When In Rome...Or in This Case, Milan
Today's review: Journey to Italy.
I decided to watch Journey to Italy both because George Sanders was in it and because the image advertising it featured him and Ingrid Bergman pressed close to each other and looking off to the side with worried looks on their faces*. From that, I figured this was some sort of drama, of the thriller or possibly noir variety. Instead, it turned out to be a relationship drama, and not a very good one at that.
Sanders and Bergman play a married couple, Alex and Katherine Joyce, who have come to Italy (Milan, specifically) to look over and then sell the home of a dead relative.~ It’s obvious immediately that their marriage is strained, and while Katherine at least was hoping that the trip would bring them closer together, it doesn’t appear to be working. Once they arrive at the estate, they spend their time together arguing, and when they’re apart, Katherine goes on tours of attractions in and around Milan, while Alex appears to be doing his best to have an affair. This leads to the odd effect of half the movie being a slow, weighty look at a struggling marriage, and the other half being a travelogue of things to do in Milan. As you can probably guess, these do not mesh very well.
Looking at the story side of things, the movie can definitely be described as “arty”, with all the negatives that implies for most people. Conversations meander and are clearly supposed to be deep, but mostly are either annoying or pointless. There are a lot of long silences between lines, which does work to show the difficulties the Joyces have in communicating with each other but also becomes tiresome after a while. There’s a lot of shots that make it very obvious that Katherine wants to have a baby that just starts feeling like too much of a muchness, especially since it almost never comes up in conversation. Worst of all, even though the plot is clearly going for the “estranged couple falls in love again” trope, Bergman and Sanders have no chemistry, so the scenes where we’re supposed to realize that they still have feelings for each other fall flat. Furthermore, Sanders doesn’t get much of anything to do, so even my main reason for wanting to watch the movie was a bust. Though there is one thing he does that’s unsettling in hindsight; early on in the movie, he keeps bringing up how bored he is. Given that Sanders committed suicide and that his farewell note read “I am leaving because I am bored”, it kind of makes you wonder if Sanders was bringing some of his real life feelings into the role. It may have fit the character, but that probably wasn’t good for Sanders’ psyche.
As for the travelogue aspect…it’s a little more successful, but still has some issues. Leaving aside the fact that I wasn’t expecting a tour of Milan in the middle of a movie, a lot of the tour guides Katherine uses talk a mile a minute, saying one or two things about a statue or a room before moving on to the next thing and not giving her (or us) time to take it in. Maybe it’s because I’m the sort of tourist who likes to linger over pieces she likes, but it didn’t feel like Katherine was getting her money’s worth to me. On the other hand, there are some things she does that are kind of neat to see, if only because I’m pretty sure you can’t do them any more. It’s very unlikely that you’d be allowed to walk right up to and interact with some smoking craters to make them generate more smoke, and it seems downright impossible that you could stand right over an excavation team at Pompeii while they uncovered a body. In that respect, the movie is a time capsule as well as a travelogue, and was probably the thing that made the biggest impact on me. Which of course doesn’t speak well for the rest of the movie.
I definitely don’t recommend this movie, though I wouldn’t call it actively bad either. There are better movies about strained marriages, and much better movies making you want to visit Italy. That being said, it might be fun to watch the tourism scenes in this movie if you’re about to go to Milan yourself. That way, you could get a sense of exactly how much things differ between then and now.
~I honestly can’t tell whose relative it was; they both call him “uncle” at different points in the movie. I think he was Katherine’s uncle, but that’s just a guess based on context clues.
*This wasn't the precise image, but it's close enough. I think you can understand my confusion.
I decided to watch Journey to Italy both because George Sanders was in it and because the image advertising it featured him and Ingrid Bergman pressed close to each other and looking off to the side with worried looks on their faces*. From that, I figured this was some sort of drama, of the thriller or possibly noir variety. Instead, it turned out to be a relationship drama, and not a very good one at that.
Sanders and Bergman play a married couple, Alex and Katherine Joyce, who have come to Italy (Milan, specifically) to look over and then sell the home of a dead relative.~ It’s obvious immediately that their marriage is strained, and while Katherine at least was hoping that the trip would bring them closer together, it doesn’t appear to be working. Once they arrive at the estate, they spend their time together arguing, and when they’re apart, Katherine goes on tours of attractions in and around Milan, while Alex appears to be doing his best to have an affair. This leads to the odd effect of half the movie being a slow, weighty look at a struggling marriage, and the other half being a travelogue of things to do in Milan. As you can probably guess, these do not mesh very well.
Looking at the story side of things, the movie can definitely be described as “arty”, with all the negatives that implies for most people. Conversations meander and are clearly supposed to be deep, but mostly are either annoying or pointless. There are a lot of long silences between lines, which does work to show the difficulties the Joyces have in communicating with each other but also becomes tiresome after a while. There’s a lot of shots that make it very obvious that Katherine wants to have a baby that just starts feeling like too much of a muchness, especially since it almost never comes up in conversation. Worst of all, even though the plot is clearly going for the “estranged couple falls in love again” trope, Bergman and Sanders have no chemistry, so the scenes where we’re supposed to realize that they still have feelings for each other fall flat. Furthermore, Sanders doesn’t get much of anything to do, so even my main reason for wanting to watch the movie was a bust. Though there is one thing he does that’s unsettling in hindsight; early on in the movie, he keeps bringing up how bored he is. Given that Sanders committed suicide and that his farewell note read “I am leaving because I am bored”, it kind of makes you wonder if Sanders was bringing some of his real life feelings into the role. It may have fit the character, but that probably wasn’t good for Sanders’ psyche.
As for the travelogue aspect…it’s a little more successful, but still has some issues. Leaving aside the fact that I wasn’t expecting a tour of Milan in the middle of a movie, a lot of the tour guides Katherine uses talk a mile a minute, saying one or two things about a statue or a room before moving on to the next thing and not giving her (or us) time to take it in. Maybe it’s because I’m the sort of tourist who likes to linger over pieces she likes, but it didn’t feel like Katherine was getting her money’s worth to me. On the other hand, there are some things she does that are kind of neat to see, if only because I’m pretty sure you can’t do them any more. It’s very unlikely that you’d be allowed to walk right up to and interact with some smoking craters to make them generate more smoke, and it seems downright impossible that you could stand right over an excavation team at Pompeii while they uncovered a body. In that respect, the movie is a time capsule as well as a travelogue, and was probably the thing that made the biggest impact on me. Which of course doesn’t speak well for the rest of the movie.
I definitely don’t recommend this movie, though I wouldn’t call it actively bad either. There are better movies about strained marriages, and much better movies making you want to visit Italy. That being said, it might be fun to watch the tourism scenes in this movie if you’re about to go to Milan yourself. That way, you could get a sense of exactly how much things differ between then and now.
~I honestly can’t tell whose relative it was; they both call him “uncle” at different points in the movie. I think he was Katherine’s uncle, but that’s just a guess based on context clues.
*This wasn't the precise image, but it's close enough. I think you can understand my confusion.