“The only stage is the street!”
an economic world contained in a street corner. Vecchiali’s fluid camera hovers around our vibrant, youthful characters for us to watch as they engage with each other and make ripples in their lives. all of them are plagued by the love - a love that has its own separate meaning according to each one - that’s there but which they have no means to express apart from transactions. beauty and evil coexist seamlessly here: everything seems so beautiful until it’s not, everything seems so dark until it isn’t ,, Rosa embodies the power and fantasy of the cinema; the free movements of dance, the romantic sound of music, the tragedy of the opera, etc. we fawn and weep for her. she takes the stage, basking in the sun for the audience to observe until she starts to attempt to quit the streets, therefore making the performance crumble and the screen go black, leaving the audience alone as the final cut determines her fate. she’s both haunted and reinvigorated by the cinema. freedom comes with a sickly cost.
some truly spellbinding filmmaking here; i struggle to not call it all magical. Vecchiali manages to stuff so much life and texture into a single scene, into a single pan of the camera, into the way the light of each space reflects across each character’s body, all bursting with color. would love to revisit this film once i see more of his filmography and the other directors he seems to be in dialogue with here (Renoir, Ophüls, etc)
“The only stage is the street!”
an economic world contained in a street corner. Vecchiali’s fluid camera hovers around our vibrant, youthful characters for us to watch as they engage with each other and make ripples in their lives. all of them are plagued by the love - a love that has its own separate meaning according to each one - that’s there but which they have no means to express apart from transactions. beauty and evil coexist seamlessly here: everything seems so beautiful until it’s not, everything seems so dark until it isn’t ,, Rosa embodies the power and fantasy of the cinema; the free movements of dance, the romantic sound of music, the tragedy of the opera, etc. we fawn and weep for her. she takes the stage, basking in the sun for the audience to observe until she starts to attempt to quit the streets, therefore making the performance crumble and the screen go black, leaving the audience alone as the final cut determines her fate. she’s both haunted and reinvigorated by the cinema. freedom comes with a sickly cost.
some truly spellbinding filmmaking here; i struggle to not call it all magical. Vecchiali manages to stuff so much life and texture into a single scene, into a single pan of the camera, into the way the light of each space reflects across each character’s body, all bursting with color. would love to revisit this film once i see more of his filmography and the other directors he seems to be in dialogue with here (Renoir, Ophüls, etc)
