Laura Mulvey calls Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, 1953) the first work of modern cinema, and the more times you watch it, the more you're convinced how right she is. Fifty years later, it's no longer the radical, disturbing experience that it was for most viewers of the day, but it still retains a strange, even challenging edge to it, and it still feels absolutely modern in the way so much attention is given to the "dead time" experience of the characters.

Absolutely emblematic is one lengthy sequence about a third of the way into the film. George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman, playing the tired married couple Alexander and Katherine Joyce, are resting in the sun on the terrace of their late uncle's villa just outside Naples. Alexander has been drinking solidly, runs out of anything to drink, and we are shown in detail and at length his search for more drink: shots of him walking around the house, walking down a staircase, opening doors; in mutually incomprehensible conversation with the servants; finally being led outside to disturb the housekeeping couple of Tony and Natalia Burton (Leslie Daniels, Natalia Ray) in their afternoon siesta. There's nothing here that is integral to the plot - a point that was recognised by the producer when he cut this sequence from an early release version of the film. But it is rich in texture: the feel of the environment, the sense of the heat of the early afternoon, the insights into Alexander's character (the arrogance of the upper-class Englishman suddenly reprimanding the Italian servant with "How dare you speak like that to me?" is very amusing, especially as he cannot understand a word she says, nor can she understand him). This sequence is a clear precursor to the kind of modern cinema developed only a few years later by directors like Antonioni; just think of the shot in L'Avventura (1960) of Monica Vitti walking the entire length of the hotel corridor, a shot famous for the way it generated cries of "Cut! Cut!" from critics at Cannes.

Journey to Italy is the last of the three great films Rossellini made with Ingrid Bergman. (It was followed by two more films starring Bergman, Giovanna d'Arco al rogo [Joan of Arc at the Stake, 1954] and La Paura [Fear, 1954], before the end of their working relationship and their marriage.) The story of Bergman's approach to Rossellini is well-known: how in 1948 she wrote a letter to him, expressing her admiration for Roma Città Aperta (Rome Open City, 1945) and Paisà (Paisan, 1946) and offering her services as an actress; how by the time they were shooting their first film together, Stromboli (1949), she was already his lover and pregnant with his child; the enormous scandal this caused in both Italy and the United States, unallayed by their subsequent marriage; and how the opprobrium directed at Rossellini on moral grounds was also paralleled by attacks from critics who had championed his neo-realist work but saw the cinema Rossellini was developing with Bergman - Stromboli was soon followed by Europa '51 in 1952 - as a betrayal of neo-realism.

This "betrayal of neo-realism" doesn't mean that Rossellini is abandoning any desire to have the real, non-fictional world represented in his cinema. More the opposite: there's a sense that whereas the earlier neo-realist films embedded their narratives within a documentary-like depiction of the world around them, the "real" footage in Journey to Italy remains in some sense distinct from and unmediated by the story acted out by the Hollywood stars, George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman. This is one of the fascinations of the film.

The very first shot of Journey to Italy is of an empty road, filmed from the inside of a car as it races forward; the shot is held a fraction long, then is replaced by another landscape shot, of the side of the road seen from a passing car. It is with the third shot, of the Joyces inside their car travelling south to Naples, that these two opening shots are identified, by implication, as coming from the point-of-view of the Joyces and the film's story gets underway.

The story is that of the disintegration of an upper-class English marriage. The Joyces are in Italy, to attend to the sale of the Naples villa belonging to their recently deceased Uncle Homer - it's indicative of Rossellini's lack of interest in and attention to certain aspects of cinema storytelling that he never specifies whose uncle Homer is; and the unaccustomed time the couple are forced to spend with one another brings to the fore, makes apparent to them the state of crisis their marriage is in.

"This is the first time we've been really alone ever since we were married," Katherine notes, and in these first scenes together in the car they seem bored and irritable, even searching for things to talk about. On finally arriving at their hotel in Naples she sums up that "I realise for the first time that we're like strangers." And Alexander can only concur: "After eight years of marriage it seems we don't know anything about each other."

