Umberto D didn’t stand a chance when it was released. A neorealist film that dramatizes the struggles of an elderly man nearing destitution in post-war Rome, it premiered to Italian audiences in 1952 who were ready to put the past behind them and look to the brighter economic future that would indeed come to pass. The government, critical of any movie that might export images of a depressed, unjust Italy, declared it irresponsible filmmaking and subsequently banned the foreign distribution of any films deemed unflattering to the country.
Considering that the main character Umberto represents the universal plight of the elderly– how to survive with dignity when one’s resources and well-being are deteriorating– it’s no surprise that the film was so strongly opposed, ultimately a box office flop and source of critical aloofness.
Umberto, a retired civil servant who is unable to pay his growing debts with his meager pension, is not unlike other Italian senior citizens; the film opens with a rally of aging demonstrators demanding increased pensions. Umberto is seen in the march, but it soon becomes clear that he is unwilling to take part when, after police disperse the crowd, he gets angry not at them, but at the organizers of the demonstration for not attaining the proper permit. It is a subtle character distinction that sets the stage for a journey of alienation as Umberto endeavors to fulfill the most basic human needs: food, shelter and companionship, all the while determined to preserve the one thing he may be left with at the end– his dignity.
After the rally, Umberto and his dog Flag (arguably one of the most adorable canines in cinema history) make their way to a soup kitchen for elderly citizens. Umberto surreptitiously shares his meal with Flag, until one of the food servers spots him doing so and scolds him. It’s a risk he’s willing to take because he doesn’t have the means to feed his pet otherwise. He leaves and, on the street, sells his watch, settling for much less than he’d originally wanted. Since every bit of money he can earn must be applied to his rent, he is forced to be resourceful in finding food, another source being Maria, the maid of the house where he lives. She secretly offers him leftover cake when the landlady isn’t around.
That landlady is bent on Umberto’s moving out. While he’s out trying to sell personal belongings to cover the cost of his room, she rents it out to couples for romantic afternoon trysts. When he does get the space to himself, it becomes evident that the room he is trying so hard to keep is indeed small, dank and infested with ants. Later, after he becomes ill and stays a few days at a hospital, he returns home to find a huge hole in the wall. The landlady has begun renovations on the place, despite the fact that Umberto is still residing there.
Carlo Battisti, who’d had no prior acting experience and was in fact a college professor that De Sica found on the street, gives Umberto an understated but very real grace that makes us feel sorry for him without feeling as if we’ve been manipulated.
Certain moments seem more like a documentary, particularly the one at the kennel, where the overabundance of dogs is being relieved through extermination; it’s a rare kind of moment in a narrative film when we stop and question if what we’re seeing might actually be taking place in front of the camera. It’s chilling, especially since it’s while Umberto is looking for Flag, who’d run off under the care of Maria, distracted by her own efforts to conceal her pregnancy from her employer and figure out which of two men is the father-to-be.
In Umberto D, nonactors inhabit all these on-location scenes, which form a sharp contrast to the sleek Hollywood sets of the time and the “white telephone” films of Italy’s past. There’s a ticking-clock immediacy as Umberto searches desperately for what will likely be not only the very last true companion of his lifetime, but ultimately the sole reason for his own existence.
The final shot is like a beautiful black-and-white painting, with a group of playing children running into the frame, mocking us with blissful youth.
Umberto D is available through the Long Beach Public Library system. Contact the Dana Branch, located at 3680 Atlantic Avenue, at (562) 570-1042 to request a copy of the film.

