1948年，《卡薩布蘭卡》女主角英格麗·褒曼被名導(dǎo)羅西里尼的戰(zhàn)爭三部曲之一《羅馬，不設(shè)防的城市》深深感動(dòng)，并寫給他一封信表示期望能與之合作，羅西里尼也為之動(dòng)容。兩年之后，兩人在合作拍攝《火山邊緣之戀》時(shí)墜入情網(wǎng)，褒曼給羅西里尼產(chǎn)下一子，褒曼清純賢惠形象被毀，輿論嘩然。不久，褒曼與丈夫離婚，并與羅西里尼結(jié)婚。此后一段時(shí)期就被稱為羅西里尼的“英格麗·褒曼時(shí)代”。但是兩人的事業(yè)并未因此更進(jìn)一步，相反地，他們?cè)獾搅艘院萌R塢為首的電影界的抵制，兩人后來合作的電影大都在業(yè)內(nèi)頗有口碑卻難以與觀眾見面。整體來看，這段時(shí)期的作品反響遠(yuǎn)不如其他時(shí)期作品。 本片就是這個(gè)時(shí)期的作品，2013年《視與聽》雜志邀請(qǐng)846位影評(píng)人共同參與投票，每人選出個(gè)人心中的影史十佳。票數(shù)匯總之后，得出影史佳片的50強(qiáng)。本片榮登Top50 #41，該片也曾入選《電影手冊(cè)》年度十佳。 本片故事內(nèi)容是戰(zhàn)后一對(duì)中產(chǎn)階級(jí)夫妻的在意大利的一次旅行，通過彼此感情的碰撞展示了戰(zhàn)后歐洲民眾的生態(tài)。故事的男主人公喜歡沾花惹草，女主人公喜歡感懷傷逝。在這次旅途中，男女主人公因?yàn)榍楦胁缓?，中途各奔東西。但是經(jīng)歷這段不美好的意大利之旅，隨著時(shí)間的推移，倆人逐漸認(rèn)識(shí)到時(shí)光易逝，生命短暫，而愛情也并非永恒，需要彼此妥協(xié)，彼此維護(hù)。通過這對(duì)男女的感情變故，羅西里尼向我們展示了戰(zhàn)后歐洲普通人的精神面貌，隱約顯露出一股淡淡的憂傷。 通觀全片，不能絕對(duì)地說這個(gè)故事的情感重點(diǎn)是婚姻感情，我覺得羅西里尼似乎有意識(shí)地情感重點(diǎn)?？吭凇皯?zhàn)爭”這個(gè)點(diǎn)上。整部電影自始至終，鏡頭里都充斥著戰(zhàn)后人們消極、迷茫、頹廢的生活態(tài)度。羅西里尼通過這對(duì)男女的情感變故來展現(xiàn)歐洲戰(zhàn)后普通人的情感變化，從他們游歷途中的所見，以及自身的情感波動(dòng)，反映出整個(gè)歐洲的思想意識(shí)形態(tài)。導(dǎo)演沒有采用形式主義手法，刻意夸大人們的情感變動(dòng)，而是把這種變動(dòng)隱含在“婚姻變故”中。從這對(duì)戀人的愛情橫生出來的枝節(jié)，看出歐洲二戰(zhàn)之后的一種精神面貌。 男主角代表了這樣一類人。客觀地看待現(xiàn)狀，并不想主動(dòng)傾注自己的精力去改變現(xiàn)狀。男主角面對(duì)婚變的做法是“逃避”，因?yàn)楦鹘堑囊恍┮庖姴缓?，男主角在某天清晨突然消失的無影無蹤。他之所以尋歡作樂，不過是為了逃避目前的現(xiàn)狀，而不是真的想要跑去玩樂。這一點(diǎn)，在男主人面對(duì)妓女的時(shí)候表現(xiàn)的極為明顯。表面上，他在調(diào)情，但實(shí)質(zhì)上，他也牽掛著女主角。這類人經(jīng)歷了戰(zhàn)爭，遭受了戰(zhàn)爭的創(chuàng)傷，他們卻并不想著去改變什么，而是選擇逃避，即便他們?cè)僭趺搓P(guān)愛著歐洲的現(xiàn)狀。 而影片中，女主角在面對(duì)婚變時(shí)，她努力表現(xiàn)得若無其事，她明知道自己過得不夠快樂，卻努力裝得美好非常。我們關(guān)心的并不是男主人的“游覽”，而是女主角的“游覽”，她的所見給我們展示了歐洲戰(zhàn)后的現(xiàn)狀。自然景觀冷清，帶著頹廢，某處安放的一排排尸骨，靜謐，哀傷。當(dāng)鏡頭從女主角角度看去的時(shí)候，我們才真正感受到那股淡淡的憂傷。它不僅僅關(guān)乎男女主角之間破裂的愛情，更關(guān)乎整個(gè)歐洲的情感裂痕。 面對(duì)陳列的尸骨和被挖掘出來的死尸時(shí)，女主角幾欲淚流。她因而想到了時(shí)光短暫，愛情未能永遠(yuǎn)，看到了愛情最終敗給了生命，看到了她所不能接受的一切。 一個(gè)民族不經(jīng)歷戰(zhàn)爭，就不會(huì)懂得戰(zhàn)爭之痛。一個(gè)人不見識(shí)死亡，就揣摩不到生命的厚度，就不知道現(xiàn)在擁有的究竟何等珍貴。 《臥虎藏龍》里有句臺(tái)詞，我們能夠觸摸的，都沒有永遠(yuǎn)。一切能夠現(xiàn)在把握的，都看不到永久。能在一起的時(shí)候，請(qǐng)別輕易分離。 又突然想到李白一首詩?！胺蛱斓卣?，萬物之逆旅；光陰者，百代之過客。而浮生若夢(mèng)，為歡幾何？”想到此處，反觀本片，這股淡淡的憂傷便越發(fā)明顯。

