Season 6, Episode 27 (#180):

Jim (00:00.112)
Pre-roll sounds legit.

Lionel (00:05.612)
like we know what we're doing.

Lionel (00:12.855)
Is this pre-roll?

Jim (00:18.082)
It's happening. It's on.

Lionel (00:19.758)
Ladies and gentlemen will be landing any moment now as soon as I can figure out the fucking wheels

Jim (00:28.58)
That's right.

Lionel (00:29.408)
Is it this button? Hey, sad.

I

Jim (00:36.29)
You

All right.

Lionel (00:41.144)
Are we rolling?

Jim (00:41.582)
Now we're going to start. We're starting right now. Here we go.

Jim (01:15.344)
So I don't really talk to anybody anymore and I don't meet people, but I think when I do, I'm going to substitute the words, instead of saying have a nice day, think I'm going to say, don't forget to like and subscribe. Ring the bell.

Lionel (01:29.218)
Ring the bell.

But it's really long, we have to boil it down to some pithy frit. please. When this is all gone, and it'll be gone soon. You saw that thing on the internet, Postmiron Jukebox did a song called When That Man Is Dead and Gone, and it became a huge, for reasons we will not discuss. But when this whole YouTube culture is dead and gone.

Jim (01:36.204)
smash that button

Jim (01:41.444)
What?

Jim (01:51.811)
yes.

Right, I know. Yeah.

Lionel (02:02.252)
not a tear will be shed. But I digress.

Jim (02:06.756)
Yes, we we've delved into Well, I don't know that it was I mean, I don't know there was a bad decision, but it was It was difficult. It was a challenge So we vittorio disica italian director Vittorio disica, he

Lionel (02:11.862)
I made a very bad decision. I made an off the cuff decision that led to.

Lionel (02:20.92)
It was a challenge.

Lionel (02:26.806)
Victor, yeah.

Jim (02:36.832)
Let's see, actually, I don't know when he first started making movies. Charming looking guy. But his last movie was in 1976. And the first film that we saw that it was the second one that I watched, but it was the earliest one was in 1946. But I know that he had been making movies before then. He started making movies. Good Lord, 19.

He was in a movie in 1917.

But yeah, 1928, 1932.

Lionel (03:14.892)
He debuted as a director in 1940.

Jim (03:20.308)
Okay, so was he an actor before then? Like in the silent films?

Lionel (03:22.7)
Yeah, he was. seems like, well, theater, was, was strikingly handsome and, he was a theater actor. you guys can read the Wikipedia page too. but

Jim (03:34.392)
Yeah, grew up in Naples, started out as an office clerk.

Yeah. Increasingly drawn toward acting, made his screen debut when he was in his teens, joining a stage company in 1923. But in late 1920s, he was a successful matinee idol of the Italian theater and repeated that achievement in Italian movies, light comedies. Light comedies, Lionel. He turned to directing in 1940, making comedies in a similar vein.

But with his fifth film, the children are watching us.

Hmm. He revealed hitherto unsuspected depths and an extraordinary sensitive touch with actors, especially children. It was the first film he made with the writer Cesare Zavattini with whom he would subsequently make Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves. Heartbreaking studies of poverty in post-war Italy, which won special Oscars before the foreign film category was officially established.

after the box office disaster of Umberto D, a relentlessly bleak study of the problems of old age, he returned to directing lighter work appearing in front of the camera more frequently. yeah, so apparently we watched a hit and a flop and I can't tell you why one was a hit and one was a flop to save my life. I have, yeah, I've seen Bicycle Thieves.

Lionel (05:02.796)
And you've seen bicycle thieves, right? Cause that's the classic. And that's the one that probably, most people have seen is bicycle thieves. and bicycle thieves is what bicycle thieves is like 47, I think, 48. Right. So what happened was Jim and I were, were thrashing around for a topic for our next, episode.

Jim (05:11.192)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim (05:18.096)
Bicycle Thieves was 48. Shoeshine was 46. Yeah.

Lionel (05:32.631)
And I just randomly went to the Criterion channel and said, Hey, you know, I'm just going to pick two because both Jim and I have a, a subscription to the Criterion channel. And I just said, I'm just going to pick two films by somebody I haven't explored. I picked Victoria De Sica, which is like picking Bellatar and say, let's check this guy out. Let's see what's going on. Sam Peck and Paul wild bunch. That sounds like fun. Wild bunch. It's like,

Jim (05:55.44)
This will be a fun.

Lionel (06:00.972)
Mikhail's Navy, you know? And so I said, let's watch Umberto Di and Shoeshine. And then I also asked Jim to watch a little piece of a film that I'd been watching, Italian, which was Federico Fellini's Eight and a Half, which was a massive hit, a very influential film on a lot of people. And that's all, I'm just gonna let.

Jim (06:23.077)
Yes.

Lionel (06:27.862)
you take the lead on this, Jim, what you think about these three and what you took away from them. just to set the stage for if anybody's actually listening to this, Vittorio De Sica is considered one of the classic guys of the Italian post-World War II neorealist cinema is how it's described. And so the hallmarks of neorealist cinema is you're not necessarily using professional actors.

Jim (06:29.549)
Okay.

Jim (06:48.971)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (06:57.166)
It's not fancy. It's not, you know, it's supposed to be, I hate the adjective, gritty, but it's supposed to be about common people, know, the life of the every man.

Jim (07:10.254)
Real people, yeah, real people, not glamorous. Not glamorous.

Lionel (07:15.692)
Not glamorous, not, but anyway, that's the interesting thing. It ain't eight and a half, and we'll get to that. Okay, so go ahead. What do you think? What struck you most about these films?

Jim (07:23.386)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim (07:28.385)
what did I think? Well, I watched Umberto D first and

Lionel (07:36.408)
So did I. Yeah.

Jim (07:38.114)
In some ways, think it was a more, it was the more artistic film of the two. You could see that it was made another decade later than Shoeshine. Shoeshine, in some ways,

Lionel (07:51.116)
No, for six years later.

Jim (07:55.792)
Let me, is this right?

Lionel (07:57.007)
46 to 52. Umberto F-

Jim (08:00.002)
Oh, 46 to 58, you're right, just six years later. Yeah, you're right. thought it was 42 to 52, yeah. And it just has greater, it has just kind of greater depth of field. the scenes have a different sense in terms of color. They're both in black and white, but there's sort of a, I don't know, it's like a different palette. The story is about a,

Lionel (08:02.56)
Shoe shine is 46, and better D is 52. But still, six years. Six years is a long time.

Jim (08:30.64)
an older man, probably somebody my age. mean, that was Umberto D, who spent 30 years in civil service. And it begins with the pensioners riot or march, not a riot, a march where the pensioners are demanding more pay for their pensions because inflation is such that what they were offered doesn't keep up with a living, know, any way to maintain a living.

And then Umberto D, you're introduced to him and he's trying to pawn his watch or sell it to people that he's meeting in restaurant and then on the street and nobody wants to buy. And eventually he sells his watch to somebody who's panhandling. And then he heads back to the room that he's renting and his constant companion.

is his dog, Flike. Flike, F-L-I-K-E. don't know, did they say what his dog's name meant in the movie? Never. Flike, I think he said at one point something about energy or something like that, but Flike is an amazing dog. mean, they got an incredible, like a circus dog for this role. was fantastic as a character in this film.

And, you know, on one level, it's about a man and his dog, and that is heartwarming. But the movie then proceeds to crush Umberto D to more or less to dust under the weight of a kind of an uncaring world that has forgotten its elders, it doesn't really know how to care for the older generation.

Lionel (10:27.554)
And the older generation doesn't care for each other. I mean, nobody cares for anybody. The only person who cares for, I mean, sorry, I gotta jump in. And also who I thought was the most magnificent actor of that film was Maria. Maria was amazing. Maria's this, she's the maid in the apartment building where he lives, which is basically just a very large house owned by this.