By Cory Bilicko
Entertainment Writer

When German art critic and historian Franz Roh devised the term “magic realism” in the early 20th Century, his frame of reference stemmed from the visual arts he’d been studying. In his essay “Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism,” Roh was recognizing the “magic” of the everyday world as it presents itself to us; in other words, how, when we really observe ordinary things, they can appear bizarre or extraordinary.
By the early 1960s, magic realism had been slightly reappropriated by writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, since literature can engage the reader in ways different from the methods a painter uses to speak to the viewer of visual arts. In literature, magic realism often combines external elements of human existence with internal ones, fusing the real with the imagined. It is a union of scientific physical actuality and psychological human reality, incorporating more cerebral facets of human existence such as ideas, feelings, dreams, cultural mythologies and the imagination.
In Amaryll Beatrice Chanady’s 1985 book Magical Realism and the Fantastic Resolved versus Unresolved Antinomy, magic realism “refers to the occurrence of supernatural, or anything that is contrary to our conventional view of reality…not divorced from reality either, [and] the presence of the supernatural is often attributed to the primitive or ‘magical’ Indian mentality, which coexists with European rationality.”
Cinema, being a visual and literary medium, offers the opportunity to incorporate elements of the visual traditions of magic realism as well as the literary devices used in books. Films such as Amarcord and Night of the Hunter, and more recently, Antonia’s Line and Magnolia, have been cited as cinematic examples of magic realism. But one that seems to fall under the critical radar is the 1988 German film Bagdad Cafe.
Shot in Newberry Springs, California, the film begins with surrealist shots of a road-tripping German couple squabbling. Jasmin, the fed-up wife, pulls from the car what she thinks is her own suitcase and begins walking down the desert highway. She ends up at the eponymous roadside cafe, where Brenda, the domineering and dramatic owner, has just had a row with her own spouse. Her cafe is also a motel, where an unusual cast of eccentrics lives, including Jack Palance as the creepily charming (or charmingly creepy) Rudi Coxx, a gonzo “Hollywood” type who is later demystified by the revelation of his having only been a set painter.
Other occupants of Bagdad Cafe include: Brenda’s son, who is devoted to practicing piano, a constant source of her chagrin; Brenda’s attention-starved daughter, who repeatedly takes off with men who represent the archetypes of those you wouldn’t want your daughter associating with; Debby, the tattoo artist whose occupation seems to be a surrogate for sex; and Cahuenga, the Native-American who waits tables and serves as the calmest person around.
Plot is not the driving force of Bagdad Cafe, and its strange characters and mystical location set the stage for its exploration and deconstruction of magic realism, toying with the genre rather than simply illustrating it. This is evident in a literal sense when, in an early scene, Jasmin the mysterious German enters the cafe where Cahuenga the sensible Native American is working; the two contradict Chanady’s idea– the diametric opposition of the European sense of reality versus the mystical traditions of the Indian.
One traditional element of literary magic realism is that characters accept the logic of the magical element rather than question it. When Brenda goes to clean Jasmin’s room, she finds nothing but men’s clothing and accessories. Rather than thinking nothing of it though, which would be appropriate to the genre, she calls the local sheriff to come and investigate. Her reaction to the clothing is more unusual than its being there in the first place. Later, truer to magic realism, Jasmin is seen perched on a ladder scrubbing a water tower, wearing her nice suit– an image used on some of the film’s posters. It’s a strange sight that seems fitting for a magic realist painting, but the logic behind her garb is the fact that she has no other clothing to wear, since she mistakenly took her husband’s bag.
Another element of magic realism is that it creates uncertainty in the reader, who has to determine whether to believe the supernatural or the realist interpretation of what happens, and to what degree. When Brenda and Jasmin first make extensive eye contact, there is a flashback that Brenda seems to have in which Jasmine is nude in a large outdoor tub while body-painted natives dance around her. There’s also a Thermos that contains some sort of seemingly transformative coffee, with no real explanation offered. Later though, the Thermos is seen on the counter, shaking as if it has a life all its own; then Cahuenga pops up from behind, revealing that he was actually the source of the movement.
These sorts of incidents fill every almost every scene of Bagdad Cafe, enriching it with a colorful verve and initiating some touching moments in unusual situations, as well as some off-kilter scenes that may be difficult to buy into. But to be too critical of these instances would be missing the point. Bagdad Cafe is not the kind of movie that will give us all the answers or lay out a story with well structured beginning, middle and ending. It’s the kind that leaves you scratching your head a bit as the desert highway beckons you.

Several books related to magic realism are available through the Long Beach Public Library system: The Fantastic Art of Vienna by Alessandra Comini; Magic Realist Landscape Painting by Rudy De Reyna; and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. To have a copy of any of these titles sent to the local Dana branch, call (562) 570-1042.

