One of cinema’s most probing examinations of human relationships, Journey to Italy finds married couple Katherine and Alexander Joyce travel to Naples to sell off a dead relative’s property. The couple’s relationship has drifted into a state of ennui, preventing any intimacy on the supposed holiday. But not all is what it seems in Roberto Rossellini’s masterful study of love, longing and companionship that features some of the finest performances ever given by Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders.
Selected for That’s a Wrap by Joanna Hogg:
If I had to single out one film that I keep coming back to, it would be Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy, 1954). Why? Because it has an atmosphere that is palpable. I can smell it. I can feel the Italian heat on my skin. It is alive. It talks candidly about the breakdown of a marriage but there’s also something recognisable about the characters and the Neapolitan setting; a very British reaction to being abroad. It is mysterious and simple and concise. I strive to create this degree of aliveness (in my own films). I need to see this film often to understand what it is I am trying to do. It’s never a question of mimicking somebody else’s work but of using that work as a spur to make better, more engaged films.