LOVE IN THE CITY Movie Review

Amore in Citta

Not everything that came out of Italy's postwar, neo-realist period was a masterpiece, and here's the proof. The five-episode film about the different kind of love that can be found on the streets of Rome at any given moment was the work of six directors: Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Dino Risi, Alberto Lattuada, Francesco Maselli and Cesare Zavattini. The film was conceived by Zavattini, who based the picture on actual incidents and used—as was often the case in the neo-realist films of the era—a completely non-professional cast. Fellini's episode, about a matrimonial agency, is a comic romp in the style of his The White Sheik, while Antonioni's, not surprisingly, is about three failed suicide attempts. The strength of the Fellini episode works to the detriment of the far more modest success of the others (though Lattuada's “girl-watchers” sequence isn't successful on any level), and the ultimate effect is distractingly uneven. A sixth episode, directed by Carlo Lizzani, was removed by the film's American distributor prior to release in the U.S. (The Fellini sequence is one of the short films that he used in calculating his numerical resume, totaling it up to get the title of his 81/2.)

NEXT STOP … Paisan, Open City, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

1953 90m/B IT Ugo Tognazzi, Maresa Gallo, Caterina Rigoglioso, Silvia Lillo; D: Michelangelo Antonioni, Fed erico Fellini, Dino Risi, Carlo Lizzani, Alberto Lattuada, Francesco Maselli, Cesare Zavattini; W: Aldo Buzzi, Luigi Malerba, Luigi Chiarini.Tullio Pinelli, Vittorio Vettreni; C: Gianni Di Venanzo; M: Mario Nascimbene. VHS NOS, FCT, AUD