Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 6 No. 35, October 2002
Tag Gallagher
Reply to Bleasdale
John Bleasdale 'The Unrealistic
Rossellini' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6
no. 34, October 2002 http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n34bleasdale In his review of my 1998
book on Roberto Rossellini, [1] John Bleasdale
writes: 'As Gallagher rather crassly puts it: 'Even at
seventy, Roberto would devote more time and energy to making
women than to making films -- which in his circle was
considered merely good taste.' (39) There is a condescending
chumminess to this statement, as well as an uncomfortable
lack of interrogation. One wonders how Tag evaluated
time/energy expenditure.' Rossellini's sense that life
is more important than cinema is one of the reasons his
cinema is so rewarding. Although he was born wealthy, this
wealth disappeared quickly, and his adult life was a
constant struggle for money, for ways of making movies, a
struggle he pursued with zest. The fact that he spent energy
on pursuits other than film does not seem to me to be a
condescending observation, or to lessen the amazing
accomplishment of the pictures; rather, the contrary.
Especially at the age of 70. Especially if you consider that
only three of his movies ever made any profit to speak of,
and that during the last seven years of his life he was able
to produce more than forty hours of his history movies
against opposition and obstacles of every sort. The sheer
energy and persistence required to get anything done in
Italy is mind boggling. The observation that at 70
he spent energy on sex, and was as a result sometimes
physically exhausted when it came to shooting, comes from
one of his oldest and dearest friends who was also a medical
doctor, Enrico Fulchignoni (a film director in Italy before
World War 2; a professor at the University of Paris when I
knew him). I don't see this observation
as condescending. Rather the contrary. In Rossellini's case,
without the sex there wouldn't have been the film. It was
all part of the same zest. For the record, my
'interrogation' was constant during fifteen years working on
the book, and has continued since its publication. I never
needed to bring up the subject of Rossellini's sex life;
everyone I spoke to brought it up first. Bleasdale writes: '_Luciano
serra pilota_ (Luciano Serra Pilot), _La nave bianca_ (The
White Ship), _Un pilota ritorna_ (A Pilot Returns), and
_L'uomo dalla croce_ (The Man of the Cross) were all filmed
under the supervision of the fascist regime, most involved
to a varying extent Vittorio Mussolini, the dictator's son,
and all of them dealt with military subjects.' None of these was filmed
'under the supervision of the [F]ascist regime'.
Vittorio Mussolini was involved with only two of them, and
only marginally, and essentially as a figurehead. It's important to note that
fascism and Fascism are quite different things, and it
serves no worthy purpose to conflate the two. Bleasdale writes: 'Gallagher
argues convincingly for a re-appraisal of these films as
non-fascist, if not anti-fascist'. Well, I tried to argue they
were anti-Fascist. Bleasdale writes: 'Unlike
other world leaders, Mussolini, we are told, 'never amassed
an estate nor even collected his salary' (49). The Spanish
Civil War is conflated into 'Spain was becoming a Soviet
satellite' (61), and so Mussolini generously sends in the
troops. There is in all of this a defiance of easy
stereotyping and the drawing of vapid conclusions but, as
with his exasperation concerning Gary Cooper and Cary Grant,
Gallagher suggests that he is a lone voice when in fact he
is in good company. His view of Italy during the fascist
period is one widely accepted in Italy today, not least by
one of the leading members of the government coalition, the
Alleanza Nazionale, the leader of which party, Giancarlo
Fini, went so far as to describe Mussolini as the century's
greatest statesman. In attempting to cut through the myths
of demonisation, Gallagher falls for the original and
fascist myth of Mussolini as the down-to-earth leader of the
Italian people who got caught up in the romantic dreams of
that people, the Fatalita' Italiana.' The line about Spain
becoming a Soviet satellite occurs in a summary of the
Fascists' arguments in favor of intervention. Bleasdale
erroneously attributes the sentiment to me. And his summary
of my presentation of Mussolini and his regime is
egregiously misleading. I never suggest that Mussolini was a
good, let alone great, statesman, and I assign
responsibility for the tragedies that ensued to Mussolini's
own personality and the corruption of his regime. Page after
page in the book is devoted to depicting the hollowness of
that regime. My concern in depicting
Roberto Rossellini living, from age 16 to 37, within the
suffocating provincialism of Fascist Italy, was to show that
Fascism, at least until 1938, was even more unremarkable to
most Italians than was 'Reaganism' in the US in recent
times. The 'demonisation' occurred later. The dissident
voices, destined to be canonized in the post-war period,
were exiled or marginalized or scoffed at during the 1930s.
