Love

After the opening credits we see a title that says "This film is an homage to the art of Anna Magnani" and that's exactly what this powerful Rossellini film is about. Magnani dominates both sections of "L'Amore" and is quite remarkable. In the first section which is called "Una Voce Umana"(The Human Voice), Magnani plays a woman in her bedroom who makes a desperate telephone call with her former husband. It is mostly comprised of close-ups of Magnani's grieving face, anticipating those of Rossellini's films starring Ingrid Bergman. In the second section, "Il Maracolo"(The Miracle), Magnani is a peasant who meets and is seduced by a vagabond whom she thinks is Saint Joseph. Though the villagers incessantly ridicule her, she thinks is pregnant with a Christ baby, something that angered the censors and religious groups, ultimately dubbing as "blasphemous". "The Miracle" section is by far the most powerful and provocative". It is characterized by overt Christian symbolism and some gorgeous shots of the countryside. Rossellini makes the viewer aware of the overpowering presence of the environment, itself another character. The scenes where Magnani is lying on the ground surrounded by animals are particularly ravishing and beautiful.

Roberto Rossellini freely admitted that the two films that make up this opus were designed as a showcase for the talents of his then partner and muse Anna Magnani. Neither film could be said to have had an easy ride as 'Il Miracolo' was banned in America thanks to that self-appointed guardian of morality, the crackpot Catholic League of Decency whilst 'Voce Umana' was not widely shown because of copyright issues with Jean Cocteau's original play.

Ingmar Bergman once said that the greatest contribution to the art of film is the well lit, well directed and well acted close-up. This is certainly true of 'Voce Umana' in which a woman alone in her apartment is desperately trying to salvage a doomed relationship over the telephone and whose agony is intensified by the phone constantly cutting off. The almost microscopic close-ups here hold no fears for Signora Magnani who is utterly riveting. Although this is a shortened version of Cocteau's original it is no less effective and her intensely emotional performance is aided by Eraldo da Roma's dynamic editing and the use of light and dark by cinematographer Otello Martelli. None of us likes rejection of course but one does feel at times like shouting out 'pull yourself together woman, he's obviously not worth it'.

Most directors never find a muse whereas Rossellini had the good fortune to have not one but two. 'Voce umana' is even more poignant, in retrospect, as he left Magnani two years later for muse#2 Ingrid Bergman. Ironically Miss Bergman was to give a powerhouse performance in a longer version of this piece on American television in 1966.

'Il Miracolo' is quite frankly not as accomplished a film. As in so many of his neo-realist films Rossellini is again playing puppet master to a supporting cast mainly composed of 'real people', that is to say non-professionals who cannot act and who are obviously 'dubbed'. The jury is still out on Fellini's acting abilities! Its rawness and immediacy still pack a punch thanks to Anna Magnani's stupendous portrayal of simpleton Nannina, the camerawork of Aldo Tonti and to another powerful score from Rossellini's brother Renzo.

The true 'miracle' of this piece is that the eventual lifting of its ban, based upon the principle of free expression, marked the beginning of the end for film censorship.

Regarding the wondrous Magnani let us leave the last word to William Dieterle who directed her in 'Volcano' at the same time as Rossellini was directing Bergman in 'Stromboli'. "She was the last of the great, shameless emotionalists."

Movies in the United States weren't protected under the First Amendment providing free speech ever since a 1915 United States Supreme Court ruling saw filmmaking as a business rather than simply public opinion. The Italian film August 1948 "L'Amore" ("Love"), directed by Roberto Rossellini, became a landmark case which was the first step in the erosion of censorship in Hollywood. Reviewing the content of the Italian film, the Supreme Court stated in a 1952 decision Rossellini's work is a form of artistic expression, giving cinema First Amendment rights guaranteeing freedom of speech, the first time since 1915.

