The Flamingo at its finest

 

Film review: Umberto D (1952)

Film number 49 from our box set, and another one that I put off because it seemed crushingly depressing, and (while undeniably sad, and left me with a lump in my throat) was definitely not that.  Certainly the description - old man and his adorable dog fall gradually into homelessness in a poverty-stricken post-war Italy (Rome?) - illustrates why I avoided it (as does the fact that it's by the director of the heartrending Bicycle Thieves, whose absence from the box-set its presence explains), but the real earthiness of the characters, and the fact that Italians just don't seem capable of simply lying down and giving up, means it's a nourishing rather than depleting watch.  The main actor, a small, slight, dapper man, was a non-professional, and I believe the next-most-major character, the maid in the house from which "Mr. Umberto" (full name Umberto Domenico Ferrari) is being evicted was new to acting.  Both are revelatory.  The old man's face is an open book 

and he is never less than completely convincing in his reactions to every event and every other character in the film (and especially his beloved small mutt "Flike" (rhymes with Bike), who is the smartest little guy since the dog in the Thin Man movies).  Meanwhile Maria-the-maid has an almost cartoon face, it's so open and guileless (she's no great beauty, but she qualifies as a great cutie), 

befitting the country girl who can't go back to her village because her father will beat her, but is the one person who cares for Mr. Umberto.  Meanwhile his heartless landlady (she is tall and bleached-blonde, in contrast to the tiny, dark Maria) 

who is a shameless social-climber, cannot wait to kick him out, and is even renting out his room by the hour in a The Apartment-style scheme while he's out protesting inadequate pensions (the film opens with the rally being broken up by brutish police, who run off hordes of Umbertos).  As with Bicycle Thieves, the rest of the movie is very "slice of life" (De Sica is one of the primary figures in Italian Neo-Realism, after all), with Umberto trotting around trying to avoid his landlady at first, and then, when he realizes how serious she is (she refuses to accept anything but a full payment of his back-rent, which amounts to 15 thousand lire, when the most he can scrape together is around 5 thousand) desperate attempts to sell off various items of property or secure loans from old acquaintances (he worked for 20 years for the Bureau of Public Works).  Meanwhile Maria confides to him that she is pregnant 

(and knows that as soon as the hated landlady finds out, she'll be fired), and also that she's not sure which of her current two boyfriends (both soldiers - she points them out to Umberto as "the tall one from Naples" and "the short one from Florence") is the father, but also that both deny it.  What is particularly appealing about their relationship is that he really is like a doting grandfather to her, who feels like he needs to be strict but caves instantly.  So he's deeply shocked when he finds out her predicament, but instantly forgives her.  (And later, when he runs into one of them giving her a hard time on the street, he gives him a death-stare.  Also his last words to Maria, after telling her she needs to get away from the evil landlady, are to dump the one from Florence.)

Other incidents: when he is trying to avoid the landlady he gets himself committed to a Catholic hospital (they come to pick him up - at this point I thought that a bankrupted post-WWII Axis country still treated its citizens better than the current USA) where he is told that he just has tonsillitis.  The doctor says that if he was younger, he'd remove the tonsils, but what's the point?  

Umberto makes a half-hearted attempt to stay longer by complaining about a pain in his side, before essentially giving up.  He does get to stay an extra day because he gets advice from the young man in the bed next to him on how to manipulate the soft-hearted nun who comes round distributing rosaries.

Then when he comes back from the hospital, he finds that Flike is missing.  Maria reveals that the landlady purposely left the door open for him to escape.  Distraught, Umberto searches all over town before going to the pound, where he witnesses crates of dogs being put down, before, to his immense relief, dogcatchers bring in Flike.

Umberto sees others unashamedly begging, and tries his best first to get Flike to do it

and then to do it himself, but in a tragi-comic scene, he chickens out just as somebody is about to put money in his outstretched hand, and turns it over, pretending to check for rain. 

But then things go from bad to worse: as the day of eviction draws near his landlady has workmen knock a giant hole in the wall of his room, 

and he realizes that the writing is on the no-longer-existing wall.  Then his focus becomes finding a place for his beloved Flike so that he'll be cared for after Umberto is gone.  He leaves most of his stuff for Maria and sets out.  However, the place he hoped would look after Flike just seems too awful.  

