Vittorio de Sica UMBERTO D (1952)

(This was the last film I watched for a Criterion challenge for this year on Letterboxd. This was under the category "Guy Maddin's Top 10" and I am so glad I got to revisit one of my absolute favorite films)

Umberto D is one of the most monumental and important of all films not because it has the most impressive technical mastery or even the most brilliant performances - though it has three very good ones (or even four if you count the dog Flike as a dog actor) - but because it shows what human decency is all about in the clearest way possible. It shows this because it is about how indecent societies can be, especially in cities, and how holding on to dignity is one part of it but just being kind is above all else what separates the good from the not. And even above all of that the film is a testament to life itself, why it is worth living, or why it at least should be given another chance even in the face of all darkness and despair.

Director De Sica and writer Zavattini already had other collaborations, and they already probed the themes of class and the desolation of working people. This really forms the third part of an unofficial trilogy with Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves, and while it is very much like trying to choose a favorite child among the three, this is the one that most potently and in this sublimely, shatteringly simple yet poetic manner shows that how people lack care for one another and what that leads to (as well as pets and animals like dogs).

I think too that as much as one may want to focus all of one's attention on the title character, and eventually when he becomes a key central companion little Flike, it is also important to note how much time De Sica and Zavattini have the audience spenda with Maria (Casilio), the maid of the apartment building where Umberto lives and is harangued by the landlord lady (Gennari). There is a lot of time where we just see her going about her tasks, spraying away ants and other menial things, and sitting in her own level of despair about what her life is going to be like as she is pregnant and doesn't know how she will take care of the baby (or even who the father is between two me).

It seems deliberately paced out to make her so essential to the film, and it makes sense that she would bond with Umberto in her own way; she is a decent person, or at least she sees that being decent to Umberto and Flike doesn't take away from her day, and she is like the young mirror image of Umberto in a sense. Society has let them both down in different ways - he because of his age and lack of financial or any kind of real options, and her for her seeming lack of education or stability (in one line she mentions she can't go back to her parents because her father beats her and that opens up a whole other level of pain she must be hiding beneath her pleasant or just placid exterior).

For Battisti as Umberto, he does so much with a character that on the page should be just an ornery grumpy kind of guy. He fills him up with something that I am sure a writer would call back-story, but it is in his voice and mannerisms and eyes how much he fills in parts for us to view (so in other words, one could say his irritation is because of how his life was once more ordered and functional, though lonely always without a family, he at least had an education and a good job). 

But when a society has no use for an older person - and many a person 70 and up will say people treat you differently once you get to that number - that affects someone and the power of Battisti's performance, especially as someone new to acting, is to never make it look like acting. This is a guy increasingly desperate and not doing a great job at hiding it (ie when he is about ready to beg and just cannot).

The film is so pure hearted because the filmmakers know how to push the emotions just enough before it becomes sentimental.  And maybe it is in parts and I just don't see it - or inherently having a dog will bring that out for us (it being a small dog, actually not unlike the one from of all things the Jim Carrey Mask movie, is the proverbial secret sauce) - but I don't think it is that, or just that.  The film opens with a worker's rights *protest, one that ends almost as soon as it begins and once it disperses there isn't anywhere else for Umberto do go but home, but that is only where the structural problem stems for Umberto.

What he can't fix or change are those around him, or his circumstances, and as much as Italy may have been letting down people like Umberto it is not a singular Italian thing.  When everything comes down to "how much $ you got," then a society is locked into patterns that at best squeeze down human compassion and at worse snuff it out.  Even people in this city that should seem compassionate like the couple who board the dogs are mistreating them not necessarily because they are bad people but because it doesn't make financial sense to do better for the dogs ("a boy will walk them, but he wants money," the wife says, and Umberto gets the F out of there before he makes a big mistake).

Suffice it to say, I have seen this film several times and each and every one - including the first time unofficially which was the clips edited together in Scorsese's My Voyage to Italy documentary (essential by the way, a full 3 credit course in 4 hours) - I sob uncontrollably in those last ten minutes.  Every moment is earned because De Sica and Zavattini get to this existential culmination that is astounding.  What does it mean to actually value your life?  Or value someone else?  Umberto tries to give Flike away multiple times, even down to just walking away and hiding as he goes to play with some kids.  But Flike won't leave... until that train comes rolling and Flike realizes he has to get out of there.

But the key thing dramatically is not Flike but Umberto, when he stares at that train coming and the camera pushes in (this sequence of shots does show how much De Sica did have excellent technical chops as it is shot and edited for maximal psychological and heart shattering impact), and it dawns on him slowly but surely that for all of his bouts of depression and feeling like everything is over... he can't do this.  He won't. Not with Flike in his arms.  And once Flike runs away and backs off, like a "hey, no, dude, no," it reinforces what he needs in that moment, which is... love. And affirmation.  And to have his buddy back in his arms.

The ending shot I am sure by a few or more scholars got compared to Chaplin - in a sense as much as this film is connected with other De Sica films it is also Modern Times Italian Style - but it really is that poignancy perfected.  We don't know what is in store for these two. Life may be a bucket of shit for them.  But they are alive and they are together.  I haven't stopped thinking of the ending of this film for decades and I know I never will, which is what film can do.

(*I wonder if one difference today for Umberto would be that he could be part of an Indivisible group and find companionship there... or at least someone could buy his watch for a few Lira more)