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Movie Monday

 

One of the mysteries of life with which I will enter 2013 is the fact that choosing Normal as the font size for my blog means different sizes on different computers. OK, I get if you don't load the same fonts into the same program on different computers, you get a message like: Can't find the font. But all this web site gives me to choose from is smallest, small, normal, large and largest and they can't even keep these few choices standard. Spooky!

 

I just read recently that perhaps the age of films is over. Now, I've been hearing this for a long time concerning books, but films? I'm thinking that this statement may be true but it's more due to the evolution of the psychological make-up of man rather than the desire of film makers to move on to a new medium.

 

For those I haven't put to sleep yet, let me back up for a look at my reasoning. Scientists discover more and more that what we have always considered free will decisions by our species are really based on predetermined brain chemistry. Therefore, we should start to look at personality traits the way we look at physical traits when we think about the evolution of the species. Thus, statements like the age of film is over might refer to the fact that human interest/understanding has evolved (and evolution doesn't have to be positive) so that only fast flashing action on big screens will become the only film experience palatable to them in the near future.

 

Which probably makes my review of the early, neo-realistic, classic directed by Vittorio De Sica, The Children Are Watching Us (1942 but released in Italy in 1944) even more important in the archival sense.

 

I'm very lucky that I don't sleep well and that TCM schedules its classic imports in the wee hours of Monday morning; thus becoming a last minute savior since most Monday mornings, without TCM, all my movie choices to review are dreck.

 

Putting aside a big flaw watching this movie had for me - I can't understand Italian and the subtitles fly past too quickly - this is definitely a must-see, forgotten treasure.

 

The story is simple yet highly provocative for the time period: a wife strays, regrets the consequences of this, but can't stop straying.  It's told mainly through the eyes of her adorable, four year old son, Prico, and was filmed 6 years before De Sica's classic child/parent story, The Bicycle Thief. With The Children Are Watching US, De Sica shows his mastery in telling a tale through the eyes of a child. Slightly maudlin, but always pulling back from the brink of soap opera, he packs in such an adult saga yet always keeping it "child proof" because, after all, there is no question Prico is always watching.

 

As with so many foreign films, the audience is demanded to participate; De Sica will spell out just so much. It's obvious that all the neighbors in Prico's apartment building know of his mother's wandering yet no one talks about it; you just have neighbors coming in to borrow items. Or the scene at the resort where the wife sees the disdain in the eyes of other couples. Or the husband and his housekeeper changing the curtains while they await his wife and son's return from vacation with the only clue from the housekeeper: You know how madame disliked those old curtains. These little scenes pepper the movie and take the place of speech to set the plot and theme.

 

Unlike American films, foreign films often do not let moral judgments in. De Sica shows the effects of the adultery on the family, taking you along on the wife's journey of desire, remorse and desire again. It's only with the last scene, when Prico acts out the movie ending of The Third Man, (which was released 7 years after this movie was filmed), that he becomes the first person to "say" to his mother: I do not accept your behavior. I hold you accountable. But even here, De Sica does not tell you how or if this loving but selfish mother will be affected by Prico's action because immediately Fin appears and the movie is over.

 

Which brings me to a major omission in this movie: it was filmed in 1942 when Italy was in WWII yet you never see any evidence of war conditions: no soldiers, no rationing, no air raids, nothing. You are just watching upper-middle class angst. Knowing De Sica's later career, I have to believe this omission is deliberate. (Perhaps demanded by Mussolini?) De Sica has defined neo-realism as real life but through poetry. If you look at this way, The Children Are Watching Us is the poem which tells the story of how people live their lives, sometimes very badly, whether the world is at war or not.

 

Not a perfect movie (Is there such a thing?) but definitely a must-see for any lover of the medium. It reaffirms that movies can say so much and, at times, so well.

 

See you in 2013.