Jim (10:30.124)
Yeah, they don't look out after each other. They don't let it look out for each other.

Yeah, no, you're right.

Jim (10:41.036)
Wonderful actress. Yep. Yeah.

Lionel (10:55.83)
woman who's sort of, anybody, the antagonist of the film, because she's kicking Humberto D out. There's more, couldn't care less, she sings opera and she has fancy friends and she has dinner parties and stuff like that and she's gonna kick Humberto D's ass out of the building. And Maria is sort of the scullery maid of this house. She sleeps on a cot in the hallway and she's, you know, what, 18?

Jim (10:59.376)
Mm-hmm.

onto the street, couldn't care.

Jim (11:25.836)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (11:25.87)
Magnificent just a magnificent face and and nobody's gonna see this because it's a podcast But what's this? You know usually when we say come here and take a look we go like this come here Come here. Take a look at this. She doesn't do that.

Jim (11:35.79)
Yeah.

That's right. Well, the hand is either sideways or turned up when we do it, but upside down, upside down for the yeah, like you're like a cat clawing.

Lionel (11:44.834)
And she claws, it's almost like a clawing thing. I just thought it was amazing, I thought it was so amazing lighting the newspaper to get rid of the ants. It's an amazing.

Jim (11:56.216)
Yes. Everything that she does in this movie is really wonderful. I I agree with you that she is far and away the main attraction when she's on camera. Yeah.

Lionel (12:07.062)
and striking the matches, like when she walks to the stove and you see this like patch above the stove with all these score marks on, and you're like, what's going on? She takes a match out and she strikes it to light the grill. Yeah, and it's just amazing. She's just so, and I found in general with both the films, you know, it's the women, you know, the women are the light in the films and she's the only one who cares about Umberto D.

Jim (12:13.178)
Looks like it's been clawed, yeah.

she skricks against that part of the wall. No, that was a great scene.

Jim (12:31.279)
Yeah.

Lionel (12:36.546)
She's the only person who cares.

Jim (12:37.168)
She is, I mean, not all the women in both of the films, but yeah.

Lionel (12:41.1)
No, the I'm not saying all the women, I'm saying any light that comes, you the major light that comes through is Maria. And the interesting thing about it is that he's not very nice to her.

Jim (12:56.046)
Yeah, no, he's just ordering her around.

Lionel (12:57.026)
He's a mystery. And that's interesting thing about Umberto D is that De Sica is not going easy on Umberto D. He's not making him a lovable person at all. Umberto D has sort of a quiet dignity, but you can tell he's kind of reserved and a, know, and a quiet guy and a thoughtful guy, but he, but he's not, but you never get any explanation of his internal state of mind really very rarely.

Jim (13:06.298)
Mm-mm.

Jim (13:18.403)
Yeah.

Lionel (13:26.924)
He's not terribly nice to Maria. He's not mean to her, but he's patriarchal. And I think that's maybe one of the things about the film is that he's old school. He's the old school father. his interaction with Maria when they talk to each other, you can tell that that's the thing. It's almost like the remains of the day. You think that he really does love her.

Jim (13:30.126)
Right.

Lionel (13:55.119)
and he really does care about her, but there's a certain formality that he wraps himself in that he can't say that. And I found that when I listened to their interactions of him talking to her, it's like, just tell her, be nice to her when she tells him she's pregnant. He's like, well, which guy is it? Is it the Florentine or the Naples guy? And he's not saying anything like, how are you gonna survive or are you scared?

Jim (14:17.038)
Yeah, yeah, Neapolitan or the.

Lionel (14:24.632)
How are you gonna, what's your plans?

Jim (14:26.958)
No, yeah, he just, he's like, he wants to make sure that one of them takes responsibility. and then in the end he says, you should choose the, you should choose the Naples, the Neapolitan. Yeah. Kick the flunting guy. And then, and she doesn't have that choice as it turns out, and he can't see that. At one point, it really becomes clear because he's looking desperately for his dog, for Flike, because Flike is.

Lionel (14:31.98)
He's an old dad.

The Neapolitan of course because De Sico is a Neapolitan. He says get rid of the kick the Florentine guy Which I thought was funny, but it but I kind of like that She has no choices

Jim (14:54.448)
has run off while he was in the hospital and he left Maria to take care of Flake and Flake meanwhile had run out the door. Now, it's not clear why he went to the hospital. It's not clear that he was sick. I noticed when he checked the thermometer, it was reading normal and they made a big point of showing you that. Right? Do you know when he said he had a fever? He had 37 in Celsius. That's normal. That's like,

Basically 98.6. So in Fahrenheit. So it's weird. Like he needed to get out of there or he, it seemed like people really enjoyed like staying with the nuns in the big hall. It was this very strange kind of scene. Like they kept talking about how great it was. Yeah. They got fed really well. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Lionel (15:40.088)
Will they get fed?

Lionel (15:44.623)
Yeah. And I love that guy in the bed next to him. Boy, the, the, the, the classic Italian, the Southern Italian from central casting. Oh, they're great here. Yeah. Here. Ask for a rosary. Come on. Ask for a rosary. They'll love it. Oh my God. It's so funny.

Jim (15:50.042)
There, the missing tooth.

Jim (15:58.702)
That's right, ask for Rosary. She's gonna give you something special. I know it was like a, it was like a kind of a scam that they were running. But meanwhile, he had basically, yeah, I suppose. But the main thing.

Lionel (16:07.182)
but a gentle scam, but a gentle, I mean, that's the whole point in the Seek of Films is that there's really nothing, it's not horrible. It's not some grim, brutalist movie. Everything does have a slight soft edge to it. It's more of a farce and it's more sort of like, yeah, this is just kind of screwed up, but you kind of just like work your way through it. And it's just.

Jim (16:32.045)
Well...

Lionel (16:33.014)
It's all these griffs and all these like making do's and stuff like the little indignities that people got to put up with.

Jim (16:38.52)
I don't really know it. not sure that I, I mean, right? No, no big crimes ever happen in either of these films. But people are punished. People are punished very severely for small, for small crimes. And it really does revolve around the evils of money. And maybe vanity. mean, obviously the landlady is a social climber. So, you know, the way from Umberto's eyes that we see her is.

Lionel (16:47.608)
Well, there's no sociopath.

Jim (17:05.391)
She needs to get him out of there because she needs to redecorate and have a grand living room so that she can entertain properly. Because she's really got her sights set on a different class of people and she can't have a, a lodger anymore because she's getting married. And Umberto can't accept that he's being kicked out. And there's never any discussion of, couldn't he rent someplace, some, somewhere else that would fit within his, within his budget, given his pension.

Because he's not, he is, he does have money coming in each month, but it, it's as if he kind of let, can't let go of certain trappings to make his life affordable. Because, you know, he goes out wearing a suit and he's walking his dog and yeah, go ahead. Yes.

Lionel (17:51.074)
Yeah, he's, he's, he's.

He's an unyielding character. Well, no, just think it's, I think you're, I think, and that's what makes the film really great because they don't turn him into a martyr. They don't turn him into a saint.

He's got his pride and he's got his reserve and he doesn't let it down. Even when you're, I mean, you're yelling at the screen, hey, why don't you just, can't you just hold Maria's hand? I mean, she's pregnant, she's got nowhere else to go. She knows she's gonna be thrown out. Wouldn't you just be, wouldn't you be really worried about her? And that, you heartbreaking line, why can't you go live with your family? Oh, my father will beat me.

Jim (18:25.913)
Yeah.

Jim (18:35.759)
Yeah.