Broken into two segments, "L'Amore's" first part, 'The Human Voice,' didn't cause any problems with the Hays Office censors when it was first shown in New York City in 1950. But it was the second half, titled 'The Miracle,' which sent dissenters howling in protest, especially those in high authority in the Catholic Church. The controversy was litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, whose members unanimously ruled in favor of the movie's U. S. distributor, Joseph Burstyn. Said film reviewer Gino Moliterno of the milestone decision, "Part of the miracle of Il miracolo, then, turned out to be its role in initiating the beginning of the demise of film censorship in the United States." 'The Miracle,' starring Anna Magnani and Federico Fellini, the future Italian director in his only acting film role and who wrote the script, sees Nannina as a borderline religious fanatic who makes a living gathering astray goats on the town's steep hillsides. She meets a stranger whom she thinks is Saint Joseph. A bit of wine and a sleepy nap results in Nannina's pregnancy. She thinks it's all due to a miracle rather than the stranger taking advantage of her. The townspeople make fun of her reasoning, causing her to seek refuge in the hills where she's about to give birth. A goat leads her to an empty church to deliver her baby.

Once released in Italy, 'The Miracle' elicited some criticism but no obstacles in showing it. The negativity was largely more for its aesthetics, criticizing the director whose 1945's "Rome, Open City" introduced Italian neo-realism for not sticking to the genre. Those critics bemoaned, "Rossellini has completely abandoned neo-realism." But it was a different story in the United States when "L'amore" premiered at NYC's Paris Theatre in December 1950. Distributor Joseph Burstyn dropped the feature film's first part, 'The Human Voice,' and lumped ' The Miracle' in with two French short films, one by director Jean Renoir. Protesters began carrying signs proclaiming "Don't Enter the Cesspool," supported by the National Legion of Decency and the Catholic diocese, led by Cardinal Francis Spellman, who on the pulpit called Rossellini's short film blasphemous. Despite the New York Film Critics voting it the best foreign language film of the year, the New York State Board of Regents condemned it, labeling the short film 'sacrilegious." The state's authorities pulled Burstyn's movie license. In 'Joseph Burstyn, Inc. V. Wilson,' the case went through the state's court system, ending up at the U. S. Supreme Court. In a 9-0 vote delivered in May 1952, the Court claimed in what is called the 'Miracle Decision,' films DO enjoy freedom of expression.

The Supreme Court's decision didn't quite open the floodgates towards total abandonment of film censorship. The Hays Office, formed in an agreement between the studios and the censors, still exercised its control so individual local and state governments would unlikely sue Hollywood film companies in expensive lawsuit cases. But the 'Miracle Decision' did establish a precedent which served as a foundation for subsequent court cases which relied on the 'Miracle Decision' to thwart censoring movies. The 1952 ruling ultimately led to a total abandonment of the Hays Office and censorship by the mid-1960s in most parts of the United States.

"L'Amore's" opener, known as 'The Human Voice," adapted from a Jean Cocteau 1930 play, stars actress Magnani in a solo performance whose telephone conversation with a boyfriend consists of the entire short film. He informs her he's marrying another woman the next day. As film reviewer Jay Carr notes, "It's her face in closeup that does the job, whether expressing raw suffering, or aching anxiety when, running her hands over her face while looking in a mirror at unforgiving evidence that she's alone and getting older." While Magnani and Rossellini were staying in Paris, she mentioned to the director her one-woman 1942 stage act would make for a great short film. He agreed, filming the extended scene at a local Paris movie studio. To make it into a full-length movie, he directed 'The Miracle,' whose script was written by Fellini, to accompany 'The Human Voice.' Because of "L'Amore's" milestone court case, the feature film is forever included in the history books for changing the course of American cinema.

L'Amore is divided into two parts, the first called "A Human Voice", and the second named "The Miracle". Anna Magnani is wonderful at both. The first episode is about love and sadness. A woman is pursuing for a man who does not love her any longer. The whole episode occurs whitin a bedroom, with Anna and a telephone. The dialogue of Anna with her ex-husband is simply fantastic and very emotive. The second episode, more cryptic and stronger, shows us a medieval Italian town with all its beliefs and supersticions. A woman, Anna Magnani again, makes remember us the mistery of creation, with symbolic references to some christian icons (as virgins, poor people, saints, etc.). In sum, this is a wonderful film.