In researching through English-language sources, I found
book after book that told me, in detail, why Mussolini and
Fascism were evil; I found almost nothing that told me why
virtually everyone in an otherwise impossibly factious and
ungovernable nation was content with Fascism during its
first fifteen years. Bleasdale writes: 'Showing a
pregnant woman with a visibly large belly for instance was
considered unconventional at the time. It was usually enough
to state that the character was pregnant, and Rossellini had
difficulty persuading Anna Magnani to dispose of
convention.' This is news to me, about
Magnani, totally contrary to her character, and hard to
believe. She had refused the starring role in Visconti's
_Ossessione_ not because she was pregnant but because
Visconti wanted her to have an abortion. Bleasdale writes:
'Rossellini's career had reached its nadir. The almost
universal critical antipathy towards him was relieved by one
exception, Francois Truffaut. However, Truffaut was becoming
almost a school in his own right. His championing of
Rossellini, as well as personally vindicating for Rossellini
himself, also led the way to a total reassessment of films,
some of which had been born already neglected.' Truffaut was not a lonely
exception; but he was Rossellini's (paid) assistant. His
colleagues at _Cahiers du cinema_ were as supportive as he.
Rohmer, Rivette, Godard, Bazin all defended Rossellini
enthusiastically. Even in Italy there were supporters. Low
as the nadir of 1956 was, the nadir eight years later was
even lower. Truffaut was not supportive of Rossellini's
history films in the early 70s. Bleasdale writes: 'At times,
partisan support can become unfair. Italian critics are
likened to 'a herd of lemmings' because they preferred
Fellini's _La strada_ to _Viaggio in Italia_ (439). I am not
even sure if this image makes sense.' But why is it unfair? Or
even inaccurate? Fellini was in fashion; Rossellini not. I
doubt anyone can come up with a film that got worse reviews
from the Italian press than did _Viaggio in Italia_. It had
taken a year to find anyone willing to distribute it and it
disappeared from the screens almost immediately. It's
difficult to find anyone who had a kind word for it -- or a
bad word for _La strada_. A few years later _Cahiers du
cinema_ voted _Voyage in Italy_ the greatest Italian film
ever made. (It was shot in English; dubbed into
Italian.) Bleasdale writes: 'Gramsci
and Croce both informed Rossellini's intellectual
development and Gallagher is precise and clear in
delineating these influences. Rossellini, however, has an
essential passivity throughout despite the energy and the
adventures. He absorbs ideas like 'a sponge', we are told
more than once (30, 110).' Seems to me a sponge is
active. The metaphor isn't mine, but that of a number of
Rossellini's friends. They said: 'He ate you up.' Bleasdale writes:
'Notwithstanding all the arguments and the reading and the
manifestos, Rossellini films in a haphazard way, often
employing a method not because of the filmed result, but
because it is easier or it takes less time. The most extreme
manifestation of this laziness comes with Rossellini's
increasing tendency to delegate the role he ought to take,
or in the ultimate case to simply abandon the film and leave
it incomplete.' Laziness was never the
problem. It was a joke because he was always in bed; he did
everything in bed. Boredom was a problem. Even
in the 1930s Rossellini's enthusiasm was at its greatest
when first conceiving a project. The process of getting the
initial enthusiasm into the finished film often involved
enormous difficulties (which Rossellini generally overcame)
and even more enormous tedium and boredom (to which he
occasionally succumbed). His hope, during the late 60s and
70s, was to get others to direct the history films which he
would conceive and outline. He wanted to enlist Fellini and
Altman and Truffaut and film students all over the world
into implementing designs for which he was the stylist. This
hope was not dictated by laziness but by the immensity of
the task. At the same time there was,
I believe, often a problem with Rossellini in that he did
not at times believe in his own powers as an artist, or the
artistic merit of his own work -- a theme which I try to
explore in the book. Bleasdale writes:
'Rossellini emerges as at times inspired in his ambivalence,
even heroic, but throughout Gallagher's account there is
also the suspicion that the master filmmaker was still the
dabbling playboy, frustratingly fickle and easily
bored.' I devoutly hope this was
true -- in the good sense of these qualities! Rossellini, especially in
his last decades, battled doggedly against his fickleness
and his boredom. He said he tried each day to demolish his
ignorance, brick by brick. His formal education had scarcely
included grammar school. Now he read hundreds of books,
underling passages, taking notes. But he would read a dozen
books at the same time -- a page from this one, then a page
from that one. It is easy to focus on
Rossellini's failings and inadequacies. He never tried to
hide them. They were the 'other side' of his successes and
virtues. Fickleness was part of unfailing energy to explore
the new. What I find awesome in his life is his incredible
persistence. He may have been a great sinner, but he never
stopped trying to be a saint. He didn't let failures and
inadequacies stop him from being Rossellini. Newton, Massachusetts,
USA Footnote 1. _The Adventures of
Roberto Rossellini: His Life and Films_ (New York: Da Capo
Press, 1998). All page numbers in parentheses. Some pages of
corrections and additions to the book are available from me
by email: <tag@sprynet.com>. Copyright ©
_Film-Philosophy_ 2002 Tag Gallagher, 'Reply to
Bleasdale', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6 no. 35, October 2002
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n35gallagher>.
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