游览意大利

《游览意大利》是完全情感化的，不只是因为它不遗余力地忠实于情感的描述，还在于它以情感流动来完成场景的构建。总体上，它丰富的情感表现，情绪化主导的动作和对白写作，细腻的潜台词和以单人镜头和双人镜头的切换，以及那些人物位置关系变化的场面调度的具体处理，它展现了一种精确的倾向，但又不失去对人物情感的高度关注。毕竟电影的逻辑呈现出的罗西里尼的理性还不足以甚于他对于微妙情绪的精准把控，整部电影像是逻辑的，但实际上，它是自由的。

影片的开场——行车戏——迅速建立了一个移动中的、不稳定的、密闭的场景，他们开着车正在通往一个预设的目标地点，那个地点对于人物来说是陌生的、不确定的未知场景，它对于人物来说更像是一个孤岛一般的存在，对于这个摄影机角度和它在剧本中的功能性，我们不难想到《闪灵》中一家人通往overlook hotel路途中行车的情景，这种旅途对于人物来说如果危险性不能确定的话，它们至少都是未知的，充满不确定性，换句话说，这种不确定性经由通往目标场景的行车戏来构建的方法被确立下来了。回到车中我们可以看到，男人在睡眠，女人在开车，车内了无生机，直到男人醒来操控汽车，两人方才进行了一些信息量式的对白。值得注意的是在换位的过程中男人因下车看到旁边飞驰而过的汽车而感到不适，表现出了强烈的身份意识和某种排斥倾向，这种特征在前后保持高度一致性，直接与人物相关而非意识形态倾向。随后两人在一些信息对白过后谈论的问题无异于男人的事业问题和直截到两人情感本质问题上，基本上，在电影的中点前男人和女人对于婚姻问题的谈论上都属于女人以直白或暗示的方法写就，仿佛费尽气力，而男人的对白则以省略和搪塞为主，轻松自然。在两人来到酒吧中的场景构建十分轻巧，罗西里尼将人物相隔尽可能远，并且以视点镜头构建单人镜头的对打，再以视点镜头和声音处理的不可见，以周围喧杂的场景和尽可能小的景别中塞下叙事视点人物和旁边不断靠近的小提琴手辅以焦外的路人或旁边坐着的朋友。这种人物关系构建方法在后一场叫醒戏中更为明显，他调度了一个前后关系的纵深结构，在女人谈及她所在乎的令她不安的情感问题时男人立刻离开场景，女人的单人镜头构建的十分顺遂。

关于人物，《游览意大利》并不像《火山边缘之恋》或是《一九五一年欧洲》一样拥有明确的戏剧性，它更加情感化，复杂化以及充满多义性，可以说，它更加接近生活本身。在别墅中饭后两人在露台日光浴时男人先是被处理为无法从容面对妻子和享受与妻子共处时光的口渴者，随后又是不愿坐下的略显紧张的状态，最后两人在谈论妻子先前的一位朋友时男人对这个异性朋友产生的非正面情绪的兴趣，在对于那位已故诗人的不屑和讽刺中结束于一个人物大小比例令人不安的双人镜头中。在这之间，对于男人有一个符合女人对他描述的小插曲，男人由于语言的不通和文化习俗的差异被一个女仆描述为粗鲁的，这也许和人物无关，但是他在无人关注的暗室中表现出了他的些微情绪变化，他对于女仆对他的言语态度十分敏感，并报以阶级身份上的恶意质疑，这对人物来说十分重要。在游览博物馆后男人只是堆积了他对于女人的浪漫主义的无意义追求的偏见，而随后，同样是一个宴会，两人回到家中后关系达到了一个目前为止破裂的至高点，只是宴会上的场景两人的权力关系倒置了，此时是剧本的中点。

女人对于男人的抱怨几乎都是在行车中进行的，也包括她在车中行路所看到的年轻夫妇和婴儿潮的现象，同样还有男人和陌生女人在车内处于道德边缘的戏份。这既可以让她在行路游览街景之时思考自己的既定的生活以便为她接下来的行动作出解释，也同时阐释了——车内——这一场景的情感封闭性效果。随后男人与先前预设的女人朱蒂之外的另一个女人关系的暧昧进展，和女人游历一个令人不安而有回声的压抑场景以及火山口场景平行并置。这些场景对人物的不同影响是显著的，人物时常处在宴会中或是时常处在历史中的不同情境，在他们之后情绪的微妙变化中体现——麻木不仁或是情感充沛。在最后象征性的三个场景中：观看庞贝古城开掘、离开时两人独自行走在空旷场景、引起分崩离析的人潮场景，彻底地用情感选取、构建了场景，他们行走在空旷场景的关系同样十分情绪化，如同两人独处家中的情景，但是这次不同的是如同最后一次感受时间流逝的复杂情感一样，整个行走过程拍摄时间很长，纵使他们已经讲完对白。最后再用被裹挟的无力感将情感全部聚集，在一个人潮奔涌的场景中形成对照。

罗西里尼的定场镜同样选择环摇长镜头，这次不只是单纯观看场景的视点镜头，他总是将空旷的场景作为镜头的起幅随后移动到室外人物的身上形成中近景，或是移动至一个建筑的表面再切入室内场景。他有意识将场景的意义与来到这里的人物相联系，让它们明确的处在一个场景中，不可分割，形成新意义。

