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DVD Video Review
Disc Specs
- Region:
0 - Released:
19th November 2007 - Country:
United Kingdom - Running Time:
98 minutes - Screen Format:
4:3 Non-Anamorphic PAL - Discs / Sides / Layers:
1 / 1 / Single - Soundtracks:
English Mono
Italian Mono - Subtitles:
English - Special Features:
Photo Galleries - Distributor:
Mr Bongo Films
Film Specs
- Certificate:
PG - Released:
1950 - Country:
Italy - Director:
Michelangelo Antonioni - Starring:
Lucia Bosé
Massimo Girotti
Ferdinando Sarmi
Gino Rossi - Genre(s):
Classic
Politics
The Story Of A Love Affair
25-11-2007 00:00 | 3129 views | John White | Show Backlinks
The Film
In 1950, Italian cinema was in the thrall of neo-realism as a young director made his debut feature. Appropriately, Story of a Love Affair is set within post war recession, capitalist exploitation and the reminders of Italian defeat in the second World War. This gritty setting is in contrast to the best of Antonioni's later films that would achieve maturity in their pointless searches and alienated beauty, where the distractions of wealth and consumerism are little recompense for the meaninglessness of the world. His later trademark characters would form attachments not because of love, but out of the fear of loneliness and the need to fill existence with something, anything. The worlds of L'Eclisse, L'Avventura and La Notte are ones of pending economic chaos where the wealthy await ruin with quiet desperation and where holocaust is as much an existing spiritual experience as an unsettling future fear.
Story of A Love Affair was some ten years before his cycle of masterpieces and after hearing a cursory description of the plot, it would be easy to categorise the work as a film noir. Adultery, secrets, money and murder are the noiresque engines of the story, but the film itself is characteristically less concerned with narrative and has a stronger social sensibility than the similarly plotted hollywood thrillers of the forties it resembles. As much as it is a love triangle thriller, Story of A Love Affair is more about the impossibility of fulfillment and the emptiness of these modern lives.
Equal parts dark night of the soul and record of a wrecked and ravaged world, Antonioni's debut is less wistful than what followed in his career but his hallmark of capturing beauty and emptiness is apparent. Lucia Bose is a striking woman who all the furs in the world will not bring happiness to, and her scenes with Massimo Girotti wreak of desperation as their torrid relationship simply shames their dreams and fails to satiate their hunger. For all the glorious nightlife, the expensive dresses and the high fashion the world outside is bleak and broken with happiness destroyed by the very notion of looking for it.
The Disc
Over in the US, No Shame released this film last year and this Mr Bongo Films region free single layer release bears the same artwork and the same restored transfer, courtesy of Giuseppe Rotunno. The US release was criticised for being taken from a PAL source with evidence of conversions issues and I did wonder whether this transfer had been converted properly from that source as the same conversion issues are written larger here. The transfer is relatively sharp and the contrast levels are generally ok, but the image lacks some detail and the print shows some damage. There is evidence of ghosting, combing and motion shake, as well as some artefacting and sawtoothing. The screens I have taken of the film give a good idea of the visual quality and you can see it is far from poor, even with a suspicion that it may be a standards conversion of a standards conversion.
The audio comes in a English mono dub which is clearer and less worn than the original Italian mono track, which has soundtrack hum and regular hiss and pops. I have to say that I can't imagine wanting to watch this in an English dub, and found that the limitations of the Italian track including flatness and some distortion did not put me off too much. The accompanying optional English subs are well written and legible.
The extra features are limited to a picture gallery accompanied by the film's soundtrack music. The menus blend poster art and the bridge scene from the film and are straightforward to use.
Summary
An excellent debut comes to DVD and whilst the release is light on extras and the transfer is not perfect, this is better than could have been expected from such an unheralded company.
Comments
Member
Posts: 605
The screens I have taken of the film give a good idea of the visual quality and you can see it is far from poor, even with a suspicion that it may be a standards conversion of a standards conversion.
I think you're right - I've been examining a couple of sequences in detail, stepping through them frame by frame, to try to work out why motion is so jerky, and I have a horrible suspicion that the transfer's defects are almost entirely down to inept standards conversion.
It's a real shame, as the source print is in excellent condition - had the transfer been done properly this could well be up there with Masters of Cinema's Bellissima, my personal benchmark for Italian cinema of this vintage.