By Cory Bilicko
Entertainment Writer

Nine years before he gave Katrina victims a platform for expressing their grief and frustration in his HBO documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Spike Lee made the move from fictional filmmaking to docs with his potent 4 Little Girls.
The film recounts the September 15, 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama– the racially motivated terrorist attack that was intended as a statement against segregation, but, when the smoke cleared, four young girls were dead in the rubble.
Through interviews with the girls’ surviving family members and friends, we learn that bombings in the black community there at that time had actually been commonplace and that this wrongdoing wasn’t an isolated event. This particular incident helped to finally wake up the nation to the racial violence in the South and it became a turning point in the Civil Rights movement.
In 4 Little Girls, Lee lets the stories tell themselves, through a mostly talking-head format, interspersed with photos and footage from the time period.
It doesn’t necessarily feel like the usual quirky, colorful “Spike Lee joint,” and, witnessing the heart-wrenching stories unfold, you forget that he indeed made it.
There’s a requisite integrity and reverence that is perhaps due in part to the fact that this story is one that Lee had wanted to tell cinematically since NYU film school and also that, until he’d proven himself as a seasoned and responsible filmmaker, he couldn’t get all the family members to agree to participate in the documentary.
One interviewee whose participation does come as a bit of a shocker, not to mention a source of cringe inducement, is former Alabama governor George Wallace, notorious for his “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” inaugural speech.
Here he is seen sitting behind a desk, where he continues to beckon his “friend,” a black caretaker, to move closer to him, into the frame, rather than discuss the significant events of the past.
There’s an anticipation that Lee’s voice will soon be heard, questioning the authenticity of the friendship, but, instead, he simply lets Wallace bury himself. It’s a truly awkward moment, but there’s some sort of strange justice that Lee is allowing to happen in the scene.
As a matter of fact, after the release of 4 Little Girls, the scales of justice began to tip more in favor of the victims of the bombing: the FBI reopened the case, Thomas Blanton Jr. was found guilty of first-degree murder four times over for the incident, and Bobby Frank Cherry was sentenced to life in prison.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary but lost to The Long Way Home, which depicts the struggles of post-WWII Jewish refugees. In the DVD extras for 4 Little Girls, Lee attributes the Oscar loss to the fact that his film was up against one about the Holocaust.
But, for its clear storytelling, raw emotion, and sense of judicature for those afflicted by the bombing, 4 Little Girls is certainly no loser.

Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls is available through the Long Beach Public Library system. To have a copy of the DVD sent to the local Dana branch, call (562) 570-1042.
To read more about the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, check out the following titles, also available through the Long Beach Public Library system: Long Time Coming by Petric J. Smith; Parting the Waters– America in the King Years by Taylor Branch; The Watsons Go To Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis; and, Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslun.

In the opening of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the author describes the social condition in England at the arrival of World War I: Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes.
Enchanted April, the 1992 Miramax adaptation of the 1922 novel by Elizabeth Von Arnim, concerns itself with the collective state-of-mind of women after that war. Four British women, strangers to each other, take a month-long holiday at an opulent medieval castle in Italy on the Mediterranean seashore, each with a completely different perspective and reason for taking the ultimately transformative vacation.
The spiritual adventure begins with Lotty (Josie Lawrence), who is desperate for a respite from her stifling marriage. Her husband, though a shrewd and successful solicitor, expects her to record all her purchases in a book and reprimands her for buying flowers. (“They always die and you have to buy more.”) Lotty sees a newspaper ad for the rental of the castle called San Salvatore and beseeches Rose (Miranda Richardson), whom she’s only seen in church, to join her and share the cost. After Rose, married to the much looser erotica novelist Frederick but confined by her self-imposed sense of duty and charity, reluctantly agrees, the two wives themselves place an ad seeking two other women to share the lodging, but they receive only two responses: one from Mrs. Fisher (Joan Plowright), a stodgy, prudish dowager; and another from Caroline Dester (Polly Walker), a striking socialite who has grown jaded from the never ending attention and advances of men. Caroline wants only to be left alone in the garden for a month so that she can clear her mind and get herself “straight.” She is essentially cursed with her beauty, not only because she must work so hard to maintain it, but also because she is so obsessed with the idea of losing it that she can’t just enjoy it.
It isn’t evident why Mrs. Fisher decides to join them–perhaps to preserve diminishing traditions by asserting her Victorian sensibilities on the younger vacationers. When they first arrive at the lush, vivacious grounds, Lotty is overwhelmed by its beauty, so she casually mentions the fact that there’s no need for the extra accommodations in their rooms since their spouses won’t be joining them. Mrs. Fisher’s large, disapproving eyes are the first to scold Lotty; her mouth is second. “In my day, husbands and beds were rarely spoken of in the same breath. Husbands were taken seriously as the only real obstacle to sin,” she tells Lotty.
It is this culture of restraint and social decorum that the younger women are so eager to flee, but they take her reprobation in stride.
Eventually, each undergoes a personal metamorphosis amid the wisteria and sea air, so Lotty persuades Rose that they should welcome their husbands there. When Rose points out the irony of the invitation, Lotty defends it. “The important thing is to have lots of love about. I was very stingy with it back at home. I used to measure and count it out. I had this obsession with justice, you see. I wouldn’t love Mellersh unless he loved me back exactly as much. But he didn’t, and neither did I. The emptiness of it all.”
When Mellersh does arrive, his take on life is so diametrically opposed to that of the newly invigorated women that his point-of-view seems utterly out of place. “It would undoubtedly be best if one’s outward appearance and one’s feelings matched, but so often they don’t,” he tells the group over dinner, maintainingsociety’s need for propriety. “One can’t have everything.”
This conflict between an individual’s interior and exterior is a central theme of Enchanted April. In the Italian gardens, Lotty is able to find herself; she becomes the woman that has been buried inside her and, likewise naturally, each of her female companions undergoes a transformation of her own. Rose, who, according to Frederick, had the look of “a disappointed Madonna,” literally and figuratively lets her hair down and changes her attitude about her husband’s authorship. The natural resplendence surrounding Caroline day after day causes her to forget her own beauty and be introspective to find herself. Mrs. Fisher, who initially fights the temptation, finally gives in to the inspiration of the coastal villa to return to a long-lost innocence and appreciation of life.
Of course, considering the circumstances and the film’s title itself, these changes are anticipated; the focus then shifts to the men’s reception of the women’s refurbished psyches.
Much like the catharsis we vicariously receive from watching a revenge flick or the purging cry that’s triggered by a tear-jerker, Enchanted April offers a similar cleansing, albeit through the too often unappreciated ingredients of beauty, nature and jubilation.
The film Enchanted April is available to rent through the Long Beach Public Library system. For more information about obtaining a copy, call the Dana Branch Library at (562) 570-1042.
To read about some of the subjects related to this film, check out the following books: The Gardens at Giverny, A View of Monet’s World by Stephen Shore; Mediterranean, A Taste of the Sun in Over 150 Recipes by Jacqueline Clark; and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