对于这部影片我倾向于将它与《火山边缘之恋》作比较。很明显的是，在这部影片中不只是因为它近距离的展现了火山口的活跃表象，它还呈现了别墅——这一处在火山边缘场景的存在——露台可以清晰看到背景中的火山，而这又正是他们来到那不勒斯这个陌生地点的目的。而其活跃的活火山内部运动的本质正是罗西里尼想说的：人际关系处在变化中的不确定性和不稳定性。同样的，褒曼的角色初次去斯特隆波里岛时乘一只令她生理不适的小船，这只船的功能性意义与行车别无二致，这个孤岛的场景，她仿佛被困在岛上，没有离开能力的设定是明确的，但是她是自主选择进入场景的，这样那部电影的妙处在于人物的自主选择性决定了她没有明确的戏剧动机，而以所有精力去处理人物感受场景的工作，于是在陌生场景的构建和观众跟随人物感受场景的过程中观众与角色达到了同一，在情感流动中完成场景构建。在这个基础上，孤岛的场景同《游览意大利》中的那不勒斯十分相似，它仿佛某种自主选择的需要充分确认的牢笼。在那场情感十分丰富的：女人一人独处家中玩纸牌的而丈夫进门后妻子不断开灯关灯并带着一些语焉不详的对白的戏中，女人玩牌，同《火山边缘之恋》中女人在迷宫一般的孤岛上逃亡最终俯身于一处石墙中与草叶对话的戏码有着本质的相似性。

而这种戏剧情境有一处明显的差异，这导致了不同的人物，以及人物在相同场景所做出的的不同选择。《火山边缘》的开场是一个女人来到一处与军营连接的铁丝网处和一个皮肤黝黑的军人调情，他们沟通的障碍、亲密的不可能性，通过铁丝网的设置在开场戏，仿佛已经是板上钉钉的阶级问题一般不可调和。随后他们才来到行船，上岛，一系列过程，女人对于个人身份问题的难以处理和对于工业文明的盲目追求让她与她那岛上原住民的丈夫之间的戏剧性明显。相比《游览意大利》则很明显对于场景有所省略，他们直接开始于行车戏，省略了为其人际关系下什么定论的场景出现，直接用信息量表明已婚八年，前往目标场景的外部动机，而另一部则没有，它一定要标注清楚两人的关系是怎样一种隔阂状态，这绝非巧合。

同样，在人物关系崩塌后的喧闹场景中，由于迥然两异的人物，一个呈现出深深的排斥和厌弃，并试图立刻计划逃跑；另一个则表现出一种对丈夫的依赖，并大声呼喊他的名字寻求帮助。于是，这种人物关系的弥合并非总是采用喧闹场景，分裂总是采用独处场景或封闭场景的做法并非永恒的方法论。她可以在一个独处的场景中对神父产生情欲，也可以在独处时对着纸牌发呆。此时若使用同样的场景，有何区别，实际上，我们需要注意那些场景的细微变化对我们心理产生的微妙反应，同时，使用广角镜头和大景别或长焦镜头的小景别也有着较大的影响，正如奥逊威尔斯使用大量广角镜头的仰拍天花板的人物镜头一样。

罗西里尼利用情感作为支撑故事的主要线索，再用这些情感构建他需要的场景以便表达他想要表达的母题，他对于叙事、场景构建和母题的一致性保持高度的关注，而并不关心故事的情节性，高度情感化的叙事利用场景在内部形成了一条无形的河流。

非常简单但是很有力量的电影。一对伦敦夫妻来到意大利去卖掉继承的房产，在途中开始互相嫌弃、说反话、生闷气，然后想办法让对方嫉妒自己，故意表现不在乎对方。他们就这样任由感情恶化，一直怄气到提出离婚。但是电影把这对夫妇的感情斗争放置在更宏观的社会景观之下：火山、街上的孕妇、马车、墓地的骷髅、考古现场被挖掘出来的尸体。他们在怄气时就在街上闲逛，这些景象反作用于他们的内心。如何把已经翻了的脸给翻回来，如何反转说出口的离婚和改不掉的嘲讽。这些外在世界的运动似乎在他们的内心积累这种反转的能量，一直等到他们的车被路上看到奇迹的信徒挡住，他们被迫下车行走。女主被人群裹挟而走，向男主呼救。人流的涌动终于让他们又抱在一起。外界的景象和运动终于在他们的内心量变引起质变：他们抱在一起表白，怄气的战争结束，他们和好了。

他们的感情本身已经没有力量让他们和好，只能一路下滑。是这个世界的运动，作用于他们内心，作用于他们身体，把他们又重新聚合在一块。影像没有推进剧情的线性发展，但也没有像其他新现实主义那样单纯的悬浮在哪儿（optical and sound situation），让人无所适从。世界的影像在人物的精神世界一点点积累能量，然后爆发出一个反转。这种组织影像的方式不同寻常，但又很有说服力，很有力量。