亞歷山大剛和妻子坦白離婚的事，夫婦被熱情地邀請(qǐng)去看尸骨挖掘，這一段處理得非常棒，把擁抱在一起的夫婦尸體與亞歷山大夫婦的情感狀態(tài)建立了某種神秘的聯(lián)系。生命太過脆弱了，愛情也敗給了它，誰又能知道那對(duì)擁抱著死去的夫婦是真心相愛呢？興許也是在不斷的妥協(xié)與退讓中，只是死亡成就了它們的愛情，將其永恒化了。那么，影片最后亞歷山大夫婦在神面前的相擁和解就一定是因?yàn)閻蹎?？不過是害怕再度迷失，害怕再度虛空，不過是無處取暖時(shí)祈求對(duì)方的一點(diǎn)溫度罷了，畢竟這里到處彌漫著死亡，需要新生命(孩子)來彌補(bǔ)破裂的情感。因此，透過女主角的眼睛，我們可以看到戰(zhàn)后的街上，嬰兒和孕婦都增加了?？梢哉f，整個(gè)民族的情感創(chuàng)傷都企圖通過嬰孩來彌合。

羅西里尼無愧于電影大師，而他跟英格麗的愛情故事雖然注定失敗，但也與此片一共千古流芳。

浪漫是人類從虛無中產(chǎn)生出激勵(lì)自己生存下去的方式。燃燒生命雖然危險(xiǎn)，雖然會(huì)導(dǎo)致更大的虛無（死亡），但也樹立了浪漫的人生典范，以規(guī)范后人的生活。

影片開始晃動(dòng)運(yùn)鏡有雙重內(nèi)涵：其一是暗示這對(duì)夫妻的婚姻搖搖欲墜；其二暗示了熱烈與無情的戰(zhàn)爭對(duì)人類帶來的創(chuàng)傷。這種雙重內(nèi)涵在后續(xù)對(duì)白中大量出現(xiàn)，提示大家影片的母題所在。比如路人甲說我們都經(jīng)歷了一場海難，你還要說我們是loafer嗎？比如女主角自言自語地罵她的丈夫：玩世不恭、殘酷無情。尤其是這一幕恰恰出現(xiàn)在女主游覽軍事要塞之后。

影片剛開始導(dǎo)演就借男主之口點(diǎn)題：“喧囂和無聊竟在此處結(jié)合的如此自然?！?再聯(lián)想片名“Journey to Italy”，就知道這部影片不僅僅是一個(gè)愛情故事這么簡單。

這對(duì)夫妻在意大利的郊野公路飛馳著，但是被一群牛所拖累了行車的速度，他們認(rèn)為這是趟無聊的旅程，這暗喻了在戰(zhàn)后重建的歐洲，經(jīng)濟(jì)雖然得到蓬勃發(fā)展，但人們的內(nèi)心卻是一片虛無，戰(zhàn)爭已經(jīng)耗盡了人類的熱情。同時(shí)這一幕也與影片結(jié)局的教徒包圍中的夫妻相呼應(yīng)。

到酒店后，兩位主角再次提示觀眾：“我們之間狀況很不好”。女主角直接說，我們之間很疏離，而男主角說我們之間結(jié)婚8年似乎從來都沒有了解過對(duì)方。似乎，這是一場虛無的婚姻，但他們還是想在其中制造出一些火花，一些浪漫?！拔覀兗热灰呀?jīng)如此陌生，不如重新開始”。

這種火花在影片的發(fā)展中的確漸成氣候，最后變成了結(jié)尾的炙熱。有趣的是，在如此這般的疏離冷漠中，這個(gè)愛情的火種是從什么時(shí)候點(diǎn)燃的呢？諷刺的是，它是從丈夫跟一個(gè)女子調(diào)情開始燃燒的。

之后，女主想起了她的藍(lán)顏知己，一位在戰(zhàn)爭中死去的詩人，他在意大利為她寫下的的動(dòng)人詩句。而這也同時(shí)點(diǎn)燃了男主心中的嫉妒之火，同時(shí)也是愛情之火。

兩位主角開始愛上了對(duì)方，也同時(shí)開始了愛情的戰(zhàn)爭。在虛無之中創(chuàng)造出來的浪漫，這對(duì)活下去的人無比的重要。在影片即將走向結(jié)局之前，借一位路人女子之口，導(dǎo)演明確指出了這一點(diǎn)：“兩天前我的一位朋友死了32歲…..如果剛才不是你叫住我，我想我會(huì)自殺”。

浪漫是從女主的藍(lán)顏（那位詩人）的那首詩開始點(diǎn)燃的："Temple of the spirit / No longer bodies but pure...compared to which mere thought / seems flesh / heavy, dim."