This column is sponsored by the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association. For more information, contact them at (562) 595-0081 or e-mail info@bixbyknollsinfo.com.

Detour, the 1946 micro-budgeted road-trip film noir, has become a classic, if little known, example of how an engaging, even titillating and philosophical, movie can be created on a shoestring.
In a plot that pits an especially venomous femme fatale against a heartbroken man’s Manifest Destiny of sorts, Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a talented but bitterly unsuccessful piano player, is hitchhiking to L.A. to reconnect with his love, Sue, the beautimous songbird who’s recently left him behind in New York so she can pursue a Hollywood career.

After a driver who gives him a ride mysteriously dies, Al fears that he’ll be accused of murder, so he decides to hide the body and assume the dead man’s identity. He later picks up a hitcher called Vera (Ann Savage) who sees through his sham and blackmails him into taking part in her unlawful and immoral ruses.
Detour works in spite of itself. Shot in six days, it’s rife with errors and cheap cinematic techniques that only add to its mystery and charm. In the fourth scene, Al and Sue are strolling the street in New York but, instead of set pieces that suggest the city, an almost ridiculously thick fog engulfs them, so the scene could have easily been shot in Burbank.
On the road, when a truck driver stops for Al, the truck is on the wrong side of the street and Al jumps into what appears to be the driver’s side. This flaw was the result of the filmmakers, in retrospect, flipping the image to make it appear that the characters are traveling west, since they’d originally shot the cars moving from the left to the right side of the screen.
But when Al places a phone call to Sue, who’s on the left coast, and the telephone lines are panned, the message appears to be going left to right. Then, when he is talking to her, we know that she’s responding to him based on what he’s saying on his end, but we only see a reaction shot of her holding a phone to her ear, almost inanimate.
It’s easy to laugh at the mistakes, especially living in our modern world where any cinematic gaffes can be covered by re-shoots or fundamentally altered by CGI, but if you go along for the bizarre ride with Al, it’s definitely worth the 68-minute investment, especially when Vera enters the car.
Vera is the type of vamp who uses manipulation rather than charm, beauty or a well-endowed figure, and, when she’s paired up with Al, he’s clearly the lamb to her lion. She is particularly noxious, especially when contrasted with Al’s moral compass; despite dumping the dead man, he is remorseful for his bad choices, faithful to Sue when the liquored-up Vera offers herself to him, and genuinely resistant to her illegal schemes. It’s his refusal of her that makes her that much more compelling. You can tell she truly thinks she’ll be able to get anything she wants from him, but he doesn’t give her everything, and the salty names she calls him, “clean” due to the Hays Code, are more provocative than most of the four-letter words that desensitize us in today’s cinema.
As seductive and mesmerizing as computer-generated car crashes and alien invaders can be, let us not forget the ages-old virtues of a gripping story, complex characters and inventive dialogue. A true auteur can do a lot with a convertible, a desert road, a brassy broad and a few thousand clams.

Detour is available at some branches of the Long Beach Public Library, located at 3680 Atlantic Avenue. To read more about film noir, check out the following titles, also available at the libraries:

The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir by Foster Hirsch; Film noir : An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward; and Film Noir in Cultural Perspective by Jon Tuska.