像罗西里尼（在这里）这样随意的人相当少见。他似乎从来不在意如何将场景（以及截然不同的配乐）连接起来，也不在意将某些生硬的东西磨平；这部电影里一些对话镜头和驾驶镜头是他作品中更为突出的例子。尽管如此，以一种独特的方式——有点接近法国新浪潮的方式——这一随意并不表现为廉价性，而是表现为令人惊讶、有点自相矛盾的自在和宽广：我是说电影，而不是说创作者。当然，这来自画面本身的清晰和优美，以及演员（我指的是Bergman）如同游泳者在水中那样（甚至并不一定virtuosic）的自如。当我们看完这样一部电影时，我们感到它的随意和瑕点几乎有如某种赐予，某种——并不是像传统地“不完美”的纪录片那样，而是像绘画那样——对生命的确认。这部电影好吗？我们迟疑而不能说；也许至少确实没有《火山边缘》好；然而——和那部一样——它令人感到（并且它的创作者也必然拥有）难以描述、微小而有力的内在的幸福。

B+

在房间中丈夫问要不要喝点什么，妻子说好，去酒吧吧。她不愿意两人独处，在朋友中两人互看着与别人谈笑甚欢的对方，回去后又都说玩得只是还可以，婚姻的疲乏让他们不再互相取乐，又在嫉妒心的监控下与失望中丧失了与别人取乐的能力。妻子提起曾经爱她的一个死去的诗人，丈夫冷嘲热讽。接着丈夫去了卡普里岛，妻子独自玩赏了维苏威火山，在卡普里他遇到另一位婚姻也有问题的女人，她的丈夫从不给她写信，“而明天事情可以解决了，因为他要回来了。” 逃离妻子的男主也回到了那不勒斯，妻子一直注意着丈夫回来的声响，却又假装不在意，此时妻子已想挽回，却无力可使。第二天妻子开着丈夫的车出门后情况更加恶化，之后一起被朋友邀请去庞贝古城，看着被火山掩埋的恋人身体，妻子情绪面临崩溃，她说了声对不起。 最后一幕二人在车中被人流阻挡，下车后被人流冲散，被人流带走的妻子挤回丈夫身边，终于在害怕中说出“我爱你”。

Letter on Rossellini Jacques Rivette Translated by Tom Milne.

'Ordinance protects. Order reigns.'

You don't think much of Rossellini; you don't, so you tell me, like Voyage to Italy; and everything seems to be in order. But no; you are not assured enough in your rejection not to sound out the opinion of Rossellinians. They provoke you, worry you, as if you weren't quite easy in your mind about your taste. What a curious attitude!

But enough of this bantering tone. Yes, I have a very special admiration for Rossellini's latest film (or rather, the latest to be released here). On what grounds? Ah, that's where it gets more difficult. I cannot invoke exaltation, emotion, joy: these are terms you will scarcely admit as evidence; but at least you will, I trust, understand them. (If not, may God help you.)

To gratify you, let us change the tone yet again. Mastery, freedom, these are words you can accept; for what we have here is the film in which Rossellini affirms his mastery most clearly, and, as in all art, through the free exercise of his talents; I shall come back to this later. First I have something to say which should be of greater concern to you: if there is a modern cinema, this is it. But you still require evidence.

