AN ATHEIST'S GUIDE TO THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS: Roberto Rossellini's EUROPA '51 (1952, co-wri & dir by Roberto Rossellini, w/Ingrid Bergman, Giulietta Masina, 109mns, Italy)

This writer was a few minutes into this movie thinking it would be their least favorite Bergman & Rossellini collaboration. This writer ended the movie feeling it was the best.

Wealthy ex-pat Americans Irene (Bergman) and George Gerard, living in Rome, experience the devastating loss of their only child, Michel. George decides it's best to soldier on as things were. Irene goes on a spiritual journey leading to her eventual institutionalization in a sanitarium.

Make no mistake, EUROPA '51 is as brutal and unrelenting as Lars Von Trier's BREAKING THE WAVES, and just as spiritual.

The first scene, an extended dinner party at the Gerards' Rome apartment where the Gerards ignore their son's repeated pleas for attention and love in favor of entertaining their guests, ends in tragedy.

The relative awkwardness and compression of this set-up is what made this writer feel that maybe this movie wouldn't work like Bergman and Rossellini's STROMBOLI and JOURNEY TO ITALY.

Very rarely has a character arc been this powerful and brilliant. Ingrid Bergman’s performance as Irene is moving beyond words.

But the unexpected turn of Irene going out into the world becomes a powerful journey. First, she helps a poor family pay medical bills, then aids a single mother with six children (NIGHTS OF CABIRIA and LA STRADA star Giulietta Masina!), cares for a sex worker dying of tuberculosis, and finally prevents a possible patricide by encouraging a local teen thief to turn himself in.

Bit by bit, the selfish materialistic Irene of the opening scene looks outward, sees the suffering of others, and commits her life to being of service. And in this commitment finds meaning.

At the same time, her increasing absences from home and bizarre (to her family) behavior of working in a factory for a day or letting a wanted criminal escape into the night singles her out as needing psychiatric treatment. Why isn't she hostessing anymore? Why isn't she conforming to the life of a wife of an American businessman? Why is she spending all her time with the "dregs" of society?

Giulietta Masina, star of Fellini’s LA STRADA and NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, is all unbridled energy here.

The acute pain of the movie is the dramatic irony of knowing that Irene is gaining her soul in her life of service and equally knowing that the "experts" of society who judge her have it all wrong. The police, doctors, priests (!) all think she has mental health issues. In fact, in a not too subtle way, we see it is the experts, the authority figures, the husbands of society who are aiding in its destruction. Too reliant on science, theories, an insistence on conformity, they have no ability to understand the role spirituality and selflessness can play in rehabilitation, reintegration, renengagement with existence.

Rossellini is a fascinating moviemaker who has now vaulted to the top ranks of this writer's favorites. Often considered one of the fathers of Italian neorealism (along with BICYCLE THIEVES' Vittorio De Sica), Rossellini was NOT a practicing Catholic nor even a believer in God. He WAS deeply moved by Christian ideals as he understood them. And he felt their lack in contemporary post World War II society.

This positions Rossellini in an important space. Agnostics and athiests probably know only too well how outwardly religious people judge them. And yet agnostics and atheists often devote their life to civic service, social acts, empirically good actions and are more actively 'Christian' than so-called practicing 'Christians'.

Irene, in the context of the movie, seems to voice this as well. She rejects the notion that she wants to be a saint or is moved to help others by some self-aggrandizing thought that she is doing the work of God. She simply does it, without judgement, because it restores her sense of shared humanity and use.

You can see where this is going…

The movie is quite politically astute in showing that Irene's motivations are humanist; they transcend political ideology. Surrounded by a capitalist husband and a communist lover (the affiar is is not explicitly spelled out) at the beginning of the movie, Irene eventually rejects them both for her own idiosyncratic path.

And there is an exquisite pain in the final movement of the movie when Irene is institutionalized. This writer froze with phobia at the thought of being committed without consent. Irene seems to accept it with an equanimity and calm that could only be borne by a spiritually enlightened and centered soul. Her calm is awe-inspiring.

There are several acts of grace in the final passages of the movie that brought this writer to tears. In moments of probably too infrequent clarity, this writer senses the most important thing in life is service to others.

Movies like EUROPA '51 reinforce this with a power that is overwhelming.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club.

(For another take on Europa ‘51, check out our other entry written by Patrick McElroy: https://www.secretmovieclub.com/blog/europa-51)