It could be something of a challenge to be fair to L'Amore as a whole if one of its two shorts, one titled 'The Human Voice' (script by Jean Cocteau) and the other titled 'The Miracle' (original script by Federico Fellini), sold short of the other. But in the end, one only slightly edges out over the other, and not by much, which is really saying something in this case. Italian neo-realist icon Roberto Rossellini changed gears, to a point, after bringing forth his 'post-war' trilogy of films (Roma Citta Aperta, Paisa, Germany Year Zero) that would catapult him into worldwide recognition. This is essentially a small film, in a way smaller and even more (considering his previous trio, amazingly) simplistic in storytelling terms and scope. Instead of war's anguish coming on as the main dread of the existences of the characters, here there are only two key characters for the two stories respectively, and played by the same actress no less.

This could be a gamble for Rossellini, putting so much faith in an actress to pull off two quite different roles (well, maybe not TOO different, there are some underlying qualities to both). Anna Magnani, however, was worth the gamble for him. This is proved right off the bat with 'Voice', where Magnani, for 75 percent of the film's running time, is in either medium-close up or close-up by Rossellini's elegant, probing (without seemingly to try) lens, as Magnani's character has a long, painful, and ultimately confessional conversation with her love who has left her. This is off the bat something that most can identify with; we know what it's like sometimes to be in a room and over-hear an outpouring of emotions through the walls (or sometimes ourselves talking in these conversations), practically wanting not to listen at all. But Cocteau understands that a conversation like this can be made into a kind of extraordinary poetry of sorts, by stripping away at the seams of the human soul (err, voice in this case), and aided by the right person to pull it off. Magnani, therefore, works because she conveys so much in her expressions, her eyes and of course voice, all without having to go into soap opera hysterics. Even towards the end of the film, where some of the momentum is lost, Magnani is like some force that you can't look away from.

This notion that Anna Magnani is in this overall project almost like her own vehicle, as Scorsese has said in his film My Voyage to Italy (which inspired me to seek this out to start with), it's un-thinkable to see anyone else play either of the two roles. This is especially so in 'The Miracle', different from anything else Rossellini had done up till that time (I could be wrong, I haven't seen anything he made pre Roma Citta Aperta) in that it takes place in a time unknown. It could be present day, or hundreds of years ago. It's a fable, with its story origins in a budding cartoonist, Fellini, who also appears here in his one and only acting role as a kind of Vagabond (and quite a suave looking one, ho-ho). Magnani plays the peasant woman, perhaps not altogether in her head, and believes as he passes by she has seen St. Joseph. She stops him, she praises and rambles, he offers her wine, and she passes out. Cut to another time in the future, and she discovers she's pregnant. Never had sex? Hmm...

The Miracle, a film that got in a heap of controversy, and in the process changed a vital point of how films were allowed to be shown in American cinemas from the 50's onward (a little historical fact few know of today), is to me perhaps one of the most powerful 'fables' I've ever seen, at least from people like Rossellini and Fellini (the later made a great career out of fashioning them out of almost nothing). It is also a very telling story about religion and faith, and to my way of thinking still holds a relevance just as meaningful today as back in the later 40's and early 50's. The peasant woman turned homeless that Magnani plays so beautifully (for such a simple character there is enough nuance for two performances) holds onto faith because, frankly, it's all that she has. She gets berated by all the townsfolk- particularly the religious folk for having a child out of wedlock and under such strange circumstances- yet nothing gets in the way of her own determination of what she thinks is true.

Even if you don't have a belief in Catholicism or even just religion, the film has an impact because of elemental questions Rossellini is trying to raise. I can't say what they are here, as they will bring different answers for the individual viewer. But the fact that Fellini and Rossellini are stirring up such thoughts among such touching and near-perfect acting and stylizing (there's even a slight touch of humor in the early scenes with Fellini) and not forcing them on the viewer, not to sound catchy about it, is a miracle in and of itself, and one of the director's best films taking into account the two as L'Amore... Be advised though- as of now this film is EXTREMELY hard to find, and only after many months and more money than I'd care to say I discovered a copy on video, so only if you feel a strong urge to see the film (likely, as with myself, from having seen the clips from My Voyage to Italy) would I recommend it. But if you do, it could serve a very rewarding experience.