1. If I consider Rossellini to be the most modern of film-makers, it is not without reason; nor is it through reason, either. It seems to me impossible to see Voyage to Italy without receiving direct evidence of the fact that the film opens a breach, and that all cinema, on pain of death, must pass through it. (Yes, that there is now no other hope of salvation for our miserable French cinema but a healthy transfusion of this young blood.) This is, of course, only a personal impression. And I should like forthwith to forestall a misunderstanding: for there are other films, other film-makers doubtless no less great than this; though less, how shall I put it, exemplary. I mean that having reached this point in their careers, their creation seems to close in on itself, what they do is of importance for, and within the perspectives of, this creation. Here, undoubtedly, is the culmination of art, no longer answerable to anyone but itself and, once the experimental fumblings and explorations are past, discouraging disciples by isolating the masters: their domain dies with them, along with the laws and the methods current there. Renoir, Hawks, Lang belong here, of course, and in a certain sense, Hitchcock. Le Carrosse d'Or may inspire muddled copies, but never a school; only presumption and ignorance make these copies possible, and the real secrets are so well hidden within the series of Chinese boxes that to unravel them would probably take as many years as Renoir's career now stretches to; they merge with the various mutations and developments undergone over thirty years by an exceptionally keen and exacting creative intelligence. In its energy and dash, the work of youth or early maturity remains a reflection of the movements of everyday life; animated by a different current, it is shackled to time and can detach itself only with difficulty. But the secret of Le Carrosse d'Or is that of creation and the problems, the trials, the gambles it subjects itself to in order to perfect an object and give it the autonomy and the subtlety of an as yet unexplored world. What example is there here, unless that of discreet, patient work which finally effaces all traces of its passage? But what could painters or musicians ever retain from the later works of Poussin or Picasso, Mozart or Stravinsky -- except a salutary despair. There is reason to think that in a decade or so Rossellini too will attain (and acclimatise himself to) this degree of purity; he has not reached it yet -- luckily, it may be said; there is still time to follow him before within him in his turn eternity . . . (1); while the man of action still lives in the artist.
2. Modern, I said; after a few minutes watching Voyage to Italy, for instance, a name kept recurring in my mind which seems out of place here: Matisse. Each image, each movement, confirmed for me the secret affinity between the painter and the film-maker. This is simpler to state than to demonstrate; I mean to try, however, though I fear that my main reasons may seem rather frivolous to you, and the rest either obscure or specious. All you need do, to start with, is look: note, throughout the first part, the predilection for large white surfaces, judiciously set off by a neat trait, an almost decorative detail; if the house is new and absolutely modem in appearance, this is of course because Rossellini is particularly attracted to contemporary things, to the most recent forms of our environment and customs; and also because it delights him visually. This may seem surprising on the part of a realist (and even neo-realist); for heaven's sake, why? Matisse, in my book, is a realist too: the harmonious arrangement of fluid matter, the attraction of the white page pregnant with a single sign, of virgin sands awaiting the invention of the precise trait, all this suggests to me a more genuine realism than the overstatements, the affectations, the pseudo-Russian conventionalism of Miracle in Milan; all this, far from muffling the film-maker's voice, gives him a new, contemporary tone that speaks to us through our freshest, most vital sensibility; all this affects the modem man in us, and in fact bears witness to the period as faithfully as the narrative does; all this in fact deals with the honnete homme of 1953 or 1954; this, in fact, is the theme.
3. On the canvas, a spontaneous curve circumscribes, without ever pinning down, the most brilliant of colors; a broken line, nevertheless unique, encompasses matter that is miraculously alive, as though transferred intact from its source. On the screen, a long parabola, pliant and precise, guides and controls each sequence, then punctually closes again. Think of any Rossellini film: each scene, each episode will recur in your memory not as a succession of shots and compositions, a more or less harmonious succession of more or less brilliant images, but as a vast melodic phrase, a continuous arabesque, a single implacable line which leads people ineluctably towards the as yet unknown, embracing in its trajectory a palpitant and definitive universe; whether it be a fragment from Paisa, a fioretto from The Flowers of St Francis, a 'station' in Europa '51, or these films in their entirety, the symphony in three movements of Germany, Year Zero, the doggedly ascending scale of The Miracle or Stromboli (musical metaphors come as spontaneously as visual ones) -- the indefatigable eye of the camera invariably assumes the role of the pencil, a temporal sketch is perpetuated before our eyes (but rest assured, without attempts to instruct us by using slow motion to analyze the Master's inspiration for our benefit) (2); we live through its progress until the final shading off, until it loses itself in the continuance of time just as it had loomed out of the whiteness of the canvas. For there are films which begin and end, which have a beginning and an ending, which conduct a story through from its initial premise until everything has been restored to peace and order, and there have been deaths, a marriage or a revelation; there is Hawks, Hitchcock, Murnau, Ray, Griffith. And there are the films quite unlike this, which recede into time like rivers to the sea; and which offer us only the most banal of closing images: rivers flowing, crowds, armies, shadows passing, curtains falling in perpetuity, a girl dancing till the end of time; there is Renoir and Rossellini. It is then up to us, in silence, to prolong this movement that has returned to secrecy, this hidden arc that has buried itself beneath the earth again; we have not finished with it yet. (Of course all this is arbitrary, and you are right: the first group prolong themselves too, but not quite in the same way, it seems to me; they gratify the mind, their eddies buoy us up, whereas the others burden us, weigh us down. That is what I meant to say.) And there are the films that rejoin time through a painfully maintained immobility; that expend themselves without flinching in a perilous position on summits that seem uninhabitable; such as The Miracle, Europa '51.
4. Is it toon soon for such enthusiasms? A little too soon, I fear; so let us return to earth and, since you wish it, talk of compositions: but this lack of balance, this divergence from the customary centres of gravity, this apparent uncertainty which secretly shocks you so deeply, forgive me if once again I see the head of Matisse here, his asymmetrism, the magisterial 'falseness' in composition, tranquilly eccentric, which also shocks at first glance and only subsequently reveals its secret equilibrium where values are as important as the lines, and which gives to each canvas this unobtrusive movement, just as here it yields at each moment this controlled dynamism, this profound inclination of all elements, all arcs and volumes at that instant, towards the new equilibrium, and in the following second of the new disequilibrium towards the next; and this might be learnedly described as the art of succession in composition (or rather, of successive composition) which, unlike all the static experiments that have been stifling the cinema for thirty years, seems to me to stand to reason as the only visual device legitimate for the film-maker.