于是女主角開始了她的朝圣之旅，她看到了兩千年前的人類，激情澎湃的人類，她還看到了地下墓穴，死亡/虛無創(chuàng)造了熱情/浪漫（2000年前的羅馬人類激發(fā)了2000年后詩人的浪漫）而浪漫/熱情又創(chuàng)造了更多的死亡/虛無（一根小小的煙頭所激發(fā)出來的火山咆哮），這是一種循環(huán)。浪漫和虛無就是這樣的共生體。

男主這邊，看似愛上他的女人是一位有夫之婦，并且深愛著她丈夫，而看似站街女的風(fēng)流女人，她只是想要自毀而已。從這些冷漠無情的女人身上，他感受到了妻子對(duì)他的愛（一種他自身浪漫之火的投射）。

基于這種互相傷害下的愛情模式（浪漫和死亡的共生），妻子和丈夫說好要離婚。這時(shí)，朋友卻勸他們?nèi)嬝惪纯磩偝鐾恋娜祟愡z骸。這是一對(duì)相擁而死的情侶。受到震撼的女主立刻崩潰了：“這太沉重了，我再也受不了了”。這熊熊燃燒的浪漫/悲劇之火將她吞噬，將她拆散，他和她來自兩個(gè)世界，他們的婚姻注定失敗，而他們的愛情注定歸為虛無，從來如此。

影片最后是諷刺的一幕，兩位分崩離析的無神論夫妻在圣母瑪麗亞和狂熱的宗教徒中重歸于好（是真的嗎？）是宗教的熱情重新喚起了燃燒的生命。這對(duì)男女，他們不過想在虛無的世界里互相尋找一點(diǎn)溫暖，勉強(qiáng)自己，繼續(xù)燃燒下去。

Letter on Rossellini Jacques Rivette Translated by Tom Milne.

'Ordinance protects. Order reigns.'

You don't think much of Rossellini; you don't, so you tell me, like Voyage to Italy; and everything seems to be in order. But no; you are not assured enough in your rejection not to sound out the opinion of Rossellinians. They provoke you, worry you, as if you weren't quite easy in your mind about your taste. What a curious attitude!

But enough of this bantering tone. Yes, I have a very special admiration for Rossellini's latest film (or rather, the latest to be released here). On what grounds? Ah, that's where it gets more difficult. I cannot invoke exaltation, emotion, joy: these are terms you will scarcely admit as evidence; but at least you will, I trust, understand them. (If not, may God help you.)

To gratify you, let us change the tone yet again. Mastery, freedom, these are words you can accept; for what we have here is the film in which Rossellini affirms his mastery most clearly, and, as in all art, through the free exercise of his talents; I shall come back to this later. First I have something to say which should be of greater concern to you: if there is a modern cinema, this is it. But you still require evidence.

