D is for Downer 


...not that you’d know it from our stony-hearted group 

Notwithstanding some ambitious promises (intimations, anyway) held forth in January, the Società italiana del cinematografo del punto di Adams has not contrived to present its features oftener than once a month; nor have I been conscientious about posting reviews here of each film as screened. We have, however, managed not to miss a calendar month yet, which means that six days ago De Sica’s Umberto D. was the eleventh flick to pass in progressive scans upon the Great Screen of Life before a selection of the usual suspects up in the garrett. I thought it was a worthy successor to Bicycle Thieves, but at the time of its original release (1952, around the time of my original release) critics sneered and audiences in droves found other things to do. De Sica suggested that the straitened circumstances worn, perversely, as a badge of national pride in the shellshocked postwar environment had become four years later in the early years of the economic boom rather by way of an uncomfortable memory. The story is simple: elderly, somewhat prickly retired civil servant (ouch!) on a fixed income (ouch!) is forced out of his longtime lodgings by an avaricious landlady (been there, done that, couldn’t afford the t-shirt afterward) and finds himself on the indifferent streets of Rome with just his dog and his suitcase. Resolved upon self-slaughter, and unable to place Flike the Wonder Pooch with a good home he decides...ah, no, you’ll have to see it yourselves, friends. I previewed the feature precisely so that I could inoculate myself against the sheer pathos of the thing, and I must tell you, o my brothers and only friends, that a tear or two trickled down my craggy visage during the closing minutes of the film. But that night, when a subset of the usual suspects assembled (Rose Barquist, Ashton Brown, Art Weller, Gail Coney, Tanya Sirkin, Elena Spichek, your humble narrator and the Bride of Urschleim), there was not a damp eye in the house. Everyone seemed to enjoy the film, but I have to assume that all the others, ranging in age from 21 to 81, have each and every one been hardened, jaded, desensitized, debauched by by our gross modern cinematic conventions. I can think of no other explanation (although as the admirable Richard Dawkins observes when the “Intelligent Design” set bleats that there couldn’t possibly have been any intermediate stages between a fully functional eye and no eye at all, this is properly described as "the argument from personal incredulity") for the apparent equanimity with which everyone else in attendance watched the sniffy tale unwind—and this after I’d laid in a dozen boxes of absorbent tissues and paid a hefty retainer for a local therapist to be on call that evening. Go figure.

In other news I've switched this evening to a newer iteration of my rather bare-bones blogging software, and a small operation in distant Hindustan is 920 rupees the richer for it. Here’s hoping—because the reviews on VersionTracker blow hot and cold, praising the new version to the skies or damning it to the deeper precincts of magma—that it works out. My thanks to surprising reader (because I'd always assumed that my four or five regular readers were all personal acquaintances) Lionel Chollet for alerting me to the fact that I wasn't RSS-compatible. Perhaps he’ll let me know if this upgrade has done the trick. 

Posted: Fri - November 25, 2005 at 05:48 PM          

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