5. I shall not labor the point further: any comparison soon becomes irksome, and I fear that this one has already continued too long; in any case, who will be convinced except those who see the point as soon as it is stated? But allow me just one last remark -- concerning the Trait: grace and gaucheness indissolubly linked. Render tribute in either case to a youthful grace, impetuous and stiff, clumsy and yet disconcertingly at ease, that seems to me to be in the very nature of adolescence, the awkward age, where the most overwhelming, the most effective gestures seem to burst unexpectedly in this way from a body strained by an acute sense of embarrassment. Matisse and Rossellini affirm the freedom of the artist, but do not misunderstand me: a controlled, constructed freedom, where the initial building finally disappears beneath the sketch. For this trait must be added which will resume all the rest: the common sense of the draft. A sketch more accurate, more detailed than any detail and the most scrupulous design, a disposition of forces more accurate than composition, these are the sort of miracles from which springs the sovereign truth of the imagination, of the governing idea which only has to put in an appearance to assume control, summarily outlined in broad essential strokes, clumsy and hurried yet epitomizing twenty fully rounded studies. For there is no doubt that these hurried films, improvised out of very slender means and filmed in a turmoil that is often apparent from the images, contain the only real portrait of our times; and these times are a draft too. How could one fail suddenly to recognize, quintessentially sketched, ill-composed, incomplete, the semblance of our daily existence? These arbitrary groups, these absolutely theoretical collections of people eaten away by lassitude and boredom, exactly as we know them to be, as the irrefutable, accusing image of our heteroclite, dissident, discordant societies. Europa '51, Germany, Year Zero, and this film which might be called Italy '53, just as Paisa was Italy '44, these are our mirror, scarcely flattering to us; let us yet hope that these times, true in their turn like these kindred films, will secretly orient themselves towards an inner order, towards a truth which will give them meaning and in the end justify so much disorder and flurried confusion.
6. Ah, now there is cause for misgivings: the author is showing the cloven hoof. I can hear the mutters already: coterie talk, fanaticism, intolerance. But this famous freedom, and much vaunted freedom of expression, but more particularly the freedom to express everything of oneself, who carries it further? -- To the point of immodesty, comes the answering cry; for the strange thing is that people still complain, and precisely those people who are loudest in their claims for freedom (to what end? the liberation of man? I'll buy that, but from what chains? That man is free is what we are taught in the catechism, and what Rossellini quite simply shows; and his cynicism is the cynicism of great art). 'Voyage to Italy is the Essays of Montaigne,' our friend M prettily says; this, it seems, is not a compliment; permit me to think otherwise, and to wonder at the fact that our era, which can no longer be shocked by anything, should pretend to be scandalized because a film-maker dares to talk about himself without restraint; it is true that Rossellini's films have more and more obviously become amateur films; home movies; Joan of Arc at the Stake is not a cinematic transposition of the celebrated oratorio, but simply a souvenir film of his wife's performance in it just as The Human Voice was primarily the record of a performance by Anna Magnani (the most curious thing is that Joan of Arc at the Stake, like The Human Voice, is a real film, not in the least theatrical in its appeal; but this would lead us into deep waters). Similarly, Rossellini's episode in We the Women is simply the account of a day in Ingrid Bergman's life; while Voyage to Italy presents a transparent fable, and George Sanders a face barely masking that of the film-maker himself (a trifle tarnished, no doubt, but that is humility), -- Now he is no longer filming just his ideas, as in Stromboli or Europa '51, but the most everyday details of his life; this life, however, is 'exemplary' in the fullest sense that Goethe implied: that everything in it is instructive, including the errors; and the account of a busy afternoon in Mrs. Rossellini's life is no more frivolous in this context than the long description Eckermann gives us of that beautiful day, on May 1st 1825, when he and Goethe practiced archery together. -- So there, then, you have this country, this city; but a privileged country, an exceptional city, retaining intact innocence and faith, living squarely in the eternal; a providential city; and here, by the same token, is Rossellini's secret, which is to move with unremitting freedom, and one single, simple motion, through manifest eternity: the world of the incarnation; but that Rossellini's genius is possible only within Christianity is a point I shall not labor, since Maurice Scherer' has already argued it better than I could ever hope to do, in a magazine: Les Cahiers du Cinema, if I remember right. (3)
7. Such freedom, absolute, inordinate, whose extreme license never involves the sacrifice of inner rigor, is freedom won; or better yet, earned. This notion of earning is quite new, I fear, and astonishing even though evident; so the next thing is, earned how? -- By virtue of meditation, of exploring an idea or an inner harmony; by virtue of sowing this predestined seed in the concrete world which is also the intellectual world ('which is the same as the spiritual world'); by virtue of persistence, which then justifies any surrender to the hazards of creation, and even urges our hapless creator to such surrender; once again the idea becomes flesh, the work of art, the truth to come, becomes the very life of the artist, who can thereafter no longer do anything that steers clear of this pole, this magnetic point. -- And thereafter we too, I fear, can barely leave this inner circle any more, this basic refrain that is reprised chorally: that the body is the soul, the other is myself, the object is the truth and the message; and now we are also trapped by this place where the passage from one shot to the next is perpetual and infinitely reciprocal; where Matisse's arabesques are not just invisibly linked to their hearth, do not merely represent it, but are the fire itself.
8. This position offers strange rewards; but grant me another detour, which like all detours will have the advantage of getting us more quickly to where I want to take you. (It is becoming obvious anyway that I am not trying to follow a coherent line of argument, but rather that I am bent on repeating the same thing in different ways; affirming it on different keyboards.) I have already spoken of Rossellini's eye, his look; I think I even made a rather hasty comparison with Matisse's tenacious pencil; it doesn't matter, one cannot stress the film-maker's eye too highly (and who can doubt that this is where his genius primarily lies?), and above all its singularity. Ah, I'm not really talking about Kino-Eye, about documentary objectivity and all that jazz; I'd like to have you feel (with your finger) more tangibly the powers of this look: which may not be the most subtle, which is Renoir, or the most acute, which is Hitchcock, but is the most active; and the point is not that it is concerned with some transfiguration of appearances, like Welles, or their condensation, like Murnau, but with their capture: a hunt for each and every moment, at each perilous moment a corporeal quest (and therefore a spiritual one; a quest for the spirit by the body), an incessant movement of seizure and pursuit which bestows on the images some indefinable quality at once of triumph and agitation: the very note, indeed, of conquest. -- (But perceive, I beg you, wherein the difference lies here; this is not some pagan conquest, the exploits of some infidel general; do you perceive the fraternal quality in this word, and what sort of conquest is implied, what it comprises of humility, of charity?)