1. If I consider Rossellini to be the most modern of film-makers, it is not without reason; nor is it through reason, either. It seems to me impossible to see Voyage to Italy without receiving direct evidence of the fact that the film opens a breach, and that all cinema, on pain of death, must pass through it. (Yes, that there is now no other hope of salvation for our miserable French cinema but a healthy transfusion of this young blood.) This is, of course, only a personal impression. And I should like forthwith to forestall a misunderstanding: for there are other films, other film-makers doubtless no less great than this; though less, how shall I put it, exemplary. I mean that having reached this point in their careers, their creation seems to close in on itself, what they do is of importance for, and within the perspectives of, this creation. Here, undoubtedly, is the culmination of art, no longer answerable to anyone but itself and, once the experimental fumblings and explorations are past, discouraging disciples by isolating the masters: their domain dies with them, along with the laws and the methods current there. Renoir, Hawks, Lang belong here, of course, and in a certain sense, Hitchcock. Le Carrosse d'Or may inspire muddled copies, but never a school; only presumption and ignorance make these copies possible, and the real secrets are so well hidden within the series of Chinese boxes that to unravel them would probably take as many years as Renoir's career now stretches to; they merge with the various mutations and developments undergone over thirty years by an exceptionally keen and exacting creative intelligence. In its energy and dash, the work of youth or early maturity remains a reflection of the movements of everyday life; animated by a different current, it is shackled to time and can detach itself only with difficulty. But the secret of Le Carrosse d'Or is that of creation and the problems, the trials, the gambles it subjects itself to in order to perfect an object and give it the autonomy and the subtlety of an as yet unexplored world. What example is there here, unless that of discreet, patient work which finally effaces all traces of its passage? But what could painters or musicians ever retain from the later works of Poussin or Picasso, Mozart or Stravinsky -- except a salutary despair. There is reason to think that in a decade or so Rossellini too will attain (and acclimatise himself to) this degree of purity; he has not reached it yet -- luckily, it may be said; there is still time to follow him before within him in his turn eternity . . . (1); while the man of action still lives in the artist.
2. Modern, I said; after a few minutes watching Voyage to Italy, for instance, a name kept recurring in my mind which seems out of place here: Matisse. Each image, each movement, confirmed for me the secret affinity between the painter and the film-maker. This is simpler to state than to demonstrate; I mean to try, however, though I fear that my main reasons may seem rather frivolous to you, and the rest either obscure or specious. All you need do, to start with, is look: note, throughout the first part, the predilection for large white surfaces, judiciously set off by a neat trait, an almost decorative detail; if the house is new and absolutely modem in appearance, this is of course because Rossellini is particularly attracted to contemporary things, to the most recent forms of our environment and customs; and also because it delights him visually. This may seem surprising on the part of a realist (and even neo-realist); for heaven's sake, why? Matisse, in my book, is a realist too: the harmonious arrangement of fluid matter, the attraction of the white page pregnant with a single sign, of virgin sands awaiting the invention of the precise trait, all this suggests to me a more genuine realism than the overstatements, the affectations, the pseudo-Russian conventionalism of Miracle in Milan; all this, far from muffling the film-maker's voice, gives him a new, contemporary tone that speaks to us through our freshest, most vital sensibility; all this affects the modem man in us, and in fact bears witness to the period as faithfully as the narrative does; all this in fact deals with the honnete homme of 1953 or 1954; this, in fact, is the theme.
3. On the canvas, a spontaneous curve circumscribes, without ever pinning down, the most brilliant of colors; a broken line, nevertheless unique, encompasses matter that is miraculously alive, as though transferred intact from its source. On the screen, a long parabola, pliant and precise, guides and controls each sequence, then punctually closes again. Think of any Rossellini film: each scene, each episode will recur in your memory not as a succession of shots and compositions, a more or less harmonious succession of more or less brilliant images, but as a vast melodic phrase, a continuous arabesque, a single implacable line which leads people ineluctably towards the as yet unknown, embracing in its trajectory a palpitant and definitive universe; whether it be a fragment from Paisa, a fioretto from The Flowers of St Francis, a 'station' in Europa '51, or these films in their entirety, the symphony in three movements of Germany, Year Zero, the doggedly ascending scale of The Miracle or Stromboli (musical metaphors come as spontaneously as visual ones) -- the indefatigable eye of the camera invariably assumes the role of the pencil, a temporal sketch is perpetuated before our eyes (but rest assured, without attempts to instruct us by using slow motion to analyze the Master's inspiration for our benefit) (2); we live through its progress until the final shading off, until it loses itself in the continuance of time just as it had loomed out of the whiteness of the canvas. For there are films which begin and end, which have a beginning and an ending, which conduct a story through from its initial premise until everything has been restored to peace and order, and there have been deaths, a marriage or a revelation; there is Hawks, Hitchcock, Murnau, Ray, Griffith. And there are the films quite unlike this, which recede into time like rivers to the sea; and which offer us only the most banal of closing images: rivers flowing, crowds, armies, shadows passing, curtains falling in perpetuity, a girl dancing till the end of time; there is Renoir and Rossellini. It is then up to us, in silence, to prolong this movement that has returned to secrecy, this hidden arc that has buried itself beneath the earth again; we have not finished with it yet. (Of course all this is arbitrary, and you are right: the first group prolong themselves too, but not quite in the same way, it seems to me; they gratify the mind, their eddies buoy us up, whereas the others burden us, weigh us down. That is what I meant to say.) And there are the films that rejoin time through a painfully maintained immobility; that expend themselves without flinching in a perilous position on summits that seem uninhabitable; such as The Miracle, Europa '51.
4. Is it toon soon for such enthusiasms? A little too soon, I fear; so let us return to earth and, since you wish it, talk of compositions: but this lack of balance, this divergence from the customary centres of gravity, this apparent uncertainty which secretly shocks you so deeply, forgive me if once again I see the head of Matisse here, his asymmetrism, the magisterial 'falseness' in composition, tranquilly eccentric, which also shocks at first glance and only subsequently reveals its secret equilibrium where values are as important as the lines, and which gives to each canvas this unobtrusive movement, just as here it yields at each moment this controlled dynamism, this profound inclination of all elements, all arcs and volumes at that instant, towards the new equilibrium, and in the following second of the new disequilibrium towards the next; and this might be learnedly described as the art of succession in composition (or rather, of successive composition) which, unlike all the static experiments that have been stifling the cinema for thirty years, seems to me to stand to reason as the only visual device legitimate for the film-maker.
