Amores na Cidade

I saw L'Amore in Citta as part of my Fellini quest. And I have to say that I found the film very interesting. Separated into five segments by five different directors, it is charming, sometimes heart breaking and I was always intrigued. All the segments are filmed absolutely beautifully especially Fellini's and Lattuada's. The music is always great, ranging from nostalgic(Rissi), bright(Fellini, though nostalgic comes under him also) and poetic(Lattuada). Of the segments my personal favourite is Lattuada's, especially for the beautiful scoring and the poetic ending. Rissi's is also very charming, very simple story but beautiful everywhere else. My least favourite, though still good, is Zavattini's, I love the climax which is very touching, as is the scene with the mother on the edge of the fountain, but found the very ending jarring compared with the scene before it and the rest of the neorealistic feel of the segment. Antonioni's documentary-like approach is interesting and the interviews are fascinating, not just the subject matter but also what there is to say. I saw L'Amore in Citta for Fellini, and apart from an ending that I think could have had more to it he doesn't disappoint. The beautiful visuals, deliberate pacing, nostalgic yet mystical story telling and colourful music are all there, and Fellini's poetic and quite ambitious style is as distinctive as you would expect. All in all, a very well done film. 8/10 Bethany Cox

That was the intent, anyway. Cesare Zavattini produced the film and brought together five directors to make short films about love. The results are all good, but none of them great. They all have problems. To add to this problem, the version that I saw had English narration in the prologue and in the inter-segments, and sometimes in the short films themselves. I don't know if anything was edited out.

Part 1 (d. Dino Risi): This segment is a charming little film about the people in a dance hall. It has no real story. Instead, we see couples connect, people alone, and couples break up. It's very nice.

Part 2 (d. Michelangelo Antonioni): Of course, I saw the film for the Antonioni and Fellini segments. They're two of my very favorite filmmakers. Antonioni's is quite interesting. It is the most documentary-like segment. I don't know if it's true, but the narration claims that they gathered together a group of people who had attempted suicide over failed relationships. Two women tell their stories in an interview format. It's quite good.

Part 3 (d. Federico Fellini): At first, this looks like it will be the best of the film. The opening sequence, with the main character wandering through the narrow hallways of a Roman apartment building looking for a matrimonial service (the equivalent of a dating service). A young child tells him that he will lead him to that room, and as they proceed, other children show up and follow them. That's a very mystical scene, but what follows is very disappointing. The man claims that he's looking for a wife for his friend, who happens to be a werewolf. This segment is the one that hints that there might have been some editing in the version that I watched. This man is introduced to the girl, they have a conversation in a field, and then the man, I guess, tells her that she is too good to do so. The result is nonsensical. There is absolutely no payoff. Actually, the weak ending reminds me a lot of the segment Fellini wrote for Roberto Rosselini's Paisa.

Part 4 (d. Mesallini Zavattini): I assume Zavattini is related to Cesare, probably his brother or son. Anyhow, this segment is most in-line with the neorealistic movement, which was dying by the time this film was made. A Sicilian woman went to Rome to find maid work. Her first employer impregnates her and then fires her. Now she's stuck with a young boy but no money whatsoever. She tries to scam a nanny into taking care of the kid, but he is eventually given back to her. There is a beautiful scene where the mother changes her sons diaper on the edge of a fountain. This scene's real-time realism is reminiscent of the maid's morning duties in Vittorio de Sica's Umberto D., made shortly after this film and written by Cesare Zavattini. The climactic scene is truly heartbreaking, but the end is horribly anticlimactic. This film really shouldn't have had a happy ending. Neorealism and happy endings really don't mix.

Part 5 (d. Alberto Lattuada): Lattuada is most famous for co-directing with Fellini on his first film, Variety Lights. His segment in Love in the City is perhaps the best of the film. It has no story at all. Instead, it is a non-narrative compilation of the reactions of men when they see beautiful woman. The editing reminded me of Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia. It's quite musical. In fact, the music of this segment is really good. The film ends on a very poetic moment.

All in all, you should see the film if you're a fan of Italian cinema, or just of Antonioni or Fellini. 7/10.

It is not a film for everyone, it will be understood and appreciated only by very sensitive people. Dino Risi with the dance, "Paradiso per tre ore", and "Agenzia matrimoniale" by Federico Fellini, are the best. "Storia di Caterina" by Francesco Maselli, very sad. Sad also "Tentato suicidio" by Michelangelo Antonioni. And, in the last episode, "Gli italiani si voltano" by Alberto Lattuada, we see that the Italian women of the '50s were not only more elegant than they are today, but also much more beautiful. The actors, with only about 3 exceptions, all unknown, are in fact non-professionals, real citizens playing themselves, and they are exceptional. In the last episode, that of Lattuada, the great director Marco Ferreri appears as an extra. Music by the great Mario Nascimbene. 20 stars! Ah, I can't give it 20, only 10 then.

This film is included in Parker Tyler's "Classics of the Foreign Film," a seminal book published in the 1960s (perhaps updated since then). I saw it for the first time recently through a videotape available at a local university. The film captures aspects of 1950s Rome fairly well, the best segment concerning a Sicilian woman who, having a baby boy out of wedlock, cannot pay for the child's care due to her inability to obtain work. Out of desperation she abandons the child in a park. He is rescued and taken to an orphanage where she tracks him down, admitting to being his mother. Though she is arrested for abandoning the child, the public and court absolve her of guilt due to understanding the situation she had been in. She then becomes a nurse to care for children. If only life had been/was like that. This segment certainly wins in depicting the difficulty of illegitimacy in those days, especially in a very traditional society. Then again, Italian and European cinema were more mature about such things than was Hollywood.

An experiment of newsreel, today we will say docufilm, recited according to the stylistic elements that would later become cinema-truth, with a splash of neorealism. All supervised by Cesare Zavattini, with the involvement of directors who will make the history of Italian cinema. Among other episodic films whose typology, born for production reasons, will assert itself in a fluctuating way in the following years. Perhaps the adjective desperate had to be added to the subject love of the title, in fact apart from the amusing episodes filmed by Risi and Blasetti, the latter a little repetitive on Italic guardonism, the rest sheds light on episodes of social sadness following the post-war years, which did not predict a rapid economic development, reaching the maximum of drama in the episode of Maselli, a news item that aroused a lot of emotion, written with four hands with Zavattini. The episode with the most stylistic rigor is the Fellini episode, with shots that anticipate the subsequent masterpieces. The episodes signed by Lizzani, on prostitution not yet regulated by Merlin, and Antonioni, on suicide attempts, are rather colorless. However, an experiment of cinematography, little known, which presupposed a sequel that was never realized.