Roberto Rossellini makes a compelling drama from an English couple’s inability to enjoy being together. Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders keep it painfully recognisable, though the leisurely pace sometimes becomes a drag.
Journey to Italy is a fine, occasionally frustrating film about a couple who have run short of things to say to each other. Katherine Joyce and Alex Joyce are English, married and in Naples to sell property, which gives them business to discuss when affection fails. Roberto Rossellini takes the ordinary discomfort of being alone with someone familiar and makes it worth sustained attention. We recommend it, with the warning that the pauses can ask rather more patience than the arguments.
Ingrid Bergman gives Katherine an unease that is difficult to dismiss as mere dissatisfaction with a holiday. George Sanders makes Alex’s stiffness a considerable obstacle: his composure can seem like a judgement on anyone who cannot maintain it. We were upset by the way her agitation meets his reserve, because he makes her unhappiness seem like an embarrassment. They do not need to explain every grievance for us to recognise the difficulty of spending another day together, or the effort involved in appearing civil.
Enzo Serafin’s cinematography lets the Italian surroundings compete with the couple for our attention, and the film benefits from that divided interest. Naples has a life that does not depend on these visitors resolving their problems. Piero Filippone’s production design makes their comfort look unwelcoming, which suits two people who cannot relax together. The contrast can be pointed, but the places have enough interest of their own that we can look at them without constantly wondering what they mean for the marriage.
Jolanda Benvenuti’s editing allows the visit to feel like time spent somewhere instead of a quick succession of marital crises. The leisurely rhythm leaves space to consider an expression after the immediate interest of an exchange has passed. It also leaves a few stretches that feel merely prolonged, and the distinction matters in a film lasting 85 minutes. Renzo Rossellini’s music underlines the unease, sometimes too emphatically for performances that already make the trouble plain without needing much assistance from the score.
The screenplay, by Roberto Rossellini and Vitaliano Brancati, is strongest when it trusts small incompatibilities to be interesting. Neither Katherine nor Alex has to be made monstrous for their company to become difficult, and neither is simply there to deliver a speech about marriage. The strain comes from watching two people whose habits no longer fit comfortably together. At times, though, the connection between the surrounding sights and their private troubles becomes too insistent; we would rather be left to decide what matters to them.
Marriage dramas often arrange their quarrels so that we can award points, identify the decisive offence and wait for somebody to apologise. This one is interested in the daily difficulty of staying together when neither person seems able to make the other happy. Its force comes from the attention paid to both of them, including the one we find less sympathetic at any given moment. That is why we would return to it despite the occasional impatience. Choose it when both of you can bear an evening with a couple who might prefer separate rooms.
