A Film Canon

Umberto D. brings De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini's neorealism to its logical conclusion, condensing narrative to the eponymous character's contemplation of his own imminent annihilation; that is, his studied contemplation of the cityscape that will remain entirely indifferent to that annihilation - from his tyrannical landlady, who deliberately raises the rent above what his pension can afford, to a peculiar prominence of classical co-ordinates, as if to crush him with the weight of history. That said, the film simultaneously presents De Sica's most mechanised cityscape, as the various factors standing in the way of a dignified death progress from a series of ambient, dreamlike noises, to so many variations on the cinema that the landlady's fiancee operates (and which finds its cipher in the screen-like opening that she makes in Umberto's wall) and, finally, to the oppressive static of the train line against which the final scene takes place. The result is a minute observation of everyday life, in which every nuance is suffused with transitoriness, culminating with the iconic, extended scene in which the boarding house's maid prepares breakfast, and which partakes of a profound melancholy that supervenes its banal, and even boring content (in much the same way as first-time non-professional Carlo Battisti's performance of Umberto). It's also worth mentioning De Sica's transformation of the sensory-motor disorientation that characterises the children of his earlier films into a shared principle of childhood and old age, explaining both the rapport between Umberto and the young maid (Maria Pia Casilio), and its pervasive clumsiness, as well as their awkwardness with their hands, which hover between instruments of appeal and repulsion.