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Umberto D. (The Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1980 I saw this film at Chapter Arts centre in Cardiff after a lecture from aged but legendary film critic Dilys Powell. She had Umberto D (about a man and his dog for goodness sake) down as her favourite movie of all time. And you've got to remember that she had sat through about 35,000 films in her lifetime. As you might imagine I was fairly intrigued at this prospect. The reality is that this film genuinely delivers like no other, if you like your heart shaken and stirred with something authentic. Now I cry fairly easily at movies when the going gets tough, but this one is truly in a class of its own. In fact the final scenes are so painful and poignant that even 20 years later I cannot recall them without emotion. But ironically this film leaves you feeling better than when you went in about the human spirit, and that's why I think it's ultimately so great.

Vittorio DeSica's wonderful "Umberto D" was one of the last films of the Italian neo-realism movement and by far its best one. It is also one of my favorite movies ever. The movie's premise is simple: it is a slice of the life of a poor lonely pensioner, Umberto. Throughout the movie, we see Umberto struggle to find money to pay rent to his horrible landlady, love his dog Flike, and deal with the loneliness and disillusionment of the postwar era.

"Umberto D" is a character-driven film. It works very well because of its sharp observations on loneliness and poignant gestures. The gestures evoke powerful feelings without necessitating dialogue. Many of the scenes, even the ones that do not necessarily advance the plot, are hypnotically beautiful in their simplicity. Take, for example, a beautiful scene where Umberto finally needs to beg for money but cannot physically bring himself to do it. He extends his palm up, but when a passer-by stops to give him money, Umberto quickly flips his hand over, as if testing for rain. The film is full of these small gestures that quietly emphasize the desperate loneliness and poignancy of Umberto's situation.

The acting in this film is absolutely superb. Carlo Battisti, despite having never acted before, is wonderful as the titular character; his face is a fascinating blend of stubborn dignity and weariness of life. Maria Pia-Casilio, who plays the maid, is just as good as evoking life's loneliness and quiet desperation. The supporting cast is also very strong.

One of the very few criticisms I have heard of this film is that it is too sentimental and borderline sappy. While some scenes with Umberto and his dog Flike are sentimental, never is it "too" sentimental. DeSica knows how far he can push his film without making it sappy, and he wisely shows it as it is. Nothing feels forced. The subject material itself and the simplicity in which it is presented will bring tears. (If you don't cry in this movie, you need to have your heart professionally de-thawed.) But "Umberto D" is never dumbed down into sappiness and clichéd corniness. It is a very powerful film.

"Umberto D" is the masterpiece of the Italian neo-realist era. Just the powerful and ambiguous ending alone is worth the price. It's a rather bleak and very realistic movie, but it makes some fascinating commentary on the human condition, specifically the loneliness we face. Highly, highly recommended. 5/5

It wouldn't be easy to find a film which is more relentlessly moving than Umberto D. Although it is a fairly simple story, the power of the images and characters will remain with the viewer long after the movie ends. The film effectively draws the viewer into the life and struggles of an old man and his dog as their condition becomes increasingly desperate. It is almost painful to watch at times but it is also one of the most beautiful and unforgettable films that I have seen.

Not much more needs to be said. There's no need to gild this lilly, the greatest film ever made. The dog's name is Flag, not Flike! I believe that De Sica chose the name as an homage to another director, the American Clarence Brown, who made The Yearling a few years earlier and the name of the fawn is Flag in that great movie. There's a small irony there: it illustrates De Sica's worldliness, his sophistication, his familiarity with and love of popular culture, especially films. There is not a trace of that charming quality in his masterpieces. Everyone should see Umberto D. Great art is our only shot at becoming civilized. And then see his other incomparable movies: The Children Are Watching Us, Shoeshine (about which Pauline Kael said that if Mozart had made movies, this is what they would have been like), The Bicycle Thief and, especially, Miracle in Milan, which is a comedy -- but not like any comedy you've ever seen. It's bliss. If you want to know what this art form is really like and what it can do to change your life, you need to see these masterpieces of De Sica.

An old man (Umberto Domenico Ferrari, played by Carlo Battisti), retired and living on a pension, hasn't enough money to pay his rent and is about to be evicted. He is proud and stubborn and tries to keep what little dignity he has left. The only thing he has left in the world is his dog Flike. The man decides suicide is the only way out, but what to do about the dog? Literally he can't sell it, can't give it away. He finally decides to take the dog with him as he dives in front of a train, but the dog breaks loose and the man's life is saved.

