I saw this film at the National Gallery of Art knowing little about it. Apparently it has had minimal exposure outside of Italy. This is too bad, because the film is thoroughly engaging. It is based on a true story of a tragic accident in Rome, which was a national sensation at the time. About 200 women line up in the stairwell of a building to interview for a modest typist position. The film introduces the women, and their economic desperation. Then tragedy strikes, as the staircase collapses in a harrowing scene. Most of the film is dedicated to the aftermath. The director interviewed some of the women involved. The film follows the stories of ten women. They are working class people in 1950 Italy. You see their dreams and their struggles. There is some comic relief and melodrama, but the film is always deeply sympathetic to ordinary people in postwar Italy.
4 Reviews
Master of Italian Neorealism, limited by its theme.
GNantes13 May 2022
Giuseppe De Santis (Riso amaro, 1949) achieves an excellent narrative work based on a real event, an accident that occurred in January 1951, on Savoia Street in Rome. In what I have mentioned, I am limiting myself to not advancing any more details about that misfortune, since its outcome is more shocking when it happens at the least expected moment. I highlight three important aspects. The first is about the initial music that accompanies the credits of the film. Its composition is, without a doubt, the incentive that Alfred Hitchcock will have for his own films. Although it has little or nothing to do with the story that De Santis tells, Hitchcock will attend better and will know how to use it greatly in his own works. Likewise, the second aspect is the quality of the photography, its plans, its settings, its excellent proportions. In all the images you can appreciate the elegance and refinement of a critical and poetic eye. The third and most important aspect is the construction of the characters, their development and their growth in the conflicts they go through, before the tragedy and after it. It should be said that, once again, it is in the feminine features where the director manages, as in other of his films, to sustain the drama, with a beautiful combination of fragility and strength, beauty, poetry. Roma 11:00 is, clearly, a great film of Italian neorealism, simple but forceful, whose gaze crosses various historical problems that are reiterated: love, poverty, pain, empathy. A masterpiece that is seen, however, somewhat conditioned by the specific limits of the subject it deals with and can remain rather anecdotal, in a memorial, in the local of a specific event, almost journalistic.
Breadth of Italian Cinema
gongminwangdaye11 August 2022
There are many films that represent the depth of Italian neorealism. "The Bicycle Thief," "German Year Zero," and even "Nights in Cablia" are all great works that are close to each other. And yet the perfect film to represent the breadth of neorealism, even the breadth of realism, is probably the only one, the heartbreaking Roman Eleven.
Trying to move up, they all fall down
jarrodmcdonald-119 May 2024
Warning: Spoilers
This film, known in English as ROME 11:00, was directed by Giuseppe De Santis, who specialized in neorealism. De Santis was at the height of his powers in the late 1940s and 1950s. Though he would make a few more motion pictures after 1960, his style as a filmmaker evolved. Unlike other neorealist directors, De Santis was a bit more idealistic, though scenes are still punctuated with uncertainty.
The story is based on an actual incident that had occurred in early 1951. A tragedy takes place one morning at 11 o'clock when over 200 women turn up at an address in Rome to apply for a job. It's a rainy winter day, and all these gals are dealing with financial hardship and desperately want to be hired as a typist for a businessman who had placed an ad. We aren't told whether or not he expected so many applicants, but he's overwhelmed to see so many women lined up in the hallway outside his office and down a concrete stairwell that is several floors up from the ground.
At one point he tells the women that he will only interview 30 or 40 of them, meaning the others should leave as they will be turned away. Interestingly, none of the women leave, that is how desperate they are for this modestly paying position. During the initial sequence of the movie, we get to know some of these women, since there are snippets of dialogue here and there that tell us in conversation what individual circumstances have brought them here looking for work.
Not all of the women are unemployed. Some of them already have jobs, but jobs they wish to quit for something better. One applicant is a saucy prostitute who is tired of entertaining men. Another applicant is a maid for a wealthy couple who is tired of being treated like a lowly servant. Then, of course, there are some who definitely are unemployed, or have never worked before because they are homemakers, but their husbands are now unemployed, so they must see if they can get hired somewhere.
Personally I found the first half hour a bit tedious and was ready to give up on the film. There were just too many characters to connect to, and they all seemed a bit precocious in a strange way; not exactly human to me. Also, almost all the ladies were glammed up, which I understand may have been necessary to entice the businessman to hire them. But after the stairwell collapses when dozens are hauled off to a hospital, they still look glamorous with no signs of having scratches or bruises, let alone life-threatening injuries. If the goal of this film is to provide a sense of deep realism, that has to be reflected beyond the economic situation and the political situation. Physically, there should be realism, too.
The stairwell collapse occurs around the 35 minute mark, and it lasts about ten minutes or so. I did think the collapse was suitably dramatic, as horrific and dangerous as one would expect. It was a bit silly, though, that the women had to wait for male firemen and male paramedics to come rescue them...that none of them could fend for themselves or depend on each other. They were totally helpless without men...really? Come on!
The film finds its stride during the second half. This is when extended hospital scenes take place, and the victims' families and friends show up which does flesh out the individual stories more. Also, there is an ongoing police investigation; and one woman (Carla Del Poggio) who jumped the line to secure an interview and had caused a scuffle on the stairs leading to the collapse, has to deal with her confusion over being responsible for disaster.
