Word: sica
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...been with. . .General Della Rovere that he has produced a film of real stature, a film whose symbols of all our world are not overt and strained." In his unflagging admiration, the reviewer praises Rossellini's wastefulness in the first part of the film, implicitly credits him for De Sica's fine acting, and concludes with a non-sequitur referring to On The Waterfront (an American film, you see). Such tangential nationalism is not only confusing but self-satirical...
BRATTLE: Last day for Vittorio De Sica's excellent GENERAL BELLA ROVERE, a film based on Roberto Rossellini's story of the conversion of an Italian pimp to patriot. Starts tomorrow: AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON, another war picture, this one Russian, and about as good as they come. Evenings at 5:30, 7:30, 9:30. Weekend matinees...
...example, in the first half of the movie, everyone immediately gets the point that the imposter Bardone (de Sica) is a criminal parasite and a coward. The point is drummed out in several scenes which do not explore Bardone's character so much as they blur by repetition the first impression of him. One episode, in which Bardone accepts money from a girl he had deserted, is irrelevant and should have been cut completely...
...soldier's duty. "If you'd stayed in the army," he tells Bardone, "you'd be a real colonel by now." The most ambiguous figure of all is Giuseppe-Bardone-General della Rovere. The character-delineation of an imposter is hard to begin with, but the ambiguity of de Sica's role is compounded by the fact that Rossellini and his three script writers do not seem sure whether Bardone is more to be pitied or more to be censured. Rather than mingling in cowardice and loneliness in one man at one time. Rossellini and his writers inconsistently portray first...
Finally, the acting is superb, but it is mechanically superb. Vittorio de Sica and the rest of the cast have the exact gesture and the exact expression for every occasion, but for the most part they are more slick than moving...