Lionel (18:35.822)
You know, he's like, Yeah, okay. And like, that's accepted. That's like, that's the way it's gonna go down. And so there's nothing we can do about that. But yeah, just everybody. Everybody. Go ahead.

Jim (18:40.463)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (18:46.864)
Yeah, both of those characters that you care about and that aren't villains are just, they're just one step away from being destitute, know, being basically run over, you know, by this, yeah, this modern society, this modern Rome. And,

Lionel (19:09.59)
And also that society sets people against each other because a lot of the people he gets into arguments with are just as destitute as he is. That scene near the end where he wants to give the dog to the board, the dog boarding place. And it's just like they're, you know, they're separated by a very thin space. And that's the ultimate indignity of the system is that it sets these people against each other. It's not just that somebody has their foot on your throat.

Jim (19:12.675)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (19:20.75)
Yes. Yeah.

Jim (19:27.972)
Right.

Lionel (19:37.782)
It's that they make you hate the person next to you.

Jim (19:40.784)
And even worse, when he tries to away his dog, he's trying to give away his dog to the little girl that he met, that who knows the dog, who loves the dog. And the parent is like, why are you trying to give the dog away? Well, what does he say?

Lionel (19:49.336)
Daniela

Jim (20:03.453)
I can't take care of it anymore. And the mother says, well, that's obviously something wrong with the dog.

Lionel (20:09.26)
Yeah suspicion weariness and I love that whole thing getting onto the bus with a dog Can't bring the dog on the bus. I can't if it's before eight o'clock. What are you trying to tell me my job? Yeah, that's only for hunting dogs. He's hunting dog. What do you must be hunting something really small? He says I might have a gun in the brief It's it's actually it's actually a laugh out loud, but it's not a funny interchange it's really interesting because you always get this feeling that everybody's like

Jim (20:11.674)
Yeah.

Jim (20:17.358)
Right. We're a hunting dog, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Right.

Jim (20:34.349)
No.

Lionel (20:38.958)
There and I think this is very much sort of like a Italian European thing like there's just this expected give-and-take on everything like nothing straightforward I Don't know if it's I don't know if it's suspicious I think I think there's just this sort of presumed thing that you just got a you got up you you got a haze somebody you got a you got a You got to rattle people. You can't let people just you can't accept anything at first

Jim (20:48.622)
Everybody's suspicious of everyone. Like there's a scam being run somehow by everyone.

Lionel (21:08.278)
Everything has to be in the goat. Everything has to be haggled. And you got to give P you got to hassle people before you give it. And it's kind of humorous to a certain degree, because kind of pro forma, you get the feeling that they're sort of following a formula, you know, you only take 50,000 lira. No, I can't do it for you. Then you come back and stuff. It's, it's just kind of interesting. But it's, it's that it's this, it's just that constant thing of just constantly having to like,

Jim (21:08.496)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (21:38.286)
hassle each other all the time about everything.

Jim (21:40.89)
Yep. Yep.

And at the end, you know, it's upsetting, but at the end there's this sense that he's...

He's completely broken down and then maybe for the only time in the movie, he's living for the moment. He's living, he's in the moment with like, with his dog and it's in a beautiful park, but his, you know, but his prospects are super grim at that point. And then the movie ends. Finne, fine, hooray, great.

Lionel (22:03.682)
Yeah, in a beautiful park.

Lionel (22:17.486)
Yeah, great ones.

Jim (22:21.23)
And then, and that was when I wanted to, I wanted to throw something at your head, but, but fine. I went on, I went on and I watched shoes shine. I had to let a little time go by. Yeah.

Lionel (22:25.71)
Ha!

Which is actually six years earlier. Yeah, six years earlier, one of his first films.

Jim (22:35.32)
Yep. And shoeshine in some ways is a much darker film. That was a dark film. shoeshine I think is a much darker film. yeah.

Lionel (22:44.824)
Well, it ends poorly. Umberto D doesn't. Umberto D has sort of this kind of happy thing stapled onto the end of it.

Jim (22:53.004)
It's not, I don't think it is happy. mean, I, that was happy was not my sense of Umberto D in terms of the ending. thought it was absolutely tragic because the happy thing was that he was, he was finally fully present and kind with his dog. The dog literally rejects him at one point, you know, so there is great criticism of his character. And so then finally he's able to just be there with the dog.

Lionel (23:14.926)
Lionel (23:18.936)
There is.

Jim (23:22.832)
who is his constant companion.

Lionel (23:25.922)
And I think that's fascinating. You're sort of telling me what I was talking about before. It's just like, can't you just, can't you just be free with somebody? cause that's what you think of with Maria. It's just like, she obviously loves you, you know, and that whole thing about you got to study your grammar because they'll always take advantage of the ignorant. And that's why she has the paper and the pen and the ink pot on the table in the kitchen, cause she's trying to teach herself. She's trying to improve herself.

Jim (23:34.947)
Right.

Lionel (23:54.977)
And probably he was the inspiration for that. He was the one who, who, and so she looks up to him and she cares for him. And she's the only person who shows him any kindness. And you're like, Hey, Umberto, why don't you be, why don't you say something nice to her? You know, why don't you say something positive and uplifting to her? He's not, he can't, he's unyielding. And so guess the interesting thing about the ending of, Umberto D is that he finally yields a little bit. He just wants to play with the dog. Anyway.

Jim (23:55.088)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (24:01.242)
Yeah.

Jim (24:12.921)
No.

Jim (24:20.719)
Right.

Lionel (24:25.386)
SKUSYA or however it's called it's a great shoe shine which is SKUSYA

Jim (24:25.679)
Yes.

you

Lionel (24:33.42)
So basically, go ahead, you take the lead.

Jim (24:33.465)
Yes.

Again, again with the animal though. So an animal has a prominent role in both of these films. In this case, it is a horse, a beautiful horse. And it is about two shoeshine boys who are constantly being hassled by the police because their shoe shines without a license, but they are successful. They're making money. They're making money and they're saving up to buy a horse. A kind of...

Lionel (24:39.5)
Yeah.

Lionel (24:55.832)
they're successful. They're doing it. Yep.

Jim (25:04.784)
somewhat unrealistic animal to take care of on a limited budget, as is pointed out. But it starts with them riding this horse, riding two horses in the country where there's a stable. And they've been going out there to rent time to ride. And they are just in love with this one horse. And they want to own it.

because someone else might buy the horse if they don't. And even at one point they're upset that someone else is renting time on the horse. So this is their whole focus. And at some point they're drawn into a scheme by one of the two friends' brothers to just deliver some blankets to someone.

and they do that and then some men come in claiming to be police and they're paid a lot of money to leave and they're able to buy the horse but shortly after that there's an investigation and the woman who I didn't quite understand how it all went down but the woman who had like was being accused of trafficking illegal goods well maybe you can explain it better because

Lionel (26:24.206)
The fortune buying, so they, yeah, so what happens is that the two boys, one of them's Giuseppe and the other one is, I forgot the name of the other kid, and they're both great. They're both great. They're both great. They're both great. And one of them has a brother and the brother says, I got something going. And so the two shoeshine boys go to meet the brother and two compatriots in crime.

Jim (26:37.102)
Yes, the wonderful actors actually, yeah.

Lionel (26:49.698)
and they've got American blankets, because this is taking place during the American occupation. It takes place in Rome. It's taking place during the American occupation of Rome. And so they say, hey, take these blankets to this woman. She'll buy the blankets from you. You get your cut. And so they take the blankets, they go to the woman who's a fortune teller, they offer the blankets, they do this stupid negotiating thing where they argue back and forth, which seems completely robotic. And then as soon as she buys them,

The three guys show up, the three cops show up and, they, they pretend the three, the three criminals show up and they pretend they're cops and they, and they accuse her. Yeah. Their mom. And they accused the fortune teller of purchasing stolen goods and they tell the two kids to get lost. So it's obviously a setup the entire thing. but then the fortune teller woman, I, I D's the two shoes shine boys and gets them arrested.

