Umberto D.



Shot on location with a cast of nonprofessional actors, Vittorio De Sica's neorealist masterpiece follows Umberto D., an elderly pensioner, as he struggles to make ends meet during Italy’s postwar economic boom. Alone except for his dog, Flike, Umberto strives to maintain his dignity while trying to survive in a city where traditional human kindness seems to have lost out to the forces of modernization. Umberto’s simple quest to fulfill the most fundamental human needs—food, shelter, companionship—is one of the most heartbreaking stories ever filmed and an essential classic of world cinema.

Disc Features

- New high-definition digital transfer, made from restored elements
- That’s Life: Vittorio De Sica, a 55-minute documentary made for Italian television in 2001
- New video interview with actress Maria Pia Casilio
- New essay by critic Stuart Klawans and a reprinted recollection on the film by De Sica
- Writings on Umberto D. by De Sica, Umberto Eco, Carlo Battisti and Luisa Alessandri
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

Criterionforum.org user rating averages

Umberto D. is a great film, I'm surprised it doesn't have any posts yet. In my opinion it is De Sica's greates film... Even better than The Bicycle Thief. He expresses emotions in his film and makes the audience express emotions too, much like David Gordon Green (Rather David Gordon Green expresses emotions much like De Sica. See my George Washington post.)
But if you really want to see something that explains Umberto D., and De Sica in general to the best possible point see Martin Scorsese's My Voyage To Italy. One of the greatest documentaries I've ever seen.

I'm curious to know what others think of Umberto Ds ending. Are you satisfied with the ending? I have a hard time buying it.

Spoilers!

Umberto sets himself with his dog to get run over by the train and the dog freaks out causing him to snap out of it. He then decides to play with the dog through the park. All happening so blazingly quick.

I think that's a bit of a simplification. I would have focused more on the dog's initial distrust of his owner after nearly being murder-suicided followed by the gradual return to devotion as the "ending" of the film.

I never meant to diss Umberto D. This film is shimmered with moments of surpassing cinematic beauty. One of such moments is the sequence that follows a young pregnant girl through her morning routine. Awakened by a cat padding across the roof, she rises and proceeds to the kitchen, grinding the coffee while reaching to close the door with her toe. De Sica is so attuned to the rhythym of her mornings that the scene feels wonderfully lived-in, as if the wall between life and art itself crumbled for one perfect instant.

I love the entirety of Umberto D except for the very last shot which I could possibly misunderstand or misread. What is De Sica trying to extend in that last shot? It can't be happy (and I hope it's never intended to be sentimental!) because life will treat Umberto the same if not worse. So is it possible that Umberto gains a new and maybe more positive outlook on life? The open-endness of the ending is not an issue with me but the entirety of the film focuses on how life is cruel through Umberto's eyes and the last shot seems to keep its distance from Umberto, leaving me a bit frustrated because I want to know what he's thinking. So I guess being with his dog is all that matters to him at that moment.

...that he's still got something, his dog who recognizes him and loves him as much as he can, and oh well, just better keep on keepin' on. Honestly, if you're looking for some hidden masterstroke epiphany I don't think it's there. After nearly ninety minutes of getting jerked around (90 minutes of us watching him get jerked around) he finally saw no way out, steeled himself to go against god and man and end it all...then got snapped back into the reality of "life sucks but it's all we got so make the most of it...and he it's a bright sunny day, you're in a park, and look! you've got a little dog wit' ya! how precious"

I think that was my problem. Ninety minutes of cinematic beauty and somberness led me to thinking that there might be something majestic hidden somehere in the end.


You couldn't say it better.

Does anyone know anything about Belmondo being in the remakeof this film?

This is as fine a depiction of urban alienation as I've ever seen.
The little man not-quite-alone in the uncaring inhuman city: eventually, even estranged from his little dog.
Beautifully photographed too, in Rome. One scene has I think the Pantheon as a backdrop.
Funnily enough, Umberto's depiction by De Sica brings to mind some aspects of Deckard's depiction by Scott in 'Blade Runner'.

The first (and so far only) Vittorio De Sica film I've seen. "Umberto D." mirror's Kurosawa's "Ikiru" in that it follows the plight of an old man aging alone and/or feeling his life has not amounted to much is milked for all its potent dramatic impact. Unlike poor and powerless Umberto D. the persistent Mr. Watanabe was at least able to bully his way through government bureocracy to leave a park behind. But, unlike "Ikiru," De Sica's non-actors deliver top-to-bottom excellent performances (Carlo Battisti in particular, with Lina Gennari exhuding Nurse Ratchet-like nastiness as the landlady) and the pride of its lead character's refusal to bend over the weight of the world on his shoulders won me over. Sad but incredibly uplifting (Umberto never surrenders his dignity despite having every reason to beg or be bitter) "Umberto D.'s" finale is ambiguous but at least Umberto's loyal dog Flicke will be around to keep his owner company... but for how long? Where will they go? How will they feed themselves? The power of the movie is that it makes you care about Domenico and Flicke, then ends the narrative and leaves us wondering what ever became of these two (plus Maria and her unborn baby). By leaving them hanging in cinematic limbo De Sica frees the audience to project our worst fears/best wishes into the unseen future of "Umberto D.'s" folks. Since we're still thinking about him (plus his pet and those that were kind to him) all these many years later Domenico's plights were rewarded with the greatest gift reward a person (even a fictitious character in a neo-realist Italian movie) can achieve after death: immortality.

Were you saying there were bad performances in Ikiru?