5. I shall not labor the point further: any comparison soon becomes irksome, and I fear that this one has already continued too long; in any case, who will be convinced except those who see the point as soon as it is stated? But allow me just one last remark -- concerning the Trait: grace and gaucheness indissolubly linked. Render tribute in either case to a youthful grace, impetuous and stiff, clumsy and yet disconcertingly at ease, that seems to me to be in the very nature of adolescence, the awkward age, where the most overwhelming, the most effective gestures seem to burst unexpectedly in this way from a body strained by an acute sense of embarrassment. Matisse and Rossellini affirm the freedom of the artist, but do not misunderstand me: a controlled, constructed freedom, where the initial building finally disappears beneath the sketch. For this trait must be added which will resume all the rest: the common sense of the draft. A sketch more accurate, more detailed than any detail and the most scrupulous design, a disposition of forces more accurate than composition, these are the sort of miracles from which springs the sovereign truth of the imagination, of the governing idea which only has to put in an appearance to assume control, summarily outlined in broad essential strokes, clumsy and hurried yet epitomizing twenty fully rounded studies. For there is no doubt that these hurried films, improvised out of very slender means and filmed in a turmoil that is often apparent from the images, contain the only real portrait of our times; and these times are a draft too. How could one fail suddenly to recognize, quintessentially sketched, ill-composed, incomplete, the semblance of our daily existence? These arbitrary groups, these absolutely theoretical collections of people eaten away by lassitude and boredom, exactly as we know them to be, as the irrefutable, accusing image of our heteroclite, dissident, discordant societies. Europa '51, Germany, Year Zero, and this film which might be called Italy '53, just as Paisa was Italy '44, these are our mirror, scarcely flattering to us; let us yet hope that these times, true in their turn like these kindred films, will secretly orient themselves towards an inner order, towards a truth which will give them meaning and in the end justify so much disorder and flurried confusion.
6. Ah, now there is cause for misgivings: the author is showing the cloven hoof. I can hear the mutters already: coterie talk, fanaticism, intolerance. But this famous freedom, and much vaunted freedom of expression, but more particularly the freedom to express everything of oneself, who carries it further? -- To the point of immodesty, comes the answering cry; for the strange thing is that people still complain, and precisely those people who are loudest in their claims for freedom (to what end? the liberation of man? I'll buy that, but from what chains? That man is free is what we are taught in the catechism, and what Rossellini quite simply shows; and his cynicism is the cynicism of great art). 'Voyage to Italy is the Essays of Montaigne,' our friend M prettily says; this, it seems, is not a compliment; permit me to think otherwise, and to wonder at the fact that our era, which can no longer be shocked by anything, should pretend to be scandalized because a film-maker dares to talk about himself without restraint; it is true that Rossellini's films have more and more obviously become amateur films; home movies; Joan of Arc at the Stake is not a cinematic transposition of the celebrated oratorio, but simply a souvenir film of his wife's performance in it just as The Human Voice was primarily the record of a performance by Anna Magnani (the most curious thing is that Joan of Arc at the Stake, like The Human Voice, is a real film, not in the least theatrical in its appeal; but this would lead us into deep waters). Similarly, Rossellini's episode in We the Women is simply the account of a day in Ingrid Bergman's life; while Voyage to Italy presents a transparent fable, and George Sanders a face barely masking that of the film-maker himself (a trifle tarnished, no doubt, but that is humility), -- Now he is no longer filming just his ideas, as in Stromboli or Europa '51, but the most everyday details of his life; this life, however, is 'exemplary' in the fullest sense that Goethe implied: that everything in it is instructive, including the errors; and the account of a busy afternoon in Mrs. Rossellini's life is no more frivolous in this context than the long description Eckermann gives us of that beautiful day, on May 1st 1825, when he and Goethe practiced archery together. -- So there, then, you have this country, this city; but a privileged country, an exceptional city, retaining intact innocence and faith, living squarely in the eternal; a providential city; and here, by the same token, is Rossellini's secret, which is to move with unremitting freedom, and one single, simple motion, through manifest eternity: the world of the incarnation; but that Rossellini's genius is possible only within Christianity is a point I shall not labor, since Maurice Scherer' has already argued it better than I could ever hope to do, in a magazine: Les Cahiers du Cinema, if I remember right. (3)
7. Such freedom, absolute, inordinate, whose extreme license never involves the sacrifice of inner rigor, is freedom won; or better yet, earned. This notion of earning is quite new, I fear, and astonishing even though evident; so the next thing is, earned how? -- By virtue of meditation, of exploring an idea or an inner harmony; by virtue of sowing this predestined seed in the concrete world which is also the intellectual world ('which is the same as the spiritual world'); by virtue of persistence, which then justifies any surrender to the hazards of creation, and even urges our hapless creator to such surrender; once again the idea becomes flesh, the work of art, the truth to come, becomes the very life of the artist, who can thereafter no longer do anything that steers clear of this pole, this magnetic point. -- And thereafter we too, I fear, can barely leave this inner circle any more, this basic refrain that is reprised chorally: that the body is the soul, the other is myself, the object is the truth and the message; and now we are also trapped by this place where the passage from one shot to the next is perpetual and infinitely reciprocal; where Matisse's arabesques are not just invisibly linked to their hearth, do not merely represent it, but are the fire itself.
8. This position offers strange rewards; but grant me another detour, which like all detours will have the advantage of getting us more quickly to where I want to take you. (It is becoming obvious anyway that I am not trying to follow a coherent line of argument, but rather that I am bent on repeating the same thing in different ways; affirming it on different keyboards.) I have already spoken of Rossellini's eye, his look; I think I even made a rather hasty comparison with Matisse's tenacious pencil; it doesn't matter, one cannot stress the film-maker's eye too highly (and who can doubt that this is where his genius primarily lies?), and above all its singularity. Ah, I'm not really talking about Kino-Eye, about documentary objectivity and all that jazz; I'd like to have you feel (with your finger) more tangibly the powers of this look: which may not be the most subtle, which is Renoir, or the most acute, which is Hitchcock, but is the most active; and the point is not that it is concerned with some transfiguration of appearances, like Welles, or their condensation, like Murnau, but with their capture: a hunt for each and every moment, at each perilous moment a corporeal quest (and therefore a spiritual one; a quest for the spirit by the body), an incessant movement of seizure and pursuit which bestows on the images some indefinable quality at once of triumph and agitation: the very note, indeed, of conquest. -- (But perceive, I beg you, wherein the difference lies here; this is not some pagan conquest, the exploits of some infidel general; do you perceive the fraternal quality in this word, and what sort of conquest is implied, what it comprises of humility, of charity?)
