What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

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Le Amiche from 1955, an Italian film with English subtitles.


Dated mainly in superficial ways, the moving and complicated personal, relationship, and class challenges faced by director and co-writer Michelangelo Antonioni's fully drawn characters in Le Amiche are still relevant today because the core human condition changes very little.

Le Amiche is consistent with Antonioni's other films, which typically focus on mood, conversation, and characters over structured plots. Le Amiche, however, is "tighter" than his other work, which can indulge in too many long, lingering shots that slow the narrative down.

Present-day cinema, with its often unforgiving view of gender roles and relationships, could learn from this 1955 Italian film, which is surprisingly open minded as it explores and respects both traditional and modern views – many of which are still being debated.

It opens when Clelia, a young, successful businesswoman, returns to her hometown of Turin to open a fashion salon for her employer. After the woman, Rosetta, in the hotel room next to Clelia, attempts suicide, Clelia is drawn into that woman's clique of upper-class young women.

Clelia herself comes from a poor, working-class neighborhood, but having succeeded in the fashion industry, she presents as a refined, upper-class woman. She can fit in with Rosetta's friends, but she still has an outsider's view of them.

The friends, who all seem to have enough family money not to work – other than one, Nene, who is a successful ceramics artist – spend their days shopping, going to lunch, gossiping, being bored, and complaining about the men in their lives.

One of the men, Lorenzo, who lives with Nene, is a struggling painter – it's never easy to be the less successful one in a relationship, but in 1955 Rome, it's emasculating for a man. Another of the men, but not part of the group, is Carlos, the assistant architect working on Clelia's shop.

While Clelia comes from the same working class that Carlos does, presented here, he's still of that class and has little chance of moving up. So while romance buds a bit between the two, there's an odd class divide where, once again, the woman is doing better than the man.

The central dynamic, though, is Rosetta's suicide attempt, which is gossiped about but only rarely addressed directly to Rosetta. She then begins an affair with Lorenzo, who is happy for the attention away from Nene, but of course, Rosetta is fragile.

Antonioni uses this thin plot to explore, through the intimate conversation of the story's mainly "bourgeois" characters, themes of class prejudice, love, sexual relationships, careers, gender roles, and finding purpose in life.

He is at his best in developing the personalities of his characters as you come to understand what drives and motivates each woman. You'll like some, like Clelia, and dislike others, like selfish and manipulative Momina, but only a few feel like stereotypes.

While their world looks incredibly different from ours – they dress much nicer to go for a fall-day walk on the beach than most dress for office work today – their personalities, ambitions, and challenges seem modern to any young, educated group of friends.

Women realize that there are trade-offs between career, relationships, and starting a family. Fair or not, and acceptable to say it or not, the placement of the ball on that field has moved to a much better position today, but the game is still being played.

The same can be said of "two career" relationships, as you don't need to search hard to find articles about the challenges they present, especially if the woman is much more successful than the man. That might not reflect well on men, but that doesn't make the problem go away.

Sadly, despair and suicide are still with us, meaning many still know someone like Rosetta and how hard it is to help someone struggling with depression.

Shot in black and white and on location around Italy, this view of the young, rich, and pseudo-intellectual at play is striking, especially with only a few visits to the working-class neighborhoods to remind us that life here is not all outdoor cafés, beautiful clothes, and fast cars.

Antonioni, in Le Amiche, tells several normal-life stories that are special because they are explored through well-developed characters whom we recognize despite superficial time-and-place differences.

Often, it's the plot, but in Le Amiche, it's the characters and their lives that make the movie special.

 

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The Big Street from 1942 with Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Barton MacLane, William T. Orr, Sam Levine, Eugene Pallette, Agnes Moorehead, and Ray Collins


The Big Street doesn’t fit neatly into any genre, as Hollywood doesn’t make too many Damon Runyon stories with a nineteenth-century romantic overlay that center on a crippled, bitter woman abusing the one good man in her life – because, well, Hollywood likes to make money.

The story – whose only message is that love can be unexplainable – is too much of a downer for box-office success. Still, stars Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, plus an impressive cast, carry this story much further than you think they can on raw talent and passion.

It starts on Broadway, where Ball is a nightclub singer who tries to trade in her gangster boyfriend, played by Barton MacLane, for a rich, handsome society gentleman, played by William T. Orr. Watching all this, with romantic dreams of Ball, is a "nobody" busboy, played by Henry Fonda.

MacLane, angry at the brushoff from Ball, pushes her down a flight of stairs. She's paralyzed from the waist down, prompting all her fancy friends and the society boyfriend to abandon her, but not Fonda. He starts paying her bills as best he can and provides her with a roof over her head.

Ball is unstintingly ungrateful. She complains about Fonda's shoddy apartment and, well, everything, as he works tirelessly to keep her housed, clothed, and fed. The only help he gets is from his, according to Ball, "low-class" friends – a bunch of Runyonesque characters.

About halfway through, Ball badgers Fonda to take her to Florida, so the movie shifts south with all the Runyonesque characters along for the ride. It's the same in Florida as Ball complains bitterly, while treating all the people who are nice to her horribly.

To wrap the plot up – which isn't much and doesn't matter much – Ball's health deteriorates, causing Fonda and his friends to make one last-ditch grand romantic gesture to pull Ball out of her depression. It's not believable, but it is an impressive scene beautifully executed.

Taken literally, this movie doesn't work as nobody would put up with Ball the way Fonda and his friends do. Taken as a fable – as a throwback story to nineteenth-century romanticism within a 1930s Damon Runyon construct – it's an odd, but often engaging effort.

This only works because Ball and Fonda are pros. Ball, playing completely against her later image, is haughty and nasty, but still, look for the few scenes where she breaks down and you'll see a talented actress at the top of her game. She was much more than just "Lucy!"

Fonda, too, in a sort of Of Human Bondage-style, inexplicably obeisant role, shows why he had a six-decade-long career in a fickle business. You want to knock some sense into him several times, but you never doubt that, for some unknown reason, he is completely devoted to Ball.

It's not fair to mention some but not all of the supporting actors (but here goes anyway) – including Sam Levine, Eugene Pallette, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, and so many others – who bring a spirit of kindness despite their meager means to this rough-edged fairytale.

Their performances give the movie comic relief, which is needed, but also a surprising amount of heart. They accept Fonda's weakness and, often, Ball's arrogance with an unspoken Christian charity that imbues a touching gentleness into the movie.

The Big Street wasn’t a hit, and it’s not well known today, as it’s a downer overall with a message of romanticism that was already passé when it was released – and one that couldn’t be more foreign to our modern-day, me-focused approach to love.

If you can step back from that, there is something here for the spirit, or the soul, or whatever it is that makes men and women more than just machines. Sure, you dismiss it as a fable, but you also feel there's something deeply human at work too.