Waste of time

The greatest movie ever made..!

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

***SPOILERS*** Kicked out of Hollywood as well as the USA because of her illicit affair, that resulted in the birth of her daughter, with Italian director Raborto Rosselini during the filming of the movie "Stromboli" Irgrid Bergman came back swinging two years later with the movie "Europa 51" as the deeply depressed and almost suicidal Irene Girard. It was Irene's partying and high living that lead to he 12 year old son Michele, Sandro Franchina, in being ignored by her to jump down a flight of stairs and end up killing himself. In finding out the reason for Michele's, in a death bed confession, strange action Irene loses it and almost, by trying to kill herself, follows her son to his grave.It's Irene's good friend communist and community organizer Andrea Casatti, Ettone Liannina, who fills her confused mind up with his socialist philosophy that screws her up even more then she already was. Leaving her rich life and luxury home in Rome Irene goes down to the slums of the city to help those unfortunate souls who's lives have been turned to sh*t because of the capitalist system that her husband George, Alexander Knox, a major Italian industrialist is a part of. As things turned out for Irene her helping the poor and downtrodden ended up with her being committed into a mental institution with her husband, who by then was estranged from her, George signing the admittance papers. It's in that mental institution that Irene finally found herself and her reason in life as well as a new home to help those souls that society has totally discarded.A bit too much to take with Ingrid Bergman playing a Mother Theresa, before anyone ever heard of her, but does a very convincing job of doing it. Bergman's acting, which was excellent, may have come more from the personal tragedies that she was suffering at the time in being condemned by the church as well as on the floor of the US Congress as being a disgrace to all thats good and decent in life because of her affair with Roberto Rosselini. That had her enhanced her acting in the part of Irene Girard that made her part so convincing. The movie also downplayed the fact that going red or communist was the way to find salvation with it, by Irene trying it, only lead to disaster to those she at first tried to help. It was Her total rejection of feeling sorry for herself and not make any excuses for the raw deals that she suffered in life that in the end made her a better person to herself as well as those that she unselfishly, without wanting any rewards, went out of her way to help.

Ingrid Bergman stars in this film made with her director husband Roberto Rossellini about a well-off wife and mother who finds out how to really make a difference after tragedy strikes her family.It does tend to get a little melodramatic, but, unlike some films that feel like two different halves, this manages to become something else in the second half without forcing it too much. Also, the writing and dialogue is very intelligent and moving, most of the time. A few lines may you feel like you're being preached at and it sometimes feels like the movie's trying too hard to be self-important for its own good. But overall, this has to be one of Ingrid Bergman's better foreign films she made with Rossellini.Oh, and how did her husband manage to get her in there anyway? Just because she left him didn't make her crazy. Where she ultimately winds up may seem ridiculous and a little extreme to some viewers, but her great acting, as usual, and strong convictions makes the movie end on a high note, allowing the viewer see the bitter irony of life and sacrifice.

It's a bit melodramatic, but up until Irene's final conversation with Cassatti the Commie, *Europa '51* is a very interesting film, first about a pampered rich woman's reaction to her son's death, then about the difference between windy Marxist propaganda and real compassion.However, at that point, Rossellini's original idea takes over: He wanted to make a film about what would happen if a truly saintly person ever showed up in the modern world. And he had a very good idea of what would happen--or at least a very insistent one. The people here obviously behave the way they do solely to make the point Rossellini wants to make, even when their behavior doesn't seem very plausible. In defter hands, such manipulation can work. Here, though, you can see the tracks Rossellini has rather clumsily laid down to move the story where he wants it to go.

After filming stories about the resistance of the Italian people during the Fascist and Nazi regimes, and the story of a German child against the barren landscape of Berlin after the war, Roberto Rossellini made a movie about Francis of Assisi and started a love and work relationship with actress Ingrid Bergman. In his evolution to works like 'The Rise To Power of Louis XIV', he made a series of melodramas with Bergman, of which 'Stromboli' and 'Voyage To Italy' are always considered the most important. Add to that list this fine drama, in which bourgeois housewife Irene suffers a transformation when confronted with the misery of those who had not been benefited with the European 'economic miracle.' Considered a saint by those she helped (Giulietta Masina included), Rossellini makes quite obvious that Irene reached that state by detouring from the usual roads she took as the wife of a prominent industrialist (Alexander Knox.) Not only has she a Marxist cousin –who curiously does not preach his philosophy, but gives Irene advise whenever she talks about the misery she is discovering- but she also ventures into the slums, helps a single mother, a prostitute and a thief. The final section of the movie reminded me of 'María de mi corazón', a latter film written by Gabriel García Márquez, based on a real story. As in 'María…' there is neither opportunity nor chance to explain clearly what she's going through to husband or authorities, leading her to a dead end of desperation. Only sainthood will save her from the dehumanization around her.