It's a very sad and poignant and emotional movie, illuminated by careful attention to tiny details. One of the movie's main themes is man's indifference to man. This is illustrated in many ways, big and small: a glance, a man turning in a seat as soon as it's vacated on a bus, a woman beating a rug from a fourth story window as a man unknowingly stands below, and many others.

The subplot of a servant girl who is pregnant doesn't add much to the movie, although there is one scene with her that is marvelous: she goes through a morning routine in the kitchen making coffee, and we realize at the end that she is crying. The whole scene means nothing, but it's so moving in its simplicity and realism that it's startling to see. The movie was not released in the US until 1955. Italy, understandably, was upset by the mean way the elderly are treated in the film. A beautiful masterpiece; its seeming simplicity hides a complex view of modern life underneath. Definitely worth a watch.

Lost between the glare of his earlier The Bicycle Thief, and his later films with Sophia Loren, Vittorio De Sica's 1952 film Umberto D. stands as an almost forgotten masterpiece of Italian Neo-Realism, and one of the last films that could claim to be of that movement alone. It was pilloried by myopic critics upon its opening- mostly Left Wing dilettantes who thought that the formerly middle class civil servant's tale was not `socially conscious' enough for the filmmaker to waste his talents on, and a few cineastes who felt it too maudlin and weepy. They simply did not understand the chasm between true sentiment and false sentimentality. The film flopped, but has steadily risen in De Sica's pantheon to being thought of as an equal to The Bicycle Thief, or right behind it. The truth is that it is very easy to portray the struggles of the impoverished, as De Sica did in The Bicycle Thief, and Shoeshine before it, as both were laden with struggling children, but to elicit the grandeur of feelings for an old man, Umberto (Carlo Battisti, non-professional actor and retired college professor from the University of Florence), alone in the world, takes a bit more. This is especially so since the lead character is not a particularly warm man. No, he's no Ebenezer Scrooge, but he's a proud and stubborn man who keeps himself emotionally withdrawn from life. He's an everyman, in that he was a civil servant, retired with a meager pension, and has lived in the same small room for decades, harried by a bitch of a bleached blond social climbing poseur of a landlady (Lina Garrari), who loathes him for unspecified reasons- she says he's behind on the rent, but how many people have never been in such a predicament, and are not treated the way she scorns this old gentleman? She even debases him by renting out his room to horny couples while he's away, and a scene of him returning to his soiled bed after strangers have copulated in it is precious- the look of disdain on Battisti's face is utterly priceless.
That some people have also misread the film to indict the old man for failing to prepare for the consequences of old age shows how out of touch with reality many critics, then and now, are. These are the same people who would deny Social Security to their grandparents who contributed to it for years, and claim the old are selfish for wanting their fair share. Yes, Umberto is behind on his rent- but he was also living in a time of runaway inflation, that would have eaten up any of his meager savings. And, despite the characterizations of Umberto as cold, at times, he is never disrespectful, not in the blatantly obvious ways the landlady is to him. Thus, when one reads criticism of the film that jab at Umberto's character, or defend the landlady's sadistic actions, one is misreading the very `realism' that this Neo-Realistic film purports. And the truth is, that just as the dilemma faced by another aging civil servant, in Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, made the same year as Umberto D., has not changed in half a century or more, and across continents, neither has the dilemma this film shows really changed, and therein lies the timelessness of this tale- which will likely still be as relevant in five hundred years, albeit unfortunately. Sadly, I've known too many real life people like Umberto D., and the foolish criticisms of the film manifest flaws in the critics more so than in the film.
The camera movements by Aldo Graziati never intrude on the simple tale penned by longtime De Sica collaborator and novelist Cesare Zavattini, which has some minor things in common with the more recent American film My Dog Skip, another great man and dog film. The DVD by The Criterion Collection is very crisp, and the white subtitles never are obscured, although, like the DVD release of The Bicycle Thief, an English language dubbed soundtrack should have been made, as well as a film commentary by some historian or scholar. The disk does come with a 55 minute Italian tv documentary called This is Life: Vittorio De Sica, a 12 minute interview with Maria Pia Casilio, and writings by Umberto Eco, Luisa Alessandri, and Carlo Battisti. Memories of the film by De Sica, and a new essay by film critic Stuart Klawans, are in the insert.
Umberto D. is a great film, and like its kissing cousin, Ikiru, it shows that films on old people can be every bit as engaging as those about the young and beautiful, and not just run of the mill crap like the Grumpy Old Men fare Hollywood spews. Those who criticize this film and its ending are likely the same sort of cretins who find Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard films to be deep and/or moving. Neo-Realism was a movement that should never have flagged, and the world would be better off if a younger wave of filmmakers picked up the banner dropped over half a century ago, for it showed new ways to tell tales and core at the thing that is human in all things- even in the will of a small dog to live with his master, and what that will generates in return.