And while a little girl he knows from the local park would love to have Flike, her snooty au pair won't let her.  So he resolves that he and Flike can just end it all together, and clutching the little dog, goes and stands on the rail tracks (the poster is a massive spoiler!).  But Flike struggles free and leads Umberto away, until our last viewing of them is them playing catch and vanishing off down the path by the river.  Not too bad, you might say, but Umberto has abandon all his worldly goods and has nowhere to stay, so this is just a moment of joy before the engulfing darkness.

 

The Sled-Dog Days of Winter

 

Temps hovering between zero and 20 F, snow has nowhere to go (because it's too cold to melt) and the nice sunny days have gone away.

Film review: Ballad of a Soldier (1959)

48th out of 50 in our Criterion box set, and put off because it looked depressing.  Once again, my cowardice was misguided, as, although it definitely had poignant elements, it is primarily a road (well, rail) movie/love story, and not really much about the war in which it is set (WWII), although that periodically intrudes (much like in Forbidden Games).  Also, despite being a Mosfilms production, this film is refreshingly un-propaganda-y, and in fact, I'm rather surprised it wasn't censored (I guess it came out during the comparative thaw of the Khrushchev era) because everybody who breaks the official rules is painted sympathetically, and the most weasley and obnoxious character is a stickler for them (well, only so that he can be bribed).  If it propagandizes anything, it's simple decency, which needs more propagandizing if you ask me.  Also, it's gorgeous to look at: lush black and white photography and absurdly photogenic leads.  (Apparently this in itself was a break from standard Soviet protocol, whereby the individual should not be lauded above the collective.)

The film begins with a grey-haired woman standing on a road that winds as far as the eye can see through fields staring off at where it disappears over the horizon, as a voiceover informs us that this is the only road along which her son could return to his home village, but that he was killed in a foreign land and buried by strangers.  Then the voice announces that this is the story of her son, told by his friends.

Next we flash back to our hero, who is a very young private in charge of telecommunications in the field, under fire.  The older officer who's with him tries to run for it and is killed.  Our hero (Alyosha Skvortzov, the actor playing whom was only 19) continues to relate what's happening until a tank literally bears down on him.  At this point he legs it, 

and we get the somewhat ludicrous image of him being followed by the tank, zigging as he zigs and so on (there's also a disorienting shot where the camera goes completely upside down).  Finally he stumbles across an anti-tank gun and as the tank crests the ridge above him, he shoots it in the underside, destroying it.  Then another tank rolls into view and he destroys that one, too.  Back at base people can barely believe his achievements, but his commander wants to give him a medal.  Alyosha requests that instead he be allowed to visit home, because his mother has written him that her roof is leaking and needs him to repair it.  After some resistance, his commander is convinced, 

and even gives Alyosha six days: 2 to journey there, 2 to fix the roof, and 2 to return.

On his way away from the front, after helping push a jeep out of the mud, he is asked to take a message for Pavlov to his wife, and then the whole troop rallies round their commander to browbeat him into giving Alyosha soap as a gift for the wife.  After initial categorical refusal, he proves just as susceptible as Alyosha's commander and eventually hands over two huge cakes - the entire supply for the platoon.

Next, Alyosha hooks up with a one-legged soldier returning from the war, Vasya (who is also absurdly good-looking, only in a much more rugged way - imagine Charles Bronson's more handsome brother).  Vasya, who clearly regards Alyosha as an annoying greenhorn, asks him to watch his suitcase while he sends a telegraph.  The train arrives and Vasya has not returned, so Alyosha goes in search of him to find that he's slumped over the desk because he's decided to tell his wife he's not coming home, because, he says, she was always too good-looking for him, so that he was jealous, and now he can't saddle her with a cripple.  However, the lady in charge of the telegraph shames him and orders him to return home to his wife who will be mad with worry.  Then we get the first of many train trips, this time with Alyosha and Vasya surrounded by other soldiers, who joke around and have to be convinced of Alyosha's story of the tanks.  Then we see a very affecting scene of Vasya's wife throwing herself into his arms (he was right, she is pretty stunning - that's the propaganda of this film) as Alyosha slinks off.