Some of the individual character stories are wrapped up quite nicely. Most of them cannot afford an expensive hospital stay; they start to file out of the medical facility. Outside the hospital, the maid is "reunited" with her bourgeoisie employers who learned of the calamity on the radio. They are shocked someone they considered to be a 'daughter' no longer wants to work for them. When the maid refuses to go back to the manse with them, another poor applicant leaving the hospital overhears this and offers her services...meaning she will go off with the snobby couple and become their new maid, so she at least ended up with a new job!
Meanwhile we see the prostitute taken back to her apartment by a rich old fat man who wants to get it on with her, even though she just barely escaped death. She tells him she has had a tiring day and needs to spend the evening alone, a rarity for her; and compassionately, he leaves a bunch of money behind without getting sex from her. At least not tonight!
There is one woman who is pregnant out of wedlock, and her story basically resolves with a doctor telling her that she did not lose her baby. However, she still has no job. Yet another gal has been in the process of leaving her husband but decides to go back to him; their reunion scene is beautifully played without dialogue. And then we have a woman who at her mother's prodding, leaves the hospital and goes back to the office building where the debris is being cleaned up. She hopes to speak to the businessman and see if she can get the job that was originally advertised, since he had not completed the interviews due to the tragedy.
Of course, we get a resolution for the woman who blamed herself for the collapse. She is told by the police that no charges will be pressed, and she is free to go. Off to the side, architects have been summoned and they may be held responsible for the damages, though they are already trying to weasel out of it. But the building itself is not the film's main concern. It's the women and their dire socio-economic condition that De Santis wants us to think about. And that is something we can do at 11 o'clock or any other time of the day.
The story is based on an actual incident that had occurred in early 1951. A tragedy takes place one morning at 11 o'clock when over 200 women turn up at an address in Rome to apply for a job. It's a rainy winter day, and all these gals are dealing with financial hardship and desperately want to be hired as a typist for a businessman who had placed an ad. We aren't told whether or not he expected so many applicants, but he's overwhelmed to see so many women lined up in the hallway outside his office and down a concrete stairwell that is several floors up from the ground.
At one point he tells the women that he will only interview 30 or 40 of them, meaning the others should leave as they will be turned away. Interestingly, none of the women leave, that is how desperate they are for this modestly paying position. During the initial sequence of the movie, we get to know some of these women, since there are snippets of dialogue here and there that tell us in conversation what individual circumstances have brought them here looking for work.
Not all of the women are unemployed. Some of them already have jobs, but jobs they wish to quit for something better. One applicant is a saucy prostitute who is tired of entertaining men. Another applicant is a maid for a wealthy couple who is tired of being treated like a lowly servant. Then, of course, there are some who definitely are unemployed, or have never worked before because they are homemakers, but their husbands are now unemployed, so they must see if they can get hired somewhere.
Personally I found the first half hour a bit tedious and was ready to give up on the film. There were just too many characters to connect to, and they all seemed a bit precocious in a strange way; not exactly human to me. Also, almost all the ladies were glammed up, which I understand may have been necessary to entice the businessman to hire them. But after the stairwell collapses when dozens are hauled off to a hospital, they still look glamorous with no signs of having scratches or bruises, let alone life-threatening injuries. If the goal of this film is to provide a sense of deep realism, that has to be reflected beyond the economic situation and the political situation. Physically, there should be realism, too.
The stairwell collapse occurs around the 35 minute mark, and it lasts about ten minutes or so. I did think the collapse was suitably dramatic, as horrific and dangerous as one would expect. It was a bit silly, though, that the women had to wait for male firemen and male paramedics to come rescue them...that none of them could fend for themselves or depend on each other. They were totally helpless without men...really? Come on!
The film finds its stride during the second half. This is when extended hospital scenes take place, and the victims' families and friends show up which does flesh out the individual stories more. Also, there is an ongoing police investigation; and one woman (Carla Del Poggio) who jumped the line to secure an interview and had caused a scuffle on the stairs leading to the collapse, has to deal with her confusion over being responsible for disaster.
Some of the individual character stories are wrapped up quite nicely. Most of them cannot afford an expensive hospital stay; they start to file out of the medical facility. Outside the hospital, the maid is "reunited" with her bourgeoisie employers who learned of the calamity on the radio. They are shocked someone they considered to be a 'daughter' no longer wants to work for them. When the maid refuses to go back to the manse with them, another poor applicant leaving the hospital overhears this and offers her services...meaning she will go off with the snobby couple and become their new maid, so she at least ended up with a new job!
Meanwhile we see the prostitute taken back to her apartment by a rich old fat man who wants to get it on with her, even though she just barely escaped death. She tells him she has had a tiring day and needs to spend the evening alone, a rarity for her; and compassionately, he leaves a bunch of money behind without getting sex from her. At least not tonight!
There is one woman who is pregnant out of wedlock, and her story basically resolves with a doctor telling her that she did not lose her baby. However, she still has no job. Yet another gal has been in the process of leaving her husband but decides to go back to him; their reunion scene is beautifully played without dialogue. And then we have a woman who at her mother's prodding, leaves the hospital and goes back to the office building where the debris is being cleaned up. She hopes to speak to the businessman and see if she can get the job that was originally advertised, since he had not completed the interviews due to the tragedy.
Of course, we get a resolution for the woman who blamed herself for the collapse. She is told by the police that no charges will be pressed, and she is free to go. Off to the side, architects have been summoned and they may be held responsible for the damages, though they are already trying to weasel out of it. But the building itself is not the film's main concern. It's the women and their dire socio-economic condition that De Santis wants us to think about. And that is something we can do at 11 o'clock or any other time of the day.
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