Jim (27:24.292)
Yeah, they're like mafia. They're like mafia.

Lionel (27:44.525)
And things just go down from there. And then like the rest of the film all takes place in sort of this juvie penitentiary, which has definite echoes of like Piranesi's carceri. It's this magnificent interior shot. It looks like a Leonardo drawing. It's just this, it's impossible to explain. It's just this long haul and at the end of it, there's this balcony.

Jim (27:47.15)
Yeah.

Jim (28:01.123)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (28:10.274)
way up on the thing and there's a spiral iron staircase that goes up to the balcony. There's just all kinds of, you could tell that De Sica just loved that space. He loved that space. And it's all about surviving in juvie and how, to make a very long story short, how eventually the hand of fate turns the brothers against each other, the two shoeshine boys against each other.

Jim (28:37.402)
Yeah, now it's Giuseppe and is it Pasquale or is it Raffaele? Pasquale, yeah, are the two friends. the main characters really is, I mean, the main point of it is their friendship and the unfairness of being thrown into prison for really not doing anything. They knew, I think they got a sense that it was something up, but it was.

Lionel (28:42.606)
Pascual. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim (29:02.458)
They were delivering blankets, right? I guess I didn't get the sense of like, what was the big deal about American blankets? But they must have been stolen from the army. Is that what you're saying? Yeah.

Lionel (29:11.67)
Sure. Yeah. They probably stole blankets, but all they're being asked to was to deliver these blankets and get some money for them, which is pretty easy to, to explain your way out of. But then it appears that the fortune teller lady who was the Mark had some high connections and she manages to get them arrested. It gets the shoeshine boys arrested. And then, then there's just all these interactions that take place in this juvie prison.

Jim (29:29.313)
Right, with the mob.

Lionel (29:40.43)
of new people coming in and all the interactions between all the people. It'd take too long to explain it all.

Jim (29:46.916)
And it's so bleak that they're really locking them into these awful little like cement cells with nothing to sleep on. it is, I mean, it's definitely a study in sort of the inhumanity of how they dealt with poor children in Italy at the time.

Lionel (30:05.966)
I I don't see, I don't see this, I mean, I've seen much bleaker films about incarceration. There's still friendships. Yeah, they're kids, but there's still friendships and they still have fun and there's still jokes and they still talk.

Jim (30:13.045)
These are kids.

Jim (30:18.744)
Well, I think that's a main point of it is that the kids are able to take this awful situation and make it a little less than totally unbearable. yes, but he's being very sarcastic. He's being very sarcastic. The food is awful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lionel (30:25.878)
It's a paradise, as I think Pasquale says. You get fed, yeah, you get fed, you get a movie, you get a place to sleep. It's a paradise. It's not horrible. I mean, it's not like they're being beaten daily. But it's still, it's not great. But the real part of the real focus of the film is that the hand of fate.

Jim (30:39.536)
No, it's not Oliver Twist level terrible, but it is it's close. Yeah. No.

Lionel (30:54.362)
slowly turns these two genuine friends against each other with disastrous results. And they start betraying each other and other people betray them. And just like in, yeah.

Jim (30:59.269)
Yeah.

Jim (31:05.548)
And hilarity ensues, right? The thing is, though, like in some films, and maybe I'm just used to this, maybe this is the difficult thing about these movies by De Sica is that

as an American of this age, you expect there to be an uptick somewhere, right? Their fortunes should at least turn around at some point. And it's just this gradual descent into oblivion that in both of these, that is...

Lionel (31:49.871)
It's not, but I've watched other things that are far harder to watch that even, but there is, there is a fundamental humanity to the entire thing. And there's a fundamental humor throughout it. And, and it's not, it's not humorless. It's not airless. There's always a sense of humanity. And again, she plays a much smaller role in the film, but to me, not over at law.

Jim (31:54.447)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (32:09.028)
No.

Lionel (32:18.222)
was just a shining light in Shushen. The little girl who loves Giuseppe and she is just unbelievable. She's at that perfect age, that perfect age when she's wearing big girl clothes, but she's still, she's like three and a half feet tall and she's just wonderful. And she has, she has.

Jim (32:20.6)
Wait, Non-Arela. yes, yes. Who was that?

Jim (32:39.428)
Yeah. Yeah. Just skinny legs. I can't find her in the...

Jim (32:50.766)
No, the palmist, no, Maria Campi was the fortune teller. You're right, was non-Aurel, there it is, Anna Pedoni. Anna Pedoni was fantastic. Yeah, really good.

Lionel (33:02.654)
Fabulous. A ray of sunshine. She's the only one who really cared about them. Because remember, the mother comes by, the mother beats up the kid for breaking the, you know, she gets angry with her son, one of the shoeshine boys, the mom comes to the prison and she says, how could you do this? And he said, we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know they were still in blankets. says, I don't care what the blankets, you.

Jim (33:07.876)
And I want to find the.

Jim (33:21.646)
You're a rat.

Yeah.

Lionel (33:27.798)
You, you ratted on the mafia guy. How could you possibly do this? We'll never live this down. It's just like, my God.

Jim (33:30.938)
How could you rat? Yeah. The one visit, one visit he, Giuseppe gets and it's like, you rat. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. From the mother. So the woman who played Maria in Umberto D was the actresses Maria Piacosilio. And yeah, I don't know if she went on to do anything. I'll find out, but that may have been her only.

Lionel (33:38.518)
Yeah, yeah, the mother trance on.

Lionel (33:53.026)
magnificent.

Jim (34:00.76)
No, she was in three other films.

Lionel (34:05.644)
Yeah, magnificent really great Okay, okay same here

Jim (34:06.948)
Yeah, I need a break. I'll be right back. I'm going to grab another beer and take care of some things and I'll be right back.

And Scott, if you're there. we have a couple of people in the chat. We're just taking a personal break. We'll be right back. Obviously, this will be edited out. We're talking about two films by Vittorio De Sica, Shoeshine, and Umberto D., if you want to look those up.

Jim (36:24.258)
Okay, we are back. We Sarah and Scott in the chat.

Sarah and Scott are in the chat.

Lionel (36:33.934)
Okay, what do they have to say?

Jim (36:37.114)
They're just saying hi. Scott's grabbing a beer. So.

Lionel (36:38.477)
Bye.

Jim (36:44.877)
Something came to me just just now I was thinking about this about Humberto Di Di go back there for a second Maria the character Maria the actress Maria Pied Castillo

She has something that I don't think any of the other actors in both films have. And she has this precision of blocking. In acting, one of the tricky things to do is to move with precision and intention according to the direction, right? According to the director. And either she had worked in a kitchen exactly like this and done all of the same things.

Lionel (37:24.984)
Yeah.

Jim (37:27.29)
But if you go back and watch that, the scenes where she is, that she's in, all of her actions are not just precise, but with a kind of attitude of, there's like this kind of wistful attitude she has, even when she goes and opens the windows and looks to see if the soldier is outside, you know, and sneaks into his room when she thinks that Umberto is sleeping. Everything she does.

Lionel (37:51.65)
Yeah. But she has to see the soldier. Yeah.

Jim (37:55.49)
every single action she takes is done sort of so perfectly. And the actor who plays Umberto, Dee, has some of this too, in terms of the way in which he takes off his coat. But she was just remarkable on screen. And it's a little disheartening to see that she only ever did three more pictures.

Lionel (38:18.542)
No, she did an enormous number of films. If you look up Maria Piacillia on Wikipedia, she appeared in like 30 films. mean, they may not be.

Jim (38:23.346)
she did?

Jim (38:27.288)
36 films. Great. That's good because I was just amazed by her. Absolutely amazed by her.