Alyosha's next journey is stowing away in a compartment of hay on an army train.  I'm not sure why he has to stow away, and he's told that he can't by the officious little oik Gavrilkin, who swears that his lieutenant is an absolute beast and is only mollified by a bribe of a can of meat (that says "MEAT" in English on it!)  Alyosha is hiding when he hears someone climbing into the car, and we have our heroine: the tiny and absurdly-long-haired Shura, 

who is initially comically terrified of him, so much so that she throws her pack out of the car intending to leap after it before Alyosha stops her (the train is by then moving very fast).  Of course they end up becoming very close, although it's chaste because Shura lies to him that she has a fiance she's returning to.  At the first stop where Alyosha hops out to get a drink, Gavrilkin comes in and discovers Shura, and demands more bribing.  Then his lieutenant shows up, and of course turns out to be very understanding... of everyone but the odious Gavrilkin.  

"See?" he says ruefully - "a beast!" 

At the next stop, Alyosha again gets out to get water, 

while Shura sleeps, but is distracted by news from the front being transmitted over loudspeaker in the small town, so that the train leaves without him.  He gets a ride from an exhausted woman 

driving an ancient truck (and lucky for her, because he keeps having to get out and crank it or push it out of ditch) but arrives too late in the next station.  Disconsolate (his pack, which contained a present for his mother among other things, was on the train) he is trudging into town when a small figure high on a bridge above him yells at him - Shura!  

They pause to picnic and wash, at which point Shura asks about the soap and Alyosha remembers he has to deliver it, handily in the very town they are near.  They find the Pavlov family building destroyed, but a kindly old lady tells them that Pavlov's father is in a shelter, while his wife is nearer by at a new address.  On arriving, Shura and Alyosha quickly realize that she has a live-in male lover, so they leave, and Alyosha even doubles back to get the soap, which he then delivers to Pavlov Sr., and spins him a yarn about his Best Friend Pavlov (Sergei).

Then it's on to the next stop, which is Shura's.  As they're saying goodbye Shura reveals that she doesn't have a fiance.  She runs alongside the train as Alyosha travels on, and later he realizes that she was telling him she loved him and he makes as though to jump off the train before realizing he can't.  The train is packed with Ukrainians (!) fleeing the carnage in their homeland, but they can't escape it fully, because the train is hit by German bombers, and Alyosha has to save as many people (not all) as he can.  This means his only way to get home is first by raft and then by car, with nobody willing to pick him up, until one old geezer (who is clearly convinced he'll be punished if he picks up a soldier - perhaps to guard against deserting) thinks twice and comes back 

and drives 10 km out of his way to take Alyosha back to his village.  But he can only give Alyosha a couple of minutes, just long enough to hug his mother, because he's almost used up all six days.  For a while there it looks like his mother will miss him, too.  I admit, I was decidedly moist-eyed at the end.  (Not so Jami, because she decided she couldn't face a war movie and was deep in David Copperfield.)  A truly lovely little film.  Definitely ranks higher than 48th out of 50.

How to survive the sub-zeros

 When it's so cold that the snow squeaks...

...here's what you need to be wearing:

Start with a good thermal layer...

...then the sturdiest heavy flannel shirt you own...

...above your patented one-pair-of-old-jeans-inside-another (the inner one went at the crotch, the outer went at the knees)...

...your baggy, wool-rich polo neck, courtesy of your loving mother...

...your thickest feels-like-a-sleeping-bag parka...

...your lovely fleece-lined winter Blundstones...

...and a fleece-lined hat.  And after all that, you're ready to make it from the parking structure to your office building.

Peak parkiness

 

Note that that's FAHRENHEIT.  That makes it -29.4 C.  However, that reading is taken off the internet by our fancy thermostat, and it might be that the official Flint temperature reading is out by the airport or something.  But this is what my car said when I drove in to work 2 hours later:

 

Dangerously parky

 We're teetering on the brink of negative Fahrenheit.  In fact, it probably happened last night, as it said ZERO on my car thermometer driving in today.  I had plenty of room in the parking structure as the campus is closed, not because of snow or ice, but simply because of the DANGEROUS COLD.  Meanwhile our house is nice and toasty, thanks to our basement gas stove.

Cold and crisp

 You can tell it's cold when I wear the green parka because it's like wearing a sleeping bag.  Frederick's red coat is even toastier.  Good thing too - it was 18 degrees F on our walk (and single digits when I got up this morning).