May 8th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Michaelangelo Antonioni's THE CRY is afforded MOMA's weekly three-day trib as part of their Auteurist History of Film series. This prime example of Italian Neorealism follows the aimless journey of Steve Cochran's sugar refinery laborer, devastated by the violent end of an illicit love affair and searching with his daughter, the product of that affair, for an unknowable comfort and/or purpose. Light fare for the month of May, in other words. Lord knows I loves me some Mickey Anthony, but a fellow practitioner of that country's postwar signature film movement is due my Pick lo these many days, so I pass.

The great Carl Theodore Dreyer's final film GERTRUD kicks off BAM's exceedingly cool Booed at Cannes series this afternoon. Any connection to the rock band Cheap Trick is unintented, I assume. The cinematic master never ceased to experiment with the medium, as is evidenced by this oblique view of romantic disillusionment in the 19th century, with its long unbroken takes pissing off more than a few upon its premiere and conferring upon the film poor status to say the least. Time, needless to say, has been much kinder to this and the other flicks scheduled to screen, and it now perfectly serves as opener to this ironic celebration of the once misunderstood. I pass it up as my Pick in favor of a different tale of love's enduring ability to create doubt where there may be cause for none.

Federico Fellini's wild and opulent SATYRICON is granted a communal viewing at the Mid-Manhattan Library as part of their Three Auteurs of World Cinema series. Fellini described his adap of Petronius' late 1st century account of Roman bacchanalia as a "science fiction of the past." I ain't gonna argue. But I will choose a different film, a more recent time travel to Europe's Boot, simply because it's a Bucket Lister and for a week it has taunted me. Today I give in.

Roberto Rosselinni is pretty much kinda sorta the cat who took the whole Neorealist film movement global post WWII. Rarely has such far-reaching influence come from a lone individual's efforts, and this case is no different. The argument for a cinema of truth goes almost back to the medium's birth, with purists dreaming of the technology's potential to perfectly record "truth", and railing against what they deemed its utilization in the service of cheap melodrama and useless fantasy filmmaking. In Mussolini's Italy several critics, including Luchino Visconti and Gianni Puccini, balked at that era's so-called "White Telephone" films, Art Deco comedies that featured the eponymous device, a status symbol of the very well-off at that time. They envisioned a new type of cinema, one that focused on the common peeps, used available light, non-actors, stolen shots and more realistic storylines and characters. Visconti's OSSESSIONE is regarded as the first Neorealist film. Rossellini's ROME OPEN CITY is the movie that broke Neorealism onto the world stage.

ROME OPEN CITY was the first entry in the director's War Trilogy, which includes the follow-ups PAISAN and GERMANY YEAR ZERO. The films may not have reflected perfect truth as was the goal, and that goal may simply be impossible, but they were representative of a new gritty verisimilitude that would reinvigorate veteran directors and spawn new ones, spawn new markets, and even spark onscreen talent to seek collaboration with him. One such fan, Ingrid Bergman, wrote the director a fan letter. The rest is history. Although the films they would make together would prove unsuccessful at the box office and met with scorn in general, largely due to the open and adulterous love affair they courageously refused to cover up, they have aged like fine wine and been met with positive reevalutation. One film in particular, hammered critically when released, now sits at #41 on the BFI list of all-time greats. A tale of a seemingly sound marriage potentially unravelling during the couple's journey to Naples to sell off some inherited land, it may have nothing to do with the real-life circumstances under which it was made, but the outcome mirrored the reality at least for a time, and we romantic film lovers can take solace in that fact at least.

Roberto Rossellini's VOYAGE TO ITALY screens all day today at Film Forum. I'm taking the trip tonight ba dum dum.

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