9. For 'I have made a discovery': there is a television aesthetic; don't laugh, that isn't my discovery, of course; and what this aesthetic is (what it is beginning to be) I learned just recently from an article by Andre Bazin (4) which, like me, you read in the colored issue of Cahiers du Cinema (definitely an excellent magazine). But this is what I realized: that Rossellini's films, though film, are also subject to this direct aesthetic, with all it comprises of gamble, tension, chance and providence (which in fact chiefly explains the mystery of Joan of Arc at the Stake, where each shot change seems to take the same risks, and induce the same anxiety, as each camera change). So there we are, because of a film this time, ensconced in the darkness, holding our breath, eyes riveted to the screen which is at last granting us such privileges: spying on our neighbor with the most appalling indiscretion, violating with impunity the physical intimacy of people who are quite unaware of being exposed to our fascinated gaze; and in consequence, to the imminent rape of their souls. But in just punishment, we must instantly suffer the anguish of anticipating, of prejudging what must come after; what weight time suddenly lends to each gesture; one does not know what is going to happen, when, how; one has a presentiment of the event, but without seeing it take shape; everything here is fortuitous, instantly inevitable; even the sense of hereafter, within the impassive web of duration. So, you say, the films of a voyeur? -- or a seer.
10. Here we have a dangerous word, which has been made to mean a good many silly things, and which I don't much like using; again you're going to need a definition. But what else can one call this faculty of seeing through beings and things to the soul or the ideal they carry within them, this privilege of reaching through appearances to the doubles which engender them? (Is Rossellini a Platonist? -- Why not, after all he was thinking of filming Socrates.) Because as the screening went on, after an hour went by I wasn't thinking of Matisse any more, I'm afraid, but of Goethe: the art of associating the idea with the substance first of all in the mind, of blending it with its object by virtue of meditation; but he who speaks aloud of the object, through it instantly names the idea. Several conditions are necessary, of course: and not just this vital concentration, this intimate mortification of reality, which are the artist's secret and to which we have no access; and which are none of our business anyway. There is also the precision in the presentation of this object, secretly impregnated; the lucidity and the candor (Goethe's celebrated 'objective description'). This is not yet enough; this is where ordering comes into play, no, order itself, the heart of creation, the creator's design; what is modestly known in professional terms as the construction (and which has nothing to do with the assembling of shots currently in vogue; it obeys different laws); that order, in other words, which, giving precedence to each appearance according to merit, within the illusion that they are simply succeeding one another, forces the mind to conceive another law than chance for their judicious advent. This is something narrative has known, in film or novel, since it grew up. Novelists and film-makers of long standing, Stendhal and Renoir, Hawks and Balzac, know how to make construction the secret element in their work. Yet the cinema turned its back on the essay (I employ A. M. 's (5) word), and repudiated its unfortunate guerrillas, Intolerance, La Regle du Jeu, Citizen Kane. There was The River, the first didactic poem: now there is Voyage to Italy which, with absolute lucidity, at last offers the cinema, hitherto condemned to narrative, the possibility of the essay.
11. For over fifty years now the essay has been the very language of modern art; it is freedom, concern, exploration, spontaneity; it has gradually -- Gide, Proust, Valery, Chardonne, Audiberti -- buried the novel beneath it; since Manet and Degas it has reigned over painting, and gives it its impassioned manner, the sense of pursuit and proximity. -- But do you remember that rather appealing group some years ago which had chosen some number or other as their objective and never stopped clamouring for the 'liberation' of the cinema; (6)don't worry, for once it had nothing to do with the advancement of man; they simply wanted the Seventh Art to enjoy a little of that more rarefied air in which its elders were flourishing; a very proper feeling lay behind it all. It appears, however, that some of the survivors don't care at all for Voyage to Italy; this seems incredible. For here is a film that comprises almost everything they prayed for: metaphysical essay, confession, log-book, intimate journal -- and they failed to realize it. This is an edifying story, and I wanted to tell you the whole of it.
12. I can see only one reason for this; I fear I may be being malicious (but maliciousness, it seems, is to today's taste): this is the unhealthy fear of genius that holds sway this season. The fashion is for subtleties, refinements, the sport of smart-set kings; Rossellini is not subtle but fantastically simple. Literature is still the arbiter: anyone who can do a pastiche of Moravia has genius; ecstasies are aroused by the daubings of a Soldati, Wheeler, Fellini (we'll talk about Mr. Zavattini another time); tiresome repetitions and longueurs are set down as novelistic density or the sense of time passing; dullness and drabness are the effect of psychological subtlety. -- Rossellini falls into this swamp like a butterfly broken on the wheel; reproving eyes are turned away from this importunate yokel. (7) And in fact nothing could be less literary or novelistic; Rossellini does not care much for narration, and still less for demonstration; what business has he with the perfidies of argumentation? Dialectic is a whore who sleeps with all odds and ends of thought, and offers herself to any sophism; and dialecticians are riff-raff. -- His heroes prove nothing, they act; for Francis of Assisi, saintliness is not a beautiful thought. If it so happens that Rossellini wants to defend an idea, he too has no other way to convince us than to act, to create, to film; the thesis of Europa '51, absurd as each new episode starts, overwhelms us five minutes later, and each sequence is above alt the mystery of the incarnation of this idea; we resist the thematic development of the plot, but we capitulate before Bergman's tears, before the evidence of her acts and of her suffering; in each scene the film-maker fulfils the theorist by multiplying him to the highest unknown quantity. But this time there is no longer the slightest impediment: Rossellini does not demonstrate, he shows. And we have seen: that everything in Italy has meaning, that all of Italy is instructive and is part of a profound dogmatism, that there one suddenly finds oneself in the domain of the spirit and the soul; all this may perhaps not belong to the kingdom of pure truths, but is certainly shown by the film to be of the kingdom of perceptible truths, which are even more true. There is no longer any question of symbols here, and we are already on the road towards the great Christian allegory. Everything now seen by this distraught woman, lost in the kingdom of grace, these statues, these lovers, these pregnant women who form for her an omnipresent, haunting cortege, and then those huddled corpses, those skulls, and finally those banners, that procession for some almost barbaric cult, everything now radiates a different light, everything reveals itself as something else; here, visible to our eyes, are beauty, love, maternity, death, God.