Lionel (38:33.186)
De Sica says she was the lucky charm.

Jim (38:36.944)
Hmm

Lionel (38:37.358)
She was a lucky charm in his films. There's also another quote I really want to get out there, which is, which one? Shoeshine, this quote on Wikipedia on Shoeshine from Orson Welles. Orson Welles said of Shoeshine, quote, what De Sica can do, that I can't do. I ran his Shoeshine again recently and the camera disappeared, the screen disappeared, it was just life.

Jim (38:58.16)
Hmm.

Jim (39:07.588)
Wow.

Lionel (39:07.596)
What a great quote from a master. I you know, from a master, just, think it's a, it's a, it's a great thing, but so circling back.

Jim (39:11.161)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim (39:19.139)
Yeah.

Lionel (39:21.451)
It's opera.

Jim (39:23.576)
It is and it's tragedy, both tragedy. It's good to know that it'd be better to know that going into it. So if any of our listener wants to watch these films, just know. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it is.

Lionel (39:26.584)
Well, it's opera.

Lionel (39:36.0)
It's Pagliacci. It doesn't, there's like, like you said, it's like the count of money Chris took, except he never gets out of the, he never gets out of the castle at Chateau d'If. He just dies there.

Jim (39:47.204)
That's right. He meets the priest, his mentor, and they plan an escape and it fails. And that's not the end. And then they get old and die in the castle. So yeah, it is unflinching and merciless. Bye.

Lionel (39:51.79)
the priest, and they both die.

Right. Fide.

Lionel (40:14.614)
It's beautiful. It's opera because you know, and also what's interesting is how sound sound does count for a lot with his stuff too, because, in Umberto D there's the, the, electric tram going past his window. There's the bells. In fact, the whole movie begins with bells. Remember that the bells before the protest, the pension protest, there's bells. There's the tick.

Jim (40:15.628)
It's beautiful. Yeah.

Jim (40:35.728)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (40:40.802)
Yeah.

Lionel (40:41.71)
ticking of the clock. It really reminded me a lot of Tokyo Story. In some ways, you have a director who has done funny, funny, funny films and who actually has a long career in movie making up to that point. And then all of a sudden they make these very quiet films about common people in desperate situations. And people sort of like the father in Tokyo Story, you know, he's unyielding.

Jim (40:47.396)
Yes.

Lionel (41:10.092)
He's unyielding, he's an older generation and there's a certain wall between him and everybody around him. The famous line in Tokyo stories when the mother dies, he says, I didn't know she was gonna die, maybe I should have been nicer to her.

Jim (41:26.052)
Yeah, I think I should have been nicer. Yeah. Your wife is dead. You're going to be lonely. the final, the final lines. Yeah.

Lionel (41:29.058)
Ha ha ha!

Lionel (41:34.35)
yeah, no So he's like an umberto d except his his prospects are not as bleak because he has a lot of children That's the thing about umberto d is that with umberto and umberto d you know nothing about him You know, all you know is that he yeah, he's a pen

Jim (41:43.268)
Yes, and he has a place to live.

Jim (41:50.018)
No, except that he was a pensioner. He's a civil servant, you know.

Lionel (41:54.681)
civil servant for 30 years. That's all you know. You know nothing else about him really.

Jim (41:57.133)
Mm-hmm. You get a sense that like

The people that he worked with don't especially love him. Right? I mean, there is definitely a sense of like, they're happy to see him just in like, I used to work with you, but they doesn't, he has no strong friendships or ties with anyone. And he refuses to create a strong tie with Maria, who is super great with him. Right? Obviously. And this is all the stuff that you said. So yeah, there is, it is a critique, I suppose.

Lionel (42:30.2)
Right, he's not a martyr. He's not a martyr at all. He doesn't deserve it.

Jim (42:30.796)
of a certain of a certain kind of person. Yeah. But he doesn't deserve it either. He doesn't deserve, you know, the way things end up going at all.

Lionel (42:39.288)
But it's not some horrible, it's not some horrible twisted, you know, it's not perverse. It's just the way things go. And so, in Obertra D, there is opera, literally, with the landlady singing. They're always singing opera, they're singing arias and things like that. in, you know, I mean, the problem is, if you do step away from it, it's easy to get too in love with these things. And if you do step away from it a bit, it's just like,

Jim (42:53.422)
Yes, yes.

Lionel (43:08.5)
Okay. A guy and his dog and, you know, there's the honest scullery made and two kids want to buy a horse and they turn on each other and there's the packages and there's the, you know, it, it's funny. Cause if you just look at it objectively from a distance, like these are really corny films. These are corny 1940s, 1950 films. Like it's a wonderful life. It's just like corny film. Right.

Jim (43:12.666)
Two kids and a horse. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim (43:30.96)
Yeah.

Right, except that it isn't, right? It's absolutely not.

Lionel (43:39.181)
And it's not because, you know, the interesting thing and that everybody talks about the Seiko, which is, know, the, the, the, the common people being used as actors and, know, not the lavish sets, but he has an eye. You can tell that all those scenes within that penitentiary were very carefully done.

Jim (43:58.991)
yes. yes.

Lionel (43:59.791)
There's a lot of architecture. There's a lot of framing of things and he's really thinking intentionally about it And he's picking people who could really fill the screen. Those two boys were amazing. In fact, all of them were They're all really good

Jim (44:10.704)
Yeah, they're incredible, both of them. All the actors that he had. I'm picking out Maria, especially because I just thought she really stole the screen. I, you yeah, they were all amazing. And actually it reminds me of the movie that you recommended also on top of these, which was light and, what is it? Light to visual, something like that, of light. And which is.

Lionel (44:35.094)
of visions of light.

Jim (44:38.67)
which was basically a documentary about, or I don't even know what it was. It was like a cinematographer, but it was, yeah, it was about cameramen. was about the art of the cameramen, aside from the director and aside from the actors and just looking at the contributions that cameramen have made to cinema. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that was really enlightening.

Lionel (44:43.022)
Cinematographers it's about cinematography, right?

Lionel (44:57.324)
the DPS, the directors of photography. Yeah. And that's by the way, for every, for anybody who's listening, that's free on the internet archive. If you look up visions, if you go to the internet archive,

Jim (45:11.086)
Sarah says that she saw it actually. But yeah.

Lionel (45:14.838)
Magnet, mean it's really good. Go ahead. You're saying I'm

Jim (45:19.862)
No, no, I just want to point out that Sarah just said I saw visions of light. So yeah, it's not so obscure that can't find it. But you're right, Lionel. only it only is on the archives, the Internet archives. Yeah, maybe it's somewhere else.

Lionel (45:28.27)
I don't know. I don't know, but it's there. That's how I found, I found out because by the way, of course, in my head comes from Foyerton nowadays. And he, and he put a link to the internet archive to see visions of light. Now, the interesting thing that he points out about visions of light, which is absolutely true, is that it's very Hollywood focused and it's very much about specific cinematographers that they could get interviews with. So it's.

Jim (45:33.264)
For your turn, right

Lionel (45:56.607)
It is not a representative, but it is a magnificent. It's just you see these shots you see in and and the interviews with the cinematographers are not particularly revelatory in any way, but just when you see these shots one after another, you're just my God, what a legacy.

Jim (45:57.306)
True. Yeah, it's not everything.

Jim (46:16.282)
Well, they are pointing out aspects of the way things are are captured and lit that I wouldn't have seen if they hadn't. And one of the movies that comes up in Visions of Light is Days of Heaven with Richard Gere. And I I did watch that. Yeah. I think the story and the script writing.

Lionel (46:35.598)
Did you watch that? What do you think?

