Woman of Rome

Woman of Rome, contrary to the Brattle's poor-taste ads, is no frolicking bedroom comedy. It is of the school of Italian neo-realism which proclaims that this is the worst of all possible worlds, and with Ecclesiastes that the greatest disaster in a man's life is the day that he is born. The film, and Alberto Moravia's novel from which it was drawn, reflect an uncompromising disgust for man and his works. Love, friendship, honesty, are all shams, and everyone, whether by his will or no, is doomed to a mire of depravity and frustration.

Painting an unmelting, bleak, cynical portrait of the road to prostitution, the plot involves a girl whose mother was early gotten with child and was left by her lover to a life of menial toil. The mother wants her child to have a "better life," ease and riches, etc. She sets her buxom daughter up as an artist's model with hopes that she will make "connections." The daughter is picked up by a chauffeur on his day off and has a very earnest affair with him, finally becoming engaged. While he is out of town, a fellow-model persuades her to accompany her on a little "trip." She is seduced by a high-ranking Fascist official who loves her but is married. Overcome, with guilt, she shortly finds out that her supposed fiance is likewise married and in mixed guilt and rage, takes the easiest course. At length our fair heroine falls in love with a customer, a well-educated anti-Fascist and she is to bear him a child. This affair ends in bleak and bloody despair. She wanders off into the darkness, saying that she will devote her life to her child, a sort of circular statement connecting with the words her mother spoke to her, implying that this is the circle of life and always will be.

Skillfully acted and directed, Woman of Rome fails as a work of art because there is no possibility of redemption, nothing beautiful or significant in this view of life. Evil is inevitable, flowing from circumstance and irresistable human weakness, and thus it means nothing. A homily of continued and undeserved misfortune seems morally and aesthetically unsatisfying. Instead of being tragic, it is merely "too bad." One does demand from any work of art that it have moral signifigance, that hope has not died with the demise of God in Western culture. The attitudes of despair and amorality reflected here are understandable values that Europe experienced after the war.

Although this film is in many ways unsatisfying, it is surely more than competent. Gina Lollobrigida is of course most convincing as the temptress and Daniel Gelin and Raymond Pellegrin are more than adequate as her various lovers. The photography is excellent.

Playing with it is a pleasant little avant garde short embodying scenes from the life of London's working class, accompanied by English popular songs.