13. All rather outmoded notions; yet there they are, visible; all you can do is cover your eyes or kneel. There is a moment in Mozart where the music suddenly seems to draw inspiration only from itself, from an obsession with a pure chord, all the rest being but approaches, successive explorations, and withdrawals from this supreme position where time is abolished. All art may perhaps reach fruition only through the transitory destruction of its means, and the cinema is never more great than in certain moments that transcend and abruptly suspend the drama: I am thinking of Lillian Gish feverishly spinning round, of Jannings' extraordinary passivity, the marvelous moments of tranquility in The River, the night sequence in Tabu with its slumbers and awakenings; of all those shots which the very greatest film-makers can contrive at the heart of a Western, a thriller, a comedy, where the genre is suddenly abolished as the hero briefly takes stock of himself (and above all of those two confessions by Bergman and Anne Baxter, those two long self-flashbacks by heroines who are the exact center and the kernel of Under Capricorn and I Confess). What am I getting at? This: nothing in Rossellini better betokens the great film-maker than those vast chords formed within his films by all the shots of eyes looking; whether those of the small boy turned on the ruins of Berlin, or Magnani's on the mountain in The Miracle, or Bergman's on the Roman suburbs, the island of Stromboli, and finally all of Italy; (and each time the two shots, one of the woman looking, then her vision; and sometimes the two merged); a high note is suddenly attained which thereafter need only be held by means of tiny modulations and constant returns to the dominant (do you know Stravinsky's 1952 Cantata?); similarly the successive stanzas of The Flowers of St Francis are woven together on the ground bass (readable at sight) of charity. -- Or at the heart of the film is this moment when the characters have touched bottom and are trying to find themselves without evident success; this vertiginous awareness of self that grips them, like the fundamental note's own delighted return to itself at the heart of a symphony. Whence comes the greatness of Rome, Open City, of Paisa, if not from this sudden repose in human beings, from these tranquil essays in confronting the impossible fraternity, from this sudden lassitude which for a second paralyses them in the very course of the action? Bergman's solitude is at the heart of both Stromboli and Europa '51: vainly she veers, without apparent progress; yet without knowing it she is advancing, through the attrition of boredom and of time, which cannot resist so protracted an effort, such a persistent concern with her moral decline, a lassitude so unweary, so active and so impatient, which in the end will undoubtedly surmount this wall of inertia and despair, this exile from the true kingdom.
14. Rossellini's work 'isn't much fun'; it is deeply serious, even, and turns its back on comedy; and I imagine that Rossellini would condemn laughter with the same Catholic virulence as Baudelaire; (and Catholicism isn't much fun either, despite its worthy apostles. -- Dov'e la liberta? should make very curious viewing from this point of view). What is it he never tires of saying? That human beings are alone, and their solitude irreducible; that, except by miracle or saintliness, our ignorance of others is complete; that only a life in God, in his love and his sacraments, only the communion of the saints can enable us to meet, to know, to possess another being than ourselves alone; and that one can only know and possess oneself in God. Through all these films human destinies trace separate curves, which intersect only by accident; face to face, men and women remain wrapped in themselves, pursuing their obsessive monologues; delineation of the 'concentration camp world' (8) of men without God. Rossellini, however, is not merely Christian, but Catholic; in other words, carnal to the point of scandal; one recalls the outrage over The Miracle; but Catholicism is by vocation a scandalous religion; the fact that our body, like Christ's, also plays its part in the divine mystery is something hardly to everyone's taste, and in this creed which makes the presence of the flesh one of its dogmas, there is a concrete meaning, weighty, almost sensual, to flesh and matter that is highly repugnant to chaste spirits: their 'intellectual evolution' no longer permits them to participate in mysteries as gross as this. In any case, Protestantism is more in fashion, especially among skeptics and free-thinkers; here is a more intellectual religion, a shade abstract, that instantly places the man for you: Huguenot ancestry infallibly hints at a coat of arms. -- I am not likely to forget the disgusted expressions with which, not so long ago, some spoke of Bergman's weeping and snivelling in Stromboli. And it must be admitted that this goes (Rossellini often does) to the limits of what is bearable, of what is decently admissible, to the very brink of indelicacy. The direction of Bergman here is totally conjugal, and based on an intimate knowledge less of the actress than of the woman; we may also add that our little world of cinema finds it difficult -- when the couple are not man and wife (9) -- to accept a notion of love like this, with nothing joyous or extravagant about it, a conception so serious and genuinely carnal (let us not hesitate to repeat the word) of a sentiment more usually disputed nowadays by either eroticism or angelism; but leave it to the Dolmances (10) among us to take offence at the way it is presented (or even just its reflection, like a watermark, on the face of the submissive wife), as though at some obscenity quite foreign to their light, amusing -- and so very modern -- fancies.
15. Enough of that; but do you now understand what this freedom is: the freedom of the ardent soul, cradled by providence and grace which, never abandoning it to its tribulations, save it from perils and errors and make each trial redound to its glory. Rossellini has the eye of a modern, but also the spirit; he is more modern than any of us; and Catholicism is still as modern as anything. You are weary of reading me; I am beginning to tire of writing to you, or at least my hand is; I would have liked to tell you many more things. One will suffice: the striking novelty of the acting, which here seems to be abolished, gradually killed off by a higher necessity; all flourishes, all glowing enthusiasms, all outbursts must yield to this intimate pressure which forces them to efface themselves and pass on with the same humble haste, as though in a hurry to finish and be done with it. This way of draining actors must often infuriate them, but there are times when they should be listened to, others when they should be silenced. If you want my opinion, I think that this is what acting in the cinema tomorrow will be like. Yet how we have loved the American comedies, and so many little films whose charm lay almost entirely in the bubbling inventiveness of their movements and attitudes, the spontaneous felicities of some actor, the pretty poutings and fluttering eyelashes of a smart and saucy actress; that one of the cinema's aims should be this delightful pursuit of movement and gesture was true yesterday, and even true two minutes ago, but after this film may not be so any longer; the absence of studied effects here is superior to any successful pursuit, the resignation more beautiful than any glow of enthusiasm, the inspired simplicity loftier than the most dazzling performance by any diva. This lassitude of demeanor, this habit so deeply ingrained in every movement that the body no longer vaunts them, but rather restrains them, keeps them within itself, this is the only kind of acting we shall be able to take for a long time to come; after this taste of pungency, all sweetness is but insipid and unremembered.
16. With the appearance of Voyage to Italy, all films have suddenly aged ten years; nothing is more pitiless than youth, than this unequivocal intrusion by the modem cinema, in which we can at last recognize what we were vaguely awaiting. With all due deference to recalcitrant spirits, it is this that shocks or troubles them, that vindicates itself today, it is in this that truth lies in 1955. Here is our cinema, those of us who in our turn are preparing to make films (did I tell you, it may be soon); as a start I have already suggested something that intrigues you: is there to be a Rossellini school? and what will its dogmas be? -- I don't know if there is a school, but I do know there should be: first, to come to an understanding about the meaning of the word realism, which is not some rather simple scriptwriting technique, nor yet a style of mise en scene, but a state of mind: that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points; (judge your De Sicas, Lattuadas and Viscontis by this yardstick). Second point: a fig for the skeptics, the rational, the judicious; irony and sarcasm have had their day; now it is time to love the cinema so much that one has little taste left for what presently passes by that name, and wants to impose a more exacting image of it. As you see, this hardly comprises a program, but it may be enough to give you the heart to begin. This has been a very long letter. But the lonely should be forgiven: what they write is like the love letter that goes astray. To my mind, anyway, there is no more urgent topic today. One word more: I began with a quotation from Peguy; here is another in conclusion: 'Kantism has unsullied hands'(shake hands, Kant and Luther, and you too, Jansen), 'but it has no hands'.