Jim (46:45.016)
Well, the script writing I thought was kind of appallingly bad, but every scene is gorgeous. Every scene, it felt like Malik couldn't be bothered to write a script and just said to the actors, say whatever you think you would say in this situation. And they did, you know, with 1977, you know, accents and also like colloquialisms that couldn't possibly exist.

Lionel (46:51.726)
It's just gorgeous.

Lionel (47:04.942)
Cut! We're good!

Jim (47:13.304)
at the time that the film was taking place. So that seemed to be the last thing on Malek's mind, but.

Lionel (47:18.636)
Well, fortunately, there's only like about like a total of like 200 words of dialogue in the entire movie.

Jim (47:22.956)
Yeah, well, there is a kind of a narration going on from the. Yeah.

Lionel (47:26.52)
Well, there's a voiceover from the woman, which I sense got under your skin, but many people worship that.

Jim (47:31.618)
No, no, I thought actually that that was a really cool part of it. I thought that was a really amazing part of it. It was more the the pseudo brother sister dialogue and interaction that was going on the way whatever. First of all, Richard Gere looked like he had always just stepped out of a hair salon. And that was like very distracting. I'm like, what kind of product did you find in the cornfield? You know, as you got off the that

Lionel (47:43.501)
Yeah.

Lionel (48:00.281)
Is there like a wall? Is there like a super center nearby?

Jim (48:03.46)
you're riding on the top of a train, right? And there's no soot anywhere. You're like, perfectly scrubbed and you're just like, freshly out of the salon. I just found that to be bizarre.

Lionel (48:14.478)
But it has that, like that whole train scene is amazing. Cause you've got what? Like 200 people, the trains pulling away. People are jumping on the train as it's pulled. I mean, my God, just to make that shot work. It's sort of like that whole David Lean thing, like Lawrence of Arabia or the bridge over the river Kwai. We got, we got 250 extras. Okay. Rolling. It's like, my God, how do they make this happen?

Jim (48:18.169)
Yeah.

Jim (48:24.708)
yeah.

Yeah, no,

Jim (48:32.921)
Yeah.

Jim (48:37.871)
it.

It is, you know, mean, Terrence Malick is a genius and it is really beautiful. And Brooke Adams plays Abby. Now Brooke Adams really does look like she's, you know, been on top of a train and been working in the court field for some reason though. Richard Gere just, you know, looks like he came out of makeup. So, Sam Shepard is kind of, you know, attractively rugged. He works out. He's fine.

Lionel (48:57.614)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (49:08.162)
Now, okay, now we got to deal with the elephant in the room here. Eight and a half. Now we jump from 1952 to 1963. We jump from Vittorio De Sica to Federico. What did you think of eight and a half?

Jim (49:12.1)
What's that? yeah, eight and a half. So

Jim (49:25.348)
Well, didn't, I did not, like you, didn't watch it all the way through. Like you were saying, in many ways, yeah. I mean, I watched the first 37 minutes of eight and a half, because that's all the time I, we were talking about, we're dealing with five films this week, right? So, and usually we just talk about two. I,

Lionel (49:29.004)
I didn't watch it all the way through either.

Jim (49:47.864)
I think it's beautiful and really funny. mean, really funny. It is a very meta picture at a time where there weren't a lot of meta pictures, which is basically it's confessions of Fellini and his insecurity around his art and his life, you know, and getting older. As told through the percentage of Marcello Mastroianni, yeah.

Lionel (50:14.442)
I gotta ask you something. Isn't Marcella Mastriano the most beautiful human being? I mean, I...

Jim (50:20.208)
at points he is and at points he's looking so worn down. Right at the beginning when he's in the doctor, when he comes up and he looks at himself in the mirror and they've clearly painted on like dark spots under his eyes. I mean he looks rough in that, no, his, later with the fedora on and his cape and everything else, the maestro outfit, yeah. he's wonderful. It's because he's the way he moves, you know.

Lionel (50:36.408)
But.

Lionel (50:40.716)
and the glasses and my God, but, but he's just an incredibly handsome guy. And the thing I thought was amazing about that scene that you mentioned when he wakes up from his dream and all the doctors are taking his blood pressure and ask him all these questions and he walks into the bathroom and he's got like the robe hanging off like from one arm. And what I loved most is all of sudden the clock, like a alarm bell goes like a brrrr

Jim (50:48.688)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (50:56.239)
Yeah.

Jim (51:02.713)
Yeah.

Lionel (51:10.188)
He just sort of like this when he hears it. It was so you.

Jim (51:11.822)
Yeah, yeah, it's just like, I couldn't tell them it was the phone or the alarm or what something was like.

Lionel (51:17.718)
No, but it's just, he just sort of crumples a little bit. He's like, I have to deal with this. It was so human, but.

Jim (51:20.398)
Yeah. I have to deal with this. I know. And he so clearly doesn't want to deal with anything. He's worn out.

Lionel (51:28.254)
Anything. Anything. And these exquisitely beautiful women.

Jim (51:35.748)
throwing themselves at him because they want to be in his movies because it's like it's a career. It's clearly Fellini, right? It's clearly and I love there was a great line in the doctor's office where the one's one of the people leans over and says, you're making another movie about how life is pointless and and depressing. Which was like

Lionel (51:43.457)
yeah.

Lionel (51:57.517)
I love that guy. The guy who's constantly the guy who's constantly talking and like semiotic nonsense all the time. He's like, you can't find the symbols. The symbols represent the culture and decay, but the decay is fragmented.

Jim (52:03.954)
no, he's, yeah.

Jim (52:08.464)
No, yeah, that's his that's the writer that the writer that is helping him with the script that doesn't exist for the movie that's just about to be made. And he's and he's well, there is a script, but the writer is tearing it apart constantly. And Guido, the main characters just trying to get away. He's just trying to escape this this endeavor that he's started. But

Lionel (52:34.446)
So the fascinating thing to me is that 8 1 1 2 me, this is the realization that came to me is that really 8 1 is the anti Vittorio De Sica film. It is the exact opposite of Vittorio De Sica film on every axis. so there's no animals right off the bat, There's no animals, there's lots of women.

Jim (52:46.34)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (52:57.7)
That's right. Yeah.

Lionel (53:03.246)
because there's very few women in Umberto D and there's practically none in shoeshine. So there's, and there's no, there's no, there's no voluptuous women.

Jim (53:03.599)
Yes.

Jim (53:17.148)
Well, right. these are movie stars that are hanging around Guido in Eight and a Half.

Lionel (53:22.22)
Right. So it's not about the life of people. It's not the gritty streets of Rome. It's not urban. It's taking place in some magnificent sanatorium somewhere, somewhere in Italy with all this sort of neo modernist park benches around. love those benches. You could tell he loved them too with the huge overhangs, the big geometric benches with the, with the, with the rain shades on them. and

Jim (53:35.044)
No.

Jim (53:39.536)
Yeah.

Jim (53:43.864)
Yes.

Lionel (53:49.761)
It's not gritty at all. It's extra everything is absolutely meticulously clean. Everybody looks beautiful. and nothing serious and nobody's in pain and nothing and nobody's poor and nobody's grinding down people. Nobody's shaking people down for a fistful of dollars.

Jim (54:08.208)
No, no, it's a beautiful kind of fantastic or fantasy. there's the man who's dating the woman half his age, whose wife is angry at him for doing that. yeah, there's just... And he's trying to figure out like, I just think she just really adores me. I feel so alive.

Jim (54:37.996)
And Guido has to kind of... I mean, Guido, you get a sense, he has his own mistress and a wife.

Lionel (54:48.098)
And he's got a roving eye.

Jim (54:48.378)
But he is. And he's got a roving eye. He doesn't he's not satisfied with anything. And I think that he just Yeah, I think he's just sort of terrified of of committing to anything. It seems like that. But I've only you know, then I bought that's just in 30 minutes, you get this. You get this sense.

