Journey to Italy
| Journey to Italy | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Roberto Rossellini |
| Produced by | Adolfo Fossataro Alfredo Guarini Roberto Rossellini |
| Written by |
Vitaliano Brancati Roberto Rossellini |
| Based on |
Duo by Colette |
| Starring |
Ingrid Bergman George Sanders |
| Music by | Renzo Rossellini |
| Cinematography | Enzo Serafin |
| Edited by | Jolanda Benvenuti |
| Distributed by | Titanus Distribuzione |
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Release date
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Running time
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105 minutes (Italy) 88 minutes (France) 80 minutes (US) 70 minutes (UK) |
| Country | Italy France |
| Language | English |
Journey to Italy, also known as Voyage to Italy is a 1954 drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini. Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders play Katherine and Alex Joyce, an English married couple whose trip to Italy unexpectedly undermines their marriage. The film was written by Rossellini and Vitaliano Brancati, but is loosely based on the novel Duo by Colette. Although the film was an Italian production, its dialogue was in English. The first theatrical release was in Italy under the title Viaggio in Italia; the dialogue had been dubbed into Italian.
Journey to Italy is considered by many to be Rossellini's finest work. In 2012, it was listed by Sight & Sound magazine as one of the fifty greatest films ever made.
Alex and Katherine Joyce (Sanders and Bergman) are a couple from England who have traveled by car to Italy to sell a villa near Naples that they have recently inherited from "Uncle Homer". The trip is intended as a vacation for Alex, who is a workaholic businessman given to brusqueness and sarcasm. Katherine is more sensitive, and the journey has evoked poignant memories of a poet friend, Charles Lewington, now deceased.
Much of the running time of Voyage to Italy is uneventful. The opening scene shows Katherine and Alex Joyce simply conversing as they drive through the Italian countryside; the only incident is momentary, when they slow for a herd of cattle in the road. Shortly after they arrive in Naples, the film follows them as they are given a lengthy, room-by-room tour of Uncle Homer's villa by its caretakers, Tony and Natalie Burton. The film subsequently follows Katherine on several days as she tours Naples without Alex. On the third day of her visit, she tours the large, ancient statues at the Naples Museum. On the sixth day she visits the Phlegraean Fields with their volcanic curiosities. On another day she accompanies Natalie Burton to the Fontanelle cemetery, with its stacks of unidentified, disinterred human skulls that are adopted and honored by local people.
Within days of their arrival, the couple's relationship becomes strained amid mutual misunderstandings and a degree of jealousy on both sides. Alex dismisses Lewington as "a fool". The two begin to spend their days separately, and Alex takes a side trip to the island of Capri. On the last day of the film, they impetuously agree to divorce. Tony Burton suddenly appears, insisting that they go with him to Pompeii for an extraordinary opportunity. There the three of them witness the discovery of another couple who had been buried in ashes during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly two thousand years earlier. Katherine is profoundly disturbed, and she and Alex leave Pompeii only to be caught up in the procession for Saint Gennaro in Naples. The afternoon's experiences — seemingly miraculously — rekindle their love for each other. Katherine asks Alex, "Tell me that you love me!", and he responds "Well, if I do, will you promise not to take advantage of me?” The film concludes with a crane shot showing the continuing religious procession
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Wikipedia