9. For 'I have made a discovery': there is a television aesthetic; don't laugh, that isn't my discovery, of course; and what this aesthetic is (what it is beginning to be) I learned just recently from an article by Andre Bazin (4) which, like me, you read in the colored issue of Cahiers du Cinema (definitely an excellent magazine). But this is what I realized: that Rossellini's films, though film, are also subject to this direct aesthetic, with all it comprises of gamble, tension, chance and providence (which in fact chiefly explains the mystery of Joan of Arc at the Stake, where each shot change seems to take the same risks, and induce the same anxiety, as each camera change). So there we are, because of a film this time, ensconced in the darkness, holding our breath, eyes riveted to the screen which is at last granting us such privileges: spying on our neighbor with the most appalling indiscretion, violating with impunity the physical intimacy of people who are quite unaware of being exposed to our fascinated gaze; and in consequence, to the imminent rape of their souls. But in just punishment, we must instantly suffer the anguish of anticipating, of prejudging what must come after; what weight time suddenly lends to each gesture; one does not know what is going to happen, when, how; one has a presentiment of the event, but without seeing it take shape; everything here is fortuitous, instantly inevitable; even the sense of hereafter, within the impassive web of duration. So, you say, the films of a voyeur? -- or a seer.
10. Here we have a dangerous word, which has been made to mean a good many silly things, and which I don't much like using; again you're going to need a definition. But what else can one call this faculty of seeing through beings and things to the soul or the ideal they carry within them, this privilege of reaching through appearances to the doubles which engender them? (Is Rossellini a Platonist? -- Why not, after all he was thinking of filming Socrates.) Because as the screening went on, after an hour went by I wasn't thinking of Matisse any more, I'm afraid, but of Goethe: the art of associating the idea with the substance first of all in the mind, of blending it with its object by virtue of meditation; but he who speaks aloud of the object, through it instantly names the idea. Several conditions are necessary, of course: and not just this vital concentration, this intimate mortification of reality, which are the artist's secret and to which we have no access; and which are none of our business anyway. There is also the precision in the presentation of this object, secretly impregnated; the lucidity and the candor (Goethe's celebrated 'objective description'). This is not yet enough; this is where ordering comes into play, no, order itself, the heart of creation, the creator's design; what is modestly known in professional terms as the construction (and which has nothing to do with the assembling of shots currently in vogue; it obeys different laws); that order, in other words, which, giving precedence to each appearance according to merit, within the illusion that they are simply succeeding one another, forces the mind to conceive another law than chance for their judicious advent. This is something narrative has known, in film or novel, since it grew up. Novelists and film-makers of long standing, Stendhal and Renoir, Hawks and Balzac, know how to make construction the secret element in their work. Yet the cinema turned its back on the essay (I employ A. M. 's (5) word), and repudiated its unfortunate guerrillas, Intolerance, La Regle du Jeu, Citizen Kane. There was The River, the first didactic poem: now there is Voyage to Italy which, with absolute lucidity, at last offers the cinema, hitherto condemned to narrative, the possibility of the essay.
11. For over fifty years now the essay has been the very language of modern art; it is freedom, concern, exploration, spontaneity; it has gradually -- Gide, Proust, Valery, Chardonne, Audiberti -- buried the novel beneath it; since Manet and Degas it has reigned over painting, and gives it its impassioned manner, the sense of pursuit and proximity. -- But do you remember that rather appealing group some years ago which had chosen some number or other as their objective and never stopped clamouring for the 'liberation' of the cinema; (6)don't worry, for once it had nothing to do with the advancement of man; they simply wanted the Seventh Art to enjoy a little of that more rarefied air in which its elders were flourishing; a very proper feeling lay behind it all. It appears, however, that some of the survivors don't care at all for Voyage to Italy; this seems incredible. For here is a film that comprises almost everything they prayed for: metaphysical essay, confession, log-book, intimate journal -- and they failed to realize it. This is an edifying story, and I wanted to tell you the whole of it.
12. I can see only one reason for this; I fear I may be being malicious (but maliciousness, it seems, is to today's taste): this is the unhealthy fear of genius that holds sway this season. The fashion is for subtleties, refinements, the sport of smart-set kings; Rossellini is not subtle but fantastically simple. Literature is still the arbiter: anyone who can do a pastiche of Moravia has genius; ecstasies are aroused by the daubings of a Soldati, Wheeler, Fellini (we'll talk about Mr. Zavattini another time); tiresome repetitions and longueurs are set down as novelistic density or the sense of time passing; dullness and drabness are the effect of psychological subtlety. -- Rossellini falls into this swamp like a butterfly broken on the wheel; reproving eyes are turned away from this importunate yokel. (7) And in fact nothing could be less literary or novelistic; Rossellini does not care much for narration, and still less for demonstration; what business has he with the perfidies of argumentation? Dialectic is a whore who sleeps with all odds and ends of thought, and offers herself to any sophism; and dialecticians are riff-raff. -- His heroes prove nothing, they act; for Francis of Assisi, saintliness is not a beautiful thought. If it so happens that Rossellini wants to defend an idea, he too has no other way to convince us than to act, to create, to film; the thesis of Europa '51, absurd as each new episode starts, overwhelms us five minutes later, and each sequence is above alt the mystery of the incarnation of this idea; we resist the thematic development of the plot, but we capitulate before Bergman's tears, before the evidence of her acts and of her suffering; in each scene the film-maker fulfils the theorist by multiplying him to the highest unknown quantity. But this time there is no longer the slightest impediment: Rossellini does not demonstrate, he shows. And we have seen: that everything in Italy has meaning, that all of Italy is instructive and is part of a profound dogmatism, that there one suddenly finds oneself in the domain of the spirit and the soul; all this may perhaps not belong to the kingdom of pure truths, but is certainly shown by the film to be of the kingdom of perceptible truths, which are even more true. There is no longer any question of symbols here, and we are already on the road towards the great Christian allegory. Everything now seen by this distraught woman, lost in the kingdom of grace, these statues, these lovers, these pregnant women who form for her an omnipresent, haunting cortege, and then those huddled corpses, those skulls, and finally those banners, that procession for some almost barbaric cult, everything now radiates a different light, everything reveals itself as something else; here, visible to our eyes, are beauty, love, maternity, death, God.