Lionel (55:08.014)
That nothing it's it's it's it's it's just a ribbon. I honestly I watched like an hour and a half and it's just it's the same thing over and over again. Like they go visit the set of the spaceship. So that's another thing distinguishes it from Victoria to see because there's a spaceship. They're building a set for a spaceship. But, you know, it's science fiction. It's very futuristic. It's got that vibe to it. You can tell where Woody Allen got a lot of his stuff from. There's a lot of, you know, white

Jim (55:14.754)
It just keeps going. Yeah.

Jim (55:23.715)
Yeah.

Jim (55:34.115)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (55:37.103)
And there's a lot of geometry. So you're starting to get that feeling for like, you know, uh, uh, clockwork orange and stuff like that. That sort of futuristic world. Um, everybody's beautiful. Everybody's wealthy. Everybody is attractive. This is not Victoria to see us. So that begs the question, is there something that binds them together? Other than the fact that they're made by two Italian guys. Um, is there something that binds them together?

Jim (55:51.952)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (56:03.12)
Well, I wondered if, I mean, because the Bicycle Thieves is one of the most famous pieces of Italian cinema. It's a towering achievement. And I wondered whether that line of, oh, you're going to make another movie that's depressing and shows that life is pointless, was a kind of a nod to De Sica on some level. If that was Fellini's kind of nod to

Lionel (56:11.758)
towering. It's a world cinema.

Jim (56:32.632)
you know, the, the sort of those tragic films that he made, those, you know, three, at least that we know of that we watched every single one of the men's in tragedy. And Fellini is not really known for that. Fellini is more whimsical. and so it's odd that a character that seems to be playing Fellini himself is being told he's going to make another depressing movie. So I wondered if that was maybe.

the connecting tissue.

Lionel (57:05.154)
No, but I'm thinking more broadly like So we've seen these films and by the way just to put it in structure here 46 is shoes shine 48 is bicycle thieves 52 is Umberto D And You know bicycle thieves is the one that everybody and bicycle thieves is really different From shoe shine not so much different from Umberto D. You definitely can see a progression

Jim (57:10.501)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (57:21.092)
Yes, that's right. They're in series, yeah.

Lionel (57:35.119)
And Bicycle Thieves is, there's no women in Bicycle Thieves. There's the mother who pawns the sheets so that the husband can buy the bicycle, that's it. But it's all about a father and his son, which is really interesting. It's interesting what the relationships are in each movie. In the first movie, it's about an older man and a young woman that he has absolutely no romantic interest in whatsoever. And you wonder.

Jim (57:45.21)
Yeah.

this friend.

Lionel (58:01.954)
What you know and so it's just a purely just two people She obviously respects him she she she asked him to come over and take a look at her boyfriend So she's she's all full of life and he's very reserved and then in bicycle thieves It's that aching relationship between a father and a young son. It's just

Jim (58:21.134)
Well, there is a common theme in all three of them, which is these people are just a paper thin boundary away from total catastrophe.

Lionel (58:33.218)
Yes.

Jim (58:35.14)
You know, and it's not even up to them always, right? It's not like one wrong step. In Bicycle Thieves, there is a little sense of one wrong step, but the catastrophe befell him not because of something he did. You know, and I don't want to get into Bicycle Thieves, but in the case of the young boys in Shoeshine, not really their fault, right? What could they have done? You kind of play it back. What could they have done to prevent this from happening? No.

Lionel (58:35.98)
Yes, they are.

Jim (59:04.108)
It's just the way society is structured. These people just end up being thrown in the garbage. And in Umberto D, again, you know, this man is being disposed of by society. however, in Umberto D, you're right. There's just a little bit of a sense of, okay, now he's not really forming any connections with people.

And clearly maybe he hasn't in the past either. And that might've protected him a little bit. Mostly his connection is with his dog. But as we see, he's never really connected to that dog until everything in his life has been broken completely down and everything's gone to shit. And then he has a genuine moment of just play. And that's about as happy as it gets. Yeah.

Lionel (59:48.655)
As it gets in a de Sica film whereas in in the bicycle thieves just it ends with doom But bicycle thieves is bicycle thieves deserves all the praise that it gets Because he really touches on something that is hugely hugely hugely powerful, which is the relationship between a father and a young son It's it's a mean I just I could go on and on about it. But So is there anything?

Jim (01:00:01.902)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (01:00:18.578)
Anything that connects to see good to. Fellini.

Jim (01:00:24.558)
There's probably an intermediate step. think just looking at these two directors is not sufficient.

Lionel (01:00:30.798)
I'm just saying, are they talking to each other or anything that survives from? Nothing I can tell.

Jim (01:00:34.512)
Not that I can tell from, but it's a really different time. mean, is, De Sica is very influenced obviously by the depression in World War II, right? He lived in fascist Italy and then, you know, many changes, especially if he's Neapolitan, Naples, 1944. This would not be Fellini's, you know, foundational,

Lionel (01:00:46.189)
War II.

Lionel (01:01:02.1)
Italy. It's not Fellini's Italy.

Jim (01:01:04.74)
vision of Italy. It's just a completely different idea.

Lionel (01:01:07.246)
By 63, Italy probably has, you know, it's a different world. if you look at England in 1946 and you look at England in 1960, if you look at America in 46 and then you look at 63, it's a different country. And it's interesting. So maybe there is no.

Jim (01:01:20.228)
Yeah. And there's that movie that I, there is a movie that I recommended. It's not that I'd never heard of the director, but it was produced, it was the very first movie that Dino De Laurentiis ever produced called Mafioso. That is a very interesting film that maybe would be worth watching if you can find it again, just to kind of.

Lionel (01:01:40.077)
We should watch mafia. So what we should also watch is a film that I think I saw at Haverford called bread and chocolate, which was done near the end. I think it's Marcello Mastroianni did it in the seventies and no, no, it's not those two guys. You looking it up.

Jim (01:01:54.626)
Is it also Fellini or is it?

Jim (01:01:59.573)
interesting. Yeah, bread and chocolate. 1974.

Lionel (01:02:04.514)
Got it. Marcello Mastriani and he's an Italian guy who has to it's Marcello.

Jim (01:02:06.704)
And yeah, yeah No, no, no, wait a minute. Nino Manfredi is is

Nino Manfredi is the main character, the lead. It's not Marcello.

Lionel (01:02:15.992)
blues and

the lead. wasn't. It's a much hello.

Jim (01:02:26.096)
Italian immigrant Nino Steadfastly tries to become a member of the Swiss society no matter how awful. Yeah, that's Nino Manfredi. Yeah.

Lionel (01:02:29.59)
Swiss. He dyes his hair blonde. see. Okay, sorry. He dyes his hair blonde and he tries to blend into Swiss society. And of course it's a disaster. know, it, hilarious. But,

Jim (01:02:40.943)
Yeah.

Jim (01:02:44.848)
All well, that I mean, that might be fun. I don't know if we should keep going with the Italian cinema two weeks in a row, or maybe we should we should we should talk about this.

Lionel (01:02:52.012)
What are you, what are we going to talk about next time? Let's, let's, let's pre.

Jim (01:02:54.892)
I don't know. We could do this. could do no, we could do mafioso and bread and chocolate. And if we don't have any other ideas we could do. Yeah.

Lionel (01:02:59.614)
We'll pull up QyToon channel and pick something out. Come on, right now.

Lionel (01:03:06.779)
no, you're right. We're done with we're done with the Italians. Yeah, we got to go somewhere else. Where are we to go? Sarah, Sarah, what two films are going to watch next? Hello, Elkins.

Jim (01:03:13.582)
I don't look.

Jim (01:03:17.902)
I need to close this thing. I need to turn this thing off.

Lionel (01:03:22.094)
You need to turn one thing off.