Yours faithfully,

Jacques Rivette

NOTES:

1. A reference to the first line of Mallarme's poem, Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe: 'Tel qu'en Lui-meme enfin l'etemite le change'. (Trans.)
2. A reference to Clouzot's Le Mystere Picasso. (Trans.)
3. 'Genie du Christianisme' by Maurice Scherer (Eric Rohmer) in Cahiers du Cinema No. 25. July 1953.
4. 'Pour contribuer a une erotologie de la Television' in Cahiers du Cinema, No, 42.
5. Probably Andre Martin. (Trans.)
6. Possibly a reference to Ricciotto Canudo (1879-1923) and his Club des Amis du Septieme Art. (Trans.)
7. Rivette's original of this sentence reads: 'Rossellini tombe dans ce marecage comme le pave de ('ours; on se detourne avec des moues reprobatrices de ce paysan du Danube.' The bear and the Danube peasant are references to Fables by La Fontaine. (Trans.)
8. Rivette was referring to David Roussel's book, L'Univers Concenrationnaire. (Trans.)
9. The adulterous affair between Rossellini and Bergman. which began during the shooting of Stromboli (1949); and their subsequent child, caused an enormous press scandal which virtually exiled Bergman from Hollywood. (Ed.)
10. A character in De Sade's La Philosophie dans le boudoir. (Trans.)

Originally appeared in Cahiers du cinema April 1955, no. 46. This translation reprinted from Rivette: Texts and Interviews (British Film Institute, 1977): p. 54-64