VIAGGIO IN ITALIA

The Joyces, played by Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, are an English couple who have gone to Italy to sell a recently inherited property near Naples. There’s a coolness in their relationship and aspects of Naples add to the strain. She remembers a poet who loved her and died in the war; he idles on Capri, flirting with women but drawing back from adultery; she tours the museums of Naples and Pompeii, immersing herself in the Neapolitan fascination with the dead and noticing how many women are pregnant; with her, he’s sarcastic; with him, she’s critical. This deceptively simple tale of a bored couple traveling to Italy is transformed by Roberto Rossellini into a passionate story of cruelty and cynicism as their marriage disintegrates around them.