It might be expected, particularly given the cynical persona George Sanders perfected (the apotheosis of which was his Addison DeWitt in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve three years before), that all the audience's sympathy would be with Ingrid Bergman's character. Certainly our exploration of the marriage is effected through Katherine's exploration of the physical surroundings of Naples, the tourist sites she visits. Her emotional reactions to the state of their relationship - her anger, her upset - are more on display than his; and if her more secret inner life can be seen as being represented through her memories of the romantic, idealistic poet Charles Lewington, Alexander's inner life finds a far coarser expression through his failed sexual pursuit of Marie (Maria Mauban) on Capri and his unconsummated pick up of the prostitute (Anna Proclemer) back in Naples.

However, our view of Katherine is by no means totally positive, and in fact Rossellini provides a remarkably nuanced and strikingly true portrayal of the shifting terrain that a marriage operates on. Katherine, in fact, is just as likely to reject Alexander's conciliatory gestures. On that first night in the hotel Alexander, in a joking tone to cover up the underlying seriousness of the issue, suggests that, as they're "strangers" now, they should try starting again from the beginning, and gets in response from Katherine a very cold "Let's go down to the bar".

After Katherine's visit to the National Archaeological Museum on the third day (they have now moved to Uncle Homer's villa), Alexander is again conciliatory. "Why don't we try to enjoy our vacation?" he says. All this leads to is Katherine's attacking him: "You don't realise how mean you can be sometimes. It's more than anyone can stand." Rossellini gives us a shot here of Alexander, a slight twitch to his face (Sanders is excellent) expressing how hurt he actually is; and then gives us a shot of Katherine, who clearly shows how aware she is of his feeling of hurt, but who can't bring herself to make any kind of gesture to him on her part, except for changing the subject of conversation.

There is an amazing sense of truth to the way this couple is being depicted here. (Not surprisingly, Rossellini and Bergman's marriage was seriously in trouble - Sanders has famously talked of Bergman throughout the shoot as "the tearful, but bravely smiling, Ingrid".) There's a marvellous scene of Katherine at night, waiting up for Alexander's return from Capri, marvellous for what it reveals of Katherine's conflicting emotions. She swings from one extreme (pretending to be sleeping) to the other (calling out to him to come in), hides the real truth of how she has been spending her time as much as he does, is conciliatory towards him but when rejected breaks down sobbing, alone in her room, as much as he is alone in his room. All played out in a matter of minutes.

Whatever sympathy may be extended at times to the character of Alexander, Katherine's "voyage" is the moral crux of the film. Moreover, Rossellini does indulge in a number of cliché perceptions of the contrast between the Northern European (cold, repressed, materialist) and the Italian/Southern European (warm, vital, instinctive). Both of the Joyces are shown reacting negatively to their experience of the South. "What noisy people!" is one of the first comments Alexander has to make about the Italians, after a stereotypical complaint about their driving. They're constantly disconcerted by the noise, the laziness, the inefficiency, the slowness in getting things done - all very much the cliché of how the English react to Italy and the Italians.

Rossellini has a more serious point to make about how life and death are interrelated in the vital, positive world-view of the Italians. So, in the shots of street life that accompany Katherine's drive to Cumae, we are shown first a funeral procession, then shots of different pregnant women; and during her drive to the Phlegraean Fields we see a series of lovers/courting couples and babies in prams. (Actually there's a certain disjunction between the shots of street life and the shots of Katherine's reactions that they are intercut with - the former have quite a different texture to them, a freer, looser shooting style, natural lighting, the latter are a product of a style of star-centred narrative filmmaking. As much as two worlds being contrasted here, Katherine and Italy, there's an intimation of two styles of filmmaking in collision).

Katherine's trip to the Fontanelle cemetery with Natalia is a further development of this theme. The cemetery itself is in fact a catacomb, with unidentified skeletal remains, mostly skulls, displayed in rows for "adoption" by local Neapolitans. Katherine of course clearly finds it morbid; but significantly, before they reach Fontanelle, we're given a series of shots of pregnant women, and then of children; and Natalia herself uses the visit to pray for a child. The image of birth and death as two sides of a holistic approach to life couldn't be made any more clearer.