13. All rather outmoded notions; yet there they are, visible; all you can do is cover your eyes or kneel. There is a moment in Mozart where the music suddenly seems to draw inspiration only from itself, from an obsession with a pure chord, all the rest being but approaches, successive explorations, and withdrawals from this supreme position where time is abolished. All art may perhaps reach fruition only through the transitory destruction of its means, and the cinema is never more great than in certain moments that transcend and abruptly suspend the drama: I am thinking of Lillian Gish feverishly spinning round, of Jannings' extraordinary passivity, the marvelous moments of tranquility in The River, the night sequence in Tabu with its slumbers and awakenings; of all those shots which the very greatest film-makers can contrive at the heart of a Western, a thriller, a comedy, where the genre is suddenly abolished as the hero briefly takes stock of himself (and above all of those two confessions by Bergman and Anne Baxter, those two long self-flashbacks by heroines who are the exact center and the kernel of Under Capricorn and I Confess). What am I getting at? This: nothing in Rossellini better betokens the great film-maker than those vast chords formed within his films by all the shots of eyes looking; whether those of the small boy turned on the ruins of Berlin, or Magnani's on the mountain in The Miracle, or Bergman's on the Roman suburbs, the island of Stromboli, and finally all of Italy; (and each time the two shots, one of the woman looking, then her vision; and sometimes the two merged); a high note is suddenly attained which thereafter need only be held by means of tiny modulations and constant returns to the dominant (do you know Stravinsky's 1952 Cantata?); similarly the successive stanzas of The Flowers of St Francis are woven together on the ground bass (readable at sight) of charity. -- Or at the heart of the film is this moment when the characters have touched bottom and are trying to find themselves without evident success; this vertiginous awareness of self that grips them, like the fundamental note's own delighted return to itself at the heart of a symphony. Whence comes the greatness of Rome, Open City, of Paisa, if not from this sudden repose in human beings, from these tranquil essays in confronting the impossible fraternity, from this sudden lassitude which for a second paralyses them in the very course of the action? Bergman's solitude is at the heart of both Stromboli and Europa '51: vainly she veers, without apparent progress; yet without knowing it she is advancing, through the attrition of boredom and of time, which cannot resist so protracted an effort, such a persistent concern with her moral decline, a lassitude so unweary, so active and so impatient, which in the end will undoubtedly surmount this wall of inertia and despair, this exile from the true kingdom.
14. Rossellini's work 'isn't much fun'; it is deeply serious, even, and turns its back on comedy; and I imagine that Rossellini would condemn laughter with the same Catholic virulence as Baudelaire; (and Catholicism isn't much fun either, despite its worthy apostles. -- Dov'e la liberta? should make very curious viewing from this point of view). What is it he never tires of saying? That human beings are alone, and their solitude irreducible; that, except by miracle or saintliness, our ignorance of others is complete; that only a life in God, in his love and his sacraments, only the communion of the saints can enable us to meet, to know, to possess another being than ourselves alone; and that one can only know and possess oneself in God. Through all these films human destinies trace separate curves, which intersect only by accident; face to face, men and women remain wrapped in themselves, pursuing their obsessive monologues; delineation of the 'concentration camp world' (8) of men without God. Rossellini, however, is not merely Christian, but Catholic; in other words, carnal to the point of scandal; one recalls the outrage over The Miracle; but Catholicism is by vocation a scandalous religion; the fact that our body, like Christ's, also plays its part in the divine mystery is something hardly to everyone's taste, and in this creed which makes the presence of the flesh one of its dogmas, there is a concrete meaning, weighty, almost sensual, to flesh and matter that is highly repugnant to chaste spirits: their 'intellectual evolution' no longer permits them to participate in mysteries as gross as this. In any case, Protestantism is more in fashion, especially among skeptics and free-thinkers; here is a more intellectual religion, a shade abstract, that instantly places the man for you: Huguenot ancestry infallibly hints at a coat of arms. -- I am not likely to forget the disgusted expressions with which, not so long ago, some spoke of Bergman's weeping and snivelling in Stromboli. And it must be admitted that this goes (Rossellini often does) to the limits of what is bearable, of what is decently admissible, to the very brink of indelicacy. The direction of Bergman here is totally conjugal, and based on an intimate knowledge less of the actress than of the woman; we may also add that our little world of cinema finds it difficult -- when the couple are not man and wife (9) -- to accept a notion of love like this, with nothing joyous or extravagant about it, a conception so serious and genuinely carnal (let us not hesitate to repeat the word) of a sentiment more usually disputed nowadays by either eroticism or angelism; but leave it to the Dolmances (10) among us to take offence at the way it is presented (or even just its reflection, like a watermark, on the face of the submissive wife), as though at some obscenity quite foreign to their light, amusing -- and so very modern -- fancies.
15. Enough of that; but do you now understand what this freedom is: the freedom of the ardent soul, cradled by providence and grace which, never abandoning it to its tribulations, save it from perils and errors and make each trial redound to its glory. Rossellini has the eye of a modern, but also the spirit; he is more modern than any of us; and Catholicism is still as modern as anything. You are weary of reading me; I am beginning to tire of writing to you, or at least my hand is; I would have liked to tell you many more things. One will suffice: the striking novelty of the acting, which here seems to be abolished, gradually killed off by a higher necessity; all flourishes, all glowing enthusiasms, all outbursts must yield to this intimate pressure which forces them to efface themselves and pass on with the same humble haste, as though in a hurry to finish and be done with it. This way of draining actors must often infuriate them, but there are times when they should be listened to, others when they should be silenced. If you want my opinion, I think that this is what acting in the cinema tomorrow will be like. Yet how we have loved the American comedies, and so many little films whose charm lay almost entirely in the bubbling inventiveness of their movements and attitudes, the spontaneous felicities of some actor, the pretty poutings and fluttering eyelashes of a smart and saucy actress; that one of the cinema's aims should be this delightful pursuit of movement and gesture was true yesterday, and even true two minutes ago, but after this film may not be so any longer; the absence of studied effects here is superior to any successful pursuit, the resignation more beautiful than any glow of enthusiasm, the inspired simplicity loftier than the most dazzling performance by any diva. This lassitude of demeanor, this habit so deeply ingrained in every movement that the body no longer vaunts them, but rather restrains them, keeps them within itself, this is the only kind of acting we shall be able to take for a long time to come; after this taste of pungency, all sweetness is but insipid and unremembered.
16. With the appearance of Voyage to Italy, all films have suddenly aged ten years; nothing is more pitiless than youth, than this unequivocal intrusion by the modem cinema, in which we can at last recognize what we were vaguely awaiting. With all due deference to recalcitrant spirits, it is this that shocks or troubles them, that vindicates itself today, it is in this that truth lies in 1955. Here is our cinema, those of us who in our turn are preparing to make films (did I tell you, it may be soon); as a start I have already suggested something that intrigues you: is there to be a Rossellini school? and what will its dogmas be? -- I don't know if there is a school, but I do know there should be: first, to come to an understanding about the meaning of the word realism, which is not some rather simple scriptwriting technique, nor yet a style of mise en scene, but a state of mind: that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points; (judge your De Sicas, Lattuadas and Viscontis by this yardstick). Second point: a fig for the skeptics, the rational, the judicious; irony and sarcasm have had their day; now it is time to love the cinema so much that one has little taste left for what presently passes by that name, and wants to impose a more exacting image of it. As you see, this hardly comprises a program, but it may be enough to give you the heart to begin. This has been a very long letter. But the lonely should be forgiven: what they write is like the love letter that goes astray. To my mind, anyway, there is no more urgent topic today. One word more: I began with a quotation from Peguy; here is another in conclusion: 'Kantism has unsullied hands'(shake hands, Kant and Luther, and you too, Jansen), 'but it has no hands'.

