The story is that of the dissolution of Vittoria's relationship with Riccardo and her attempt to take up with Piero, a young stock trader. That is pretty much it for story, the rest is style.
The first scene lasts almost fifteen minutes and sets the dominant mood and tone for the rest of the movie. The scene details the end of the relationship between Riccardo and Vittoria; it opens with a long shot of Riccardo staring disconsolately into space, then the camera moves to Vittoria, equally bummed out. Nothing is spoken for the first six minutes and then what follows is some anguished dialog inter-cut with images of Vittoria framed against different parts of the room: at windows, on a couch, against a door, in front of a painting, and so forth. I understand this scene is to illustrate the breakdown in communication between these two, and Vittoria's isolation, but it went on agonizingly long.
There are two scenes filmed in the Rome Stock Exchange. The first of these goes on for five minutes, and the second lasts for fifteen minutes. That chaos reigns in those scenes is established within a few minutes and I came away from them thinking that they had lasted long beyond their relevance. I found that almost all scenes went on way too long.
There are scenes that emphasize how lonely and isolated Vittoria is. In many of the exterior scenes, Vittoria is imaged against a background devoid of all but an occasional person: isolated streets, drab buildings, empty fields. I understand the message being sent is how difficult it is to gain purchase on a meaningful life in an uncaring urban environment, but I did not feel that I needed to be hit over the head with that.
There is a racist scene that may make many contemporary viewers uncomfortable. It was just one scene of several that seemed to come out of nowhere only to puzzle me as to why it was there.
The thing that saved this from being totally tedious was the spectacular black and white cinematography. The Blu-ray DVD is incredibly pristine, particularly considering that this movie is over fifty years old.
The commentary tract by Richard Peña is of the kind that gives film critics a bad name as being effete snobs. He sees significance in every detail. For example, he remarks on the opening scene as being abstract, offering a fractured space that is almost cubist. I simply saw two people who were several decades away from having access to Prozac. Peña remarks on the pagan roots of the behavior in the stock exchange. I finally had to cease listening to his bloviating.
The mood created by this overly long movie is distinctly downbeat.
The first scene lasts almost fifteen minutes and sets the dominant mood and tone for the rest of the movie. The scene details the end of the relationship between Riccardo and Vittoria; it opens with a long shot of Riccardo staring disconsolately into space, then the camera moves to Vittoria, equally bummed out. Nothing is spoken for the first six minutes and then what follows is some anguished dialog inter-cut with images of Vittoria framed against different parts of the room: at windows, on a couch, against a door, in front of a painting, and so forth. I understand this scene is to illustrate the breakdown in communication between these two, and Vittoria's isolation, but it went on agonizingly long.
There are two scenes filmed in the Rome Stock Exchange. The first of these goes on for five minutes, and the second lasts for fifteen minutes. That chaos reigns in those scenes is established within a few minutes and I came away from them thinking that they had lasted long beyond their relevance. I found that almost all scenes went on way too long.
There are scenes that emphasize how lonely and isolated Vittoria is. In many of the exterior scenes, Vittoria is imaged against a background devoid of all but an occasional person: isolated streets, drab buildings, empty fields. I understand the message being sent is how difficult it is to gain purchase on a meaningful life in an uncaring urban environment, but I did not feel that I needed to be hit over the head with that.
There is a racist scene that may make many contemporary viewers uncomfortable. It was just one scene of several that seemed to come out of nowhere only to puzzle me as to why it was there.
The thing that saved this from being totally tedious was the spectacular black and white cinematography. The Blu-ray DVD is incredibly pristine, particularly considering that this movie is over fifty years old.
The commentary tract by Richard Peña is of the kind that gives film critics a bad name as being effete snobs. He sees significance in every detail. For example, he remarks on the opening scene as being abstract, offering a fractured space that is almost cubist. I simply saw two people who were several decades away from having access to Prozac. Peña remarks on the pagan roots of the behavior in the stock exchange. I finally had to cease listening to his bloviating.
The mood created by this overly long movie is distinctly downbeat.