Jim (01:03:23.184)
No, I just I don't I don't think I can plan for next week during the taping of the episode I know that that does create a kind of a momentum and that that's maybe a good idea But I'm likely to just choose something that will be a bad idea just because there's no time

Lionel (01:03:37.71)
No, no, there's no, there's no, there's no bad ideas. Okay, so you like my, let's.

Jim (01:03:43.836)
Sarah is in the, Sarah can't help us. Sarah's in the middle of a deploy. She can't, you know, people have lives. They listen while they're doing things.

Lionel (01:03:52.906)
OK, so.

OK, so there's.

Jim (01:04:01.602)
I think we should.

Ahem.

Lionel (01:04:05.964)
We did some Japan. We did some Italy.

We did some England. We did Morvin, Calar and Rat Catcher. So we did England.

Jim (01:04:11.524)
Okay.

Jim (01:04:18.564)
Germany, Russia. Yeah, all right.

Lionel (01:04:20.83)
We did that, Vim Vendors, we did Anselm and we did Days of Heaven and stuff like that. So we did Germany, the Dutch, no, anyway, Russia.

Jim (01:04:31.364)
We did Japan.

There's, okay, so Russia, India, China.

Lionel (01:04:40.6)
Tarkovsky. You wanna tackle something? You wanna tackle a ball breaker? Did you see that?

Jim (01:04:46.328)
No.

Lionel (01:04:50.068)
is purely rhetorical. So a film that I saw at Haverford and you probably saw too is Andrei Rubiev by Tarkovsky.

Jim (01:04:51.248)
Yeah.

Jim (01:05:00.854)
No, I didn't see that. Andrei Rubiev?

Lionel (01:05:02.958)
Tarkovsky is huge. I've seen Andrei Rubiev. I've seen stalker.

Jim (01:05:11.106)
Okay, maybe you should choose.

Lionel (01:05:16.586)
Sorcerer we're gonna

Jim (01:05:17.232)
Is it one Russian film or two? Can I handle two Russian films? All right, let's pick one. Let's pick one.

Lionel (01:05:22.454)
No, no, no, you can't. Neither can I. No, I'm going to go back. No, I'm go back to what we we actually discussed this before. Yes. Sorcerer because Sorcerer, the movie with Roy Scheider was based upon a French film called The Wages of Sin. So we should watch The Wages of Sin and Sorcerer.

Jim (01:05:28.42)
The stalker I've heard of, stalker is something I definitely want to see.

Jim (01:05:36.42)
Okay.

Jim (01:05:46.137)
Okay.

Lionel (01:05:47.311)
You up for that? do you want to do? don't want to. I just I really don't want to do Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog. I really don't. That's that feels been plowed too many times.

Jim (01:05:56.634)
That's fine.

Yep. wait, wait, here we go. Sarah's got some recommendations.

Lionel (01:06:04.822)
See, I told you. It's like the bat signal. We have like this Elkin signal. We just shine it up in the clouds and Sarah chimes in.

Jim (01:06:06.5)
But well, she was busy.

Well, here's the thing though, if we do watch something, mean, doesn't have to be next week, but maybe the week after. Sarah, maybe we could have you on and we could discuss something that is kind of your favorite obscure. writing Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust, different from anything else you've done and it's also beautiful. Gullah Family, Coastal Southern USA. It's all one movie. Julie Dash, Daughters.

Lionel (01:06:26.082)
What does she recommend?

Jim (01:06:40.972)
of the dust is Sarah's recommendation. It might be that Julie Dash is the director.

Lionel (01:06:43.49)
That's one film.

Lionel (01:06:48.834)
Daughters of the does okay, but we need to film sir. You got to cough up another one

Jim (01:06:53.474)
Or maybe, maybe they're two, no, it's all one movie is what she's saying. I'm cutting this out. This is not, this is not interesting. This leaves the edit.

Lionel (01:07:01.346)
This is fat. No, this is, this is cinema. This is cinema. Very Tay. People love this shit. Excuse me. What did you say? you know what you're getting? You're now you're getting daughters of the dust by Julie dash.

Jim (01:07:08.4)
It's a little too very Tay. A little too much very Tay. There's

Lionel (01:07:20.942)
Set in 1902, film started as a three generations of Gullah women from the family in St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Okay, so what do we pair with that?

Jim (01:07:33.712)
question.

Lionel (01:07:34.67)
Hmm.

Jim (01:07:36.644)
Well, something else by Julie Dash.

Lionel (01:07:40.75)
Okay, let's take a look at Julie Dash. Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust, what's her filmography here? Hello, filmography.

Jim (01:07:54.01)
Daughters are known for Daughters of the Dust, The Rosa Parks Story, Funny Valentines, and Illusions. Rosa Parks Story is a TV movie. Funny Valentines.

Jim (01:08:10.884)
and illusions.

Lionel (01:08:16.044)
Let's do Rosa Parks doors to the dust and Rosa Parks. Got it.

Jim (01:08:22.384)
the Rosa Parks story. That's a TV movie. Yeah. There is a higher rating on Queen Sugar. No, it's a series. Hang on. The two episode series. And she directed two of the, two of the SSO. So yeah, I think you might be right.

Lionel (01:08:25.752)
That's fine.

Jim (01:08:39.728)
All right, so.

Lionel (01:08:44.246)
Okay. Rosa parks and what.

Jim (01:08:45.442)
all right, but now Sarah's complicated things because those are Spike Lee, aren't they? She's got to have it and just another girl on the IRT.

Jim (01:08:59.472)
see what I'm saying? This is not this is not episode worthy.

Lionel (01:09:01.462)
If you give a mouse a cookie, don't let the pigeon drive the bus. Don't let Sarah recommend the agenda for the podcast. Okay. You got to pick one Sarah. Okay. So we got, we got daughters of the dust. You get one other, you get, you have one job, Sarah, one job.

Jim (01:09:15.534)
Get.

No, no. So I think I think sticking with the same director, right? So we did De Sica, two films. I think Julie Dash, we should do two films. And if you think Rosa Parks is it or if you think there's another one, but it sounds like maybe you don't have it, you don't have a preference. Now, let's see, there's a movie, there's a short film called Homegoing. That's that is her most recent. And there's no information about it.

it sounds like daughters of the dust is definitely is definitely a good one.

Illusions?

Lionel (01:10:04.543)
Also, writer.

Jim (01:10:08.994)
African-American woman rises to prominence in a fictional movie studio in the 1940s by passing as a white woman, affording others some dignity in the business that frequently portrayed movies as an illusion of a purely white world. That sounds great to me. Illusions and Daughters of the Dust. do you want to just let us know if you want to do that next week or the following week?

Lionel (01:10:25.102)
Okay, let's do illusions and Doris the dust.

Sold.

Jim (01:10:37.678)
and have you on as a guest host. All right, and we'll work all that out on our own time, but.

Lionel (01:10:40.918)
Okay, cool.

Lionel (01:10:45.592)
Yeah. It's, it's, would like to come back to the Italian cinema thing. Cause I'm fast. And I'd like to, I'll do it on my own, but I like to see if anybody's written an essay. Like how do you bridge the distance between Umberto D and eight and a half? I mean, it's only 10 years and man, it's, it's, I mean, you couldn't imagine two different planets.

Jim (01:11:08.622)
Yeah, no, it's totally, yeah, totally different.

Lionel (01:11:13.186)
So interesting we're not gonna we're not gonna solve that here today. I think that's good Good enough for government work

Jim (01:11:14.711)
Yeah.

It's a big question. wait, Sarah responded. After taxes, not next week. Alright, next week is up in the air, but I'll try and think of something. OK. I believe, yeah, we'll work it out. I gotta go. Bye.

Lionel (01:11:29.706)
Okay, all four. Okay, bye. Okay. Bye.