Katherine's sightseeing journeys are also used to provide her with a sense of historical depth to her experiences. Her first trip is to the National Archaeological Museum, a connection to the classical past of Greece and Rome, where Rossellini's camera, fascinatingly, focuses more on the individual statues than on Katherine herself. Many of the shots (some involving elaborate camera movements using a crane - hardly "neorealist"!) start on a statue before moving to an angle that includes Katherine reacting to the statue: a striking effect.

The second trip, to Cumae, the site of the oldest of the region's Greek settlements and the cave of the Sibyl, is a connection to both the mythological past (Aeneas, the mythical founder of Roman culture, is said to have landed here) and to the more recent historical past with direct associations for Katherine: British troops landed here in World War II, which Katherine realises would include Charles Lewington and which evokes lines of Charles's poetry in Katherine's mind. The visit to the volcanic craters of the Phlegraean Fields is a further historical exploration, this time into the geological past.

The last of these journeys is the one that Katherine and Alexander make together, to Pompeii. It comes immediately after Katherine's return with Natalia from Fontanelle, the last of these visits which have left her disturbed, shaken, in crisis; and her return leads immediately to a serious argument with Alexander and an almost off-the-cuff decision to get a divorce. At this point they're interrupted by Tony, who insists on taking them to witness a new discovery at Pompeii.

At the excavation site the bodies of those who died in the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD are reconstructed by pouring plaster into the ground to fill the holes left behind by the disintegrating bodies. What Alexander and Katherine come to witness is the uncovering of one of these plaster moulds; it's revealed to be that of a couple, the sight of which leaves Katherine so overcome with emotion that Alexander has to take her away. It's the critical moment for their relationship. As these two lonely figures walk through the vast, empty ruins of Pompeii, Katherine tries apologising to Alexander, he rejects it, she turns cold on him and he turns sarcastic. The potential breakthrough to mutual understanding and reconciliation doesn't take place here; and Katherine's attempts at explaining what her experiences have taught her can only be expressed as "life is so short". Alexander still insists on the divorce, and she agrees.

They then drive into the climactic scene of the film. Just as, in the film's opening sequence, their impatient journey was slowed down (twice) by cattle on the road, in this scene they are brought to a halt by literally driving into a religious procession. Here, as an intimation of the second-to-last shot of the film, Rossellini's camera cranes away from the Joyces, trapped, standing next to their car, to explore panoramically the crowd surrounding and following the procession. Then we return to the Joyces, trapped too in their blocked relationship, with a repeat of the same to-and-fro pattern that we saw in the Pompeii ruins: Katherine conciliatory, Alexander defensive and rejecting, Katherine cold and bitter in return.

Then - as unexpected, and even unconvincing, as it may seem to us - Rossellini gives them their breakthrough. The crowd surges forward, carrying Katherine with them; Katherine cries out in panic for help; Alexander fights through the crowd to her and in response to Katherine's declaration of concern for him and of love - and (yes!) to the background cries from the crowd of "Miracle! Miracle!" - says the words: "I love you."

But this moment of reconciliation isn't the final moment of the film. Think, in comparison, of the ending of Antonioni's L'Avventura: in the cold light of dawn some kind of bitter reconcilation is reached between Claudia (Monica Vitti) and Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and the film ends with them. Journey to Italy, in contrast, leaves the characters and their story, craning away from them to the left in a single shot to turn its concentration on the crowd. Which is then emphasised again by the following shot, the final one of the film: members of the crowd pass in front of the camera, from right to left, implicitly away from where we left the Joyces. The story has stopped; real life recorded by the documentary camera flows on. Rossellini thus marks what interests him and in the act creates an important, thrilling and still vital landmark in modern cinema.

This BFI DVD offers a very good if not perfect transfer of the film in the original 1.33:1 ratio (in other words, not quite at Criterion standards but still thoroughly acceptable). Extras comprise only a director's biography (but no filmography) and a superb commentary, both by Laura Mulvey. All in all, given the quality of the transfer, the status of the film, and the excellence of the commentary, this is a must buy.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002