson, as the soldier, isn't up to the acting challenge asked of him. Patricia Collinge is decent as his mom, but everyone is done a disservice by Zinnemann's detached direction. I think he was going for understated realism but everything is so understated as to be lacking in any kind of emotional impact whatsoever.

"Teresa" received a 1951 Oscar nomination for Best Motion Picture Story, a category that later was absorbed into the Original Screenplay Oscar.

Grade: C

Great looking, idiosyncratic movie with a fascinating cast and the kind of painterly imagery that lingers in the memory, but the story is a jumble and unwisely structured around a limp, spineless, infuriating character. There are so many terrific little details on the fringes that so powerfully convey a sense of time and setting (an outdoor wedding on a windy day in a bombed out Italian village, overheard conversations through thin walls on a walk up the steps of a cramped New York apartment building, an exuberant mob of WWII servicemen reuniting with their wide-eyed war brides the moment they step off the boat - sprinting to meet them and gather them up in their arms as each bride's name is called out on a loudspeaker to wild applause) that it's a shame they're attached to such a diffuse storyline.

John Ericson is a revelation (to me, at least) as the smothered, neurotic veteran (with similarities to "REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE", as others have pointed out). He looks astonishingly like Marlon Brando in many shots, and he IS a good, sensitive actor in the classic brooding mold. His scenes with the angelic Pier Angeli (future love of James Dean) are unusually tender and achingly romantic and he does an excellent job in one agonizing scene where he bombs in an ill-advised effort to make a living as a door to door salesman. The problem isn't really with his performance; it's just that his character is written in such a way that many of his actions don't seem to mesh with what's going on around him. The character loses our respect early with a terrible act of cowardice and seems to possess mild (at best) interest in getting it back. His behavior towards Angeli at one point late in the movie, is impossible to accept, as is the slushy resolution.

Extremely interesting cast if you're a movie buff. There's Ralph Meeker, the actor who replaced Brando in the stage version of "STREETCAR", if I'm not mistaken. There's Angeli and her association to Dean. And then there's Rod Steiger in his film debut, a five or so minute part as a psychiatrist. Not realizing he was in it going in, I was floored to see him turn up here and was certain at first it must just be some other actor who looked like him.

Really good movies just "nail it" somehow. Despite all its strengths, "TERESA" never quite zeroes in on what it's trying to say. It never quite achieves lift-off. Nevertheless, it's well crafted by Fred Zinnemann and parts of it really stick in the mind.

Teresa was one of several marvelous 1951 films that fell off the radar screen.

Others were 'Night and the City', Jules Dassin's best film and possibly the best "film noir" ever made; 'Bullfighter and the Lady' (forget the "B" picture title, it was far better than the more famous 'The Brave Bulls'; and 'The Sound of Fury', titled also later the same year 'Try and Get Me'.

Teresa joins this list of scarcely seen gems. It was John Ericson's first film, but also his best. It does (as your reviewer says) resemble, in its depiction of parental smothering, 'Rebel Without a Cause'. However, Teresa was better. It does Fred Zinnemann proud. It was more sensitive than his touching film of two years earlier, 'The Search'.

What a year 1951 was for forgotten films that were better than many well-known, fondly remembered ones.

"Teresa", is a movie that is time well spent for several reasons. Patricia Collinge delivers a performance atypical of the most memorable characters she had played to that point in her career. When I think of Collinge, I think of her as the quintessential, albeit clueless mother in Hitchcock's, "Shadow Of A Doubt". The other character was the sympathetic, "Aunt Birdie", from the director, William Wyler's classic film, "The Little Foxes". Collinge, in "Teresa", is spine chilling as a domineering mother / mother-in-law from Hell. She is a great performer. The next reason to recommend spending time viewing this film is for the fine effort by the brilliant director, Fred Zinneman. His talents lend a positive element which makes the film artistically better than good. He was truly a great director. Finally, there is the powerful, yet poignant performance by Pier Angeli. She was perfectly cast as the young girl from post war Italy, who falls in love with an American soldier. Angeli was young, pretty and believable in her role. Zinneman really squeezed a gem of an acting performance from Pier Angeli that left me most moved. The story itself is good, with some predictability, but not to a degree that would make one roll their eyes. I saw this movie just once, several years ago. I am more critical than most when I watch a film. I have been hoping TCM would run it again, as this movie, "Teresa", left a very favorable impression on me. I wholeheartedly recommend this film to lovers of classic films, and to those who like stories from the post WWII era. The other elements are that, "Teresa", offers a good viewing for fans of love stories and stories involving strong, heroic female characters.