Sure, that's the spirit of the message DeSica was trying to get across viz Umberto.

I haven't even seen the movie yet and I know how ridiculous that is. It's not about the individual, but people acting with people.

This is a nice thought and I'm glad you enjoyed the film. You should definitely check out DeSica's other works, starting with "Bicycle Thieves" and/or "Shoeshine". Some of his later stuff is worth seeing as well, including "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis". Approach the screwball comedies with caution. ("Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" is one of the better ones.) Enjoy!

"Goebbels, for all his foibles, is still remembered today, and isn't that what really counts?"

Mostly the guys playing the clerks and civilians that show up during Mr. Watanabe's funeral (particularly Minosuke Yamada's Saito and Kamatari Fujiwara's Ono). Even with the excuse they were drunk on sake, grief and/or the spirit of the moment their overacting teeters on the edge of cartoony. By contrast even the non-actors in "Umberto D." show restrain and never deliver OTT performances like the handful that snuck past Kurosawa in his '52 masterpiece.

And domino harvey, I don't need to tell you there are different kinds and degrees of immortality. Yes, Goebbles (and his piece of shit Nazi boss) is an immortal being for the horrible things he and his subordinates did to millions of innocent people. So are Pol Pot, Milošević, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini and countless other despots. But their immortality comes at the price that whatever these men stood for (along with their names) will be perpetually discredited, condemned and looked at with disgust by generations to come. By contrast millions of innocent hard-working men like Umberto Domenico have died and been forgotten by even their relatives, the only people that can keep the memory of a dead person alive. In "Umberto D." De Sica gave these masses of nameless civilians (the one's that don't fall into the opposite end of the spectrum depicted in Bunuel's "Viridiana") a symbol they can look at, relate to and vicariously feel their meaningless day-to-day lives mean something. It's the storyline fuel that powers religious devotion, telenovela viewership in Latin American countries and our love of movies that transcend their time and place.

So yes, both Goebbles and the fictitious Umberto D. are immortal but only one of them is looked back as something worth remembering with a smile. And it's not the one whose actions are studied in history books as the stuff we're NOT supposed to emulate or admire.

So it's either a blessing or a curse, but not the:

And i hesitate to say it could even be called a blessing in this case, as poor Umberto, Old World, stubborn and defiant as he is, would probably be outraged at the fact that he's remembered as an example of great human suffering, of the unfairness of the state, as someone abandoned by society. He's too proud to accept our pity, perhaps even our compassion.


This is a huge and slightly offensive generalization you're making about the nature of religion and art. I would also like to think (and do think, actually) that De Sica's methods and narrative draw us in in more subtle and complex ways than those of the telenovela.

Respectfully disagree. I don't see any similarity between Ikiru and Umberto D besides the age of the protagonist. Ikiru is ultimately positive. Umberto D is maddeningly negative (in a great way that film confronts the senses of the viewer). There is a major different between the two protagonists. While both are very sad, it is for different reasons. The old man in Ikiru is indeed how you described and Kurosawa drives the point home that the protagonist is very conscious of a seeming 'waste of life'. He actively looks for a way to bring some value to his life before he passes. Umberto on the other hand seems less romantic himself. In my opinion, he doesn't seem to care about meaning at all. This isn't to say he is without his pride of course, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is proactively trying to have an affect on his surroundings. Umberto is detached. I even question is want of survival beyond the primordial instinct. Even in the beginning when he and his fellow workers are protesting, he doesn't even seem to want to be there. Ikiru is sad in forcing the viewer him/herself to question the meaning of life in terms of making a different or leaving a legacy. Umberto D is sad by rendering the viewer impotent and helpless. Even if you are compelled to love him, he doesn't give a shit. The viewer is forced to confront apathy by watching someone who not only won't do anything about his precarious situation, but doesn't even question it. The old man in Ikiru isn't beaten; Umberto is.

I would compare Ikiru with Wild Strawberries before Umberto D.

EDIT: (Umberto D is one of my favorite films)

Ahh, what a nice contrast to Mouchette. Both films have a downtrodden protagonist in common; however, all comparisions end there. De Sica treats Umberto with the respect Bresson could not afford for Mouchette. Indeed, de Sica's Umberto is downright human. His situation can happen to any of us. This stands in sharp contrast to Bresson's Mouchette, who seemed like a cartoonish caricature of suffering. There's a humanity in de Sica's telling of Umberto's days. While I understand that was not Bresson's modus operandi with Mouchette, it was still refreshing to see warmth on display.

And that ending. Perhaps one of the most discussed endings in all of de Sica's work, I found it only worked as an epiphany, if at all. Umberto decided to live, at least for that one day. His dog made his life worth living. Yet something about the ending rang hollow. Umberto had been languishing over uncertainty, clearly contemplating suicide and then, as if he had been delivered a giant slap in the face, snapped out of it. It removed me from the groove and feel de Sica had established early on.

Also, were all the automobiles coming between people symbolic of anything? There are multiple scenes where buses, trains, and trucks come between people . . .

Personally, I find Mouchette engaging because I experience it as a cartoonish caricature of suffering.

The Umberto D Criterion website page lists the Trailer, but the initial post in this thread doesn't.

As I live in Australia I'm unable to get the BlueRay Criterion DVDs as they are region locked, so need to get the DVDs.

Could anyone who has the DVD edition please advise if it includes the Trailer, or will this be a BluRay only extra?

John

my DVD does NOT list the trailer.

I am a bit disappointed, I prefer those rounded-corners.