Yours faithfully,

Jacques Rivette

NOTES:

1. A reference to the first line of Mallarme's poem, Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe: 'Tel qu'en Lui-meme enfin l'etemite le change'. (Trans.)
2. A reference to Clouzot's Le Mystere Picasso. (Trans.)
3. 'Genie du Christianisme' by Maurice Scherer (Eric Rohmer) in Cahiers du Cinema No. 25. July 1953.
4. 'Pour contribuer a une erotologie de la Television' in Cahiers du Cinema, No, 42.
5. Probably Andre Martin. (Trans.)
6. Possibly a reference to Ricciotto Canudo (1879-1923) and his Club des Amis du Septieme Art. (Trans.)
7. Rivette's original of this sentence reads: 'Rossellini tombe dans ce marecage comme le pave de ('ours; on se detourne avec des moues reprobatrices de ce paysan du Danube.' The bear and the Danube peasant are references to Fables by La Fontaine. (Trans.)
8. Rivette was referring to David Roussel's book, L'Univers Concenrationnaire. (Trans.)
9. The adulterous affair between Rossellini and Bergman. which began during the shooting of Stromboli (1949); and their subsequent child, caused an enormous press scandal which virtually exiled Bergman from Hollywood. (Ed.)
10. A character in De Sade's La Philosophie dans le boudoir. (Trans.)

Originally appeared in Cahiers du cinema April 1955, no. 46. This translation reprinted from Rivette: Texts and Interviews (British Film Institute, 1977): p. 54-64