Viaggio, Voyage, Journey - before the history films, travelogue is the key to Rossellini's cinema: Paisan, Stromboli, India, Viva Italia. In the first and last of these we get literal maps charting our progression from one story/location to another, and all films here mentioned here minus Stromboli are these progressions from South to North. This movie is no exception either. We have no maps in this film, and no wonder! The Joyces are very lost, trying to find hope in a place they don't understand, trapped in the prisms of their own beliefs - not till the end do both discover that the travelogue isn't physical, it is in their own hearts - their emotions must travel from south to…

96

Journey to Italy is relatively simple, but the implications are cosmic. A disruption in geography causes a waning relationship to fully dismantle and then reassemble within the context of a shifting understanding of themselves as human beings. All it showcases is a couple on the rocks only to realize they are everything to each other, as much as they hate that idea. But Roberto Rossellini doesn't merely provide an existential core to the proceedings, but a metaphysical one as well. This is a film not just about what happens to us, the reality of life and death and love, but what we should contemplate or yearn to understand while we're here. Journey to Italy, above all else, seeks to…

Following the journey of Katherine and Alex Joyce, a married couple from England who have to visit Naples to supervise the sale of a deceased uncle’s estate which suddenly arouses both of them to the weakened state of their marriage, Journey to Italy is exhilarating for not merely the usage of the numerous locations, but also how the roles of its characters are representational to broader concerns. The performances from the leads are outstanding and aptly demonstrate a concise concentration of marital despair, once they are outside of their ivory tower.

Based loosely on the 1934 novel Duo by Colette, although the rights to the novel were not able to be secured, the film takes advantage of the aesthetically pleasing…

A gorgeous, magnificent piece of cinema which shows off 1950s Italy in the context of the fragile marriage of Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders - one of my favourites of his roles, and a fine one of many of hers.

In just eighty minutes we watch as this couple travel around (not 'to') Italy, where her memories of a lost love tap against the pain of her husband's thoughtless wandering eye. This would be a good companion piece to this year's '45 Years' which also deals with old memories and failing companionship.

Roberto Rossellini's film looks and sounds gorgeous, and presents a romantic, yet dangerous and unpredictable Italy in which Bergman's tourist amongst the ruins and hot springs keeps her…

It's movies like Roberto Rossellini's Voyage in Italy that make me grateful to be alive—here, now, in this moment, communicating with you.

It's movies like Voyage in Italy that give me the crucial insight into the world I previously did not possess, but which I now realize I had the capability of possessing all along.

It's movies like Voyage in Italy that leave me staring in wide-eyed wonder at the power of the cinematic-photographic image to transcend space-time and reach me in the heart, where it counts.

It's movies like Voyage in Italy that understand the true essence of film: as a paradoxical medium of life and death, chronicling existence in the past, mummifying faces in the present, foretelling death…

Eric Rohmer: 'The Land of Miracles'

('La Terre du Miracle', Cahiers du Cinema 47, May 1955, written under his real name, Maurice Scherer)

The term 'neo-realism' has become so debased that I would hesitate to use it in relation to Viaggio in Italia if Rossellini hadn't in fact claimed it himself. He sees this film as embodying a 'neo-realism' that is purer and deeper than in any of his earlier films. At least that was his comment to one member of the audience at the Paris premiere. One can certainly talk about evolution in the work of the author of Rome, Open City. If it is true that the more recent films can only at a pinch be categorized along…

If anything deserved a 2K restoration as stunning as this, it was the spellbinding face of Ingrid Bergman. After seeing only a handful of her performances, I’m convinced there’s never been a reactionary actor quite like her. She’s so good you can almost hear the thoughts rattling around in her head, precise body language and rapturous eyes telling half the story before she’s even opened her mouth. George Sanders bats back superbly, depicting a tangible jealousy that’s coated in a covert disguise of romantic indifference. Some scenes could linger in the thematic weight a while longer, the limitations of the era clearly visible through sketchy edits and one too many conversations cut short, but I wasn’t expecting the existential angst…