Film Forum

Italy, 1952
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Starring Ingrid Bergman, Alexander Knox, Giulietta Masina, Ettore Gianini
Approx. 110 min.

Shortly after completing THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS, Rossellini seized upon a hypothetical: if Francis himself appeared in Europe today and preached his humble doctrine, he would be promptly thrown in an insane asylum. Augmented by ideas derived from Simone Weil and Herbert Marcuse, Rossellini’s thought experiment grew and grew until it became EUROPA ’51, a sweeping state-of-the-continent address aimed at the complacency of post-war society. Luckily, Rossellini retained the services of his wife to put a box office spin on this dense rumination. (It would become, ironically, the only one of their pictures together to do any business in Italy.) Irene Gerard (Ingrid Bergman) is a socialite who’s more focused on throwing a good dinner party than attending to the needs of her young son. When the boy kills himself, Irene’s world is shattered: what could drive a child to so thoroughly reject life, and what can she make of the life that remains? Inspired by her cousin’s commitment to the class struggle, Irene begins devoting her time to Rome’s downtrodden. After all, the sick, the dying, and the poor need her more than her husband (Alexander Knox) ever could, do they not? Is Bergman preaching Communist revolution, Christian neighborliness, or some obscure, hyper-personal fusion of the two? Disarmingly literal and unspeakably sincere in its spiritual crusade, EUROPA ‘51 remains the most mysterious of Bergman and Rossellini’s collaborations.

Courtesy Janus Films.

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