The master of Italian Neo-Realist cinema, DeSica, creates with Umberto D. one of the finest films of his career (I will not say his finest because I am torn between this movie and his earlier "The Bicycle Thief"). Set in post WWII Italy, this film follows the heartwrentching story of a retired civil servant, Umberto D., and his dog, Flike, as he tries to survive on his modest government pension in a world where traditional human values have fallen before the weight of an amoral modernistic culture.

OK. So far what I have said is basically right off of the movie's box description and no more origional than what others have said. It's just that this movie is very difficult to describe without doing the nature of the film an extreme disservice. This is a movie completely devoted to instilling in the audience a sense of empathy towards a character that they very likely just passed by on the street entering into the theatre without a second thought. By attempting to convey the strong pathos of such an ordinary human being (played incedentally by a nonprofessional actor) the film offers hardly anything in the way of spectacle, just showing the realistic day to day life of forgoten humanity. This all sounds almost silly on paper, and by virtue of the subject matter it is. This is one of those movies that could not be a book. It could not convey its message by means of the printed word, and takes advantage of the medium of picture in a masterful way. One of the true greats of world cinema.

Now just a few words on the Criterion Edition DVD. As many of us have some to expect from Criterion, this DVD is presented in a sharp clear transfer and with a decently clean audio track. It also shipped with a fair amount of extra features which help to elucidate and expand the viewing experience. It has a very nice hour length documentary devoted to DeSica's films and a very interesting interview with the actress who played the maid. On top of this it ships with a few written essays. The one disappointing omission is the lack of a commentary track. Oh well, maybe some day. Overall a good buy, especially considering that this is one of Criterion's less expensive offerings.

New on DVD (August 03), this exceptional film strikes an emotional chord with universal truths.

Among the greatest of films, Vittorio De Sica's UMBERTO D (Criterion) tells the simple story of an elderly man and his only companion, a dog, struggling to survive in post WW II Rome. Words cannot convey the power of this unsentimental, compassionate masterpiece of Italian Neorealism. Carlo Battista, a retired teacher and non-actor, is extraordinary as Umberto. You'll laugh and weep and it will remain a part of your heart as long as you live. A must have.

Vittorio de Sica, in another neorealist classic "The Bicycle Thief" brings us a saddened tale of an old man and his dog, their plight to avoid poverty and homelessness. Once a respected well-tailored business man, he now struggles to live on a meager pension. He makes several attempts to protest but ends with futility. It is about fighting the system, isolation and disparity. Umberto D lives in a house where the landlady earns more by renting his room out during the day to prostitutes and johns. From here, his fight for dignity continues as he sinks to the bottom of his soul for survival.

Most anyone with a pet can feel for an aging man about to be evicted. We look into the sad eyes of the old man and his cute little dog Flike reflects the same. The situations are painfully sad and tension mounts. Not only his is own survivability at risk, we grasp when Flike's life is in jeopardy a couple of times too.

Neorealism is stark, grainy and gritty. It is filmed on streets that depict real depth and soul of life. It is about compassion, struggle, hardship, humanity, poverty, pride, etc. Non- actors generally role play with conversational dialogue rather than polished Hollywood scripts. ......A wonderful classic....MzRizz

Portraying the plight of the elderly dispossessed in an acknowledged masterpiece of the neorealist style, De Sica's "Umberto D." may surpass his own "Bicycle Thief" for heartbreaking poignancy. What in less skillful hands could have been treacly melodrama becomes instead a wrenchingly honest tale about a forgotten human being searching in vain for some shred of human kindness. Half a century later, "Umberto D." remains a monumental achievement of simple, eloquent storytelling.