Black & White World

Terra trema: Episodio del mare, La (1948)

IMDB

Luchino Visconti’s heartfelt melodrama about poor fishermen in Sicily feels voyeuristic at times because of its near-documentary style.  Using real people instead of actors was part of the style of neo-Realism, but in this case it didnt’ seem to work as well as in De Sica’s Bicycle Thief or Umberto D.  The credits on this film are skimpy on IMDB, but the young lady who played Mara was particularly lifeless—and yes, the character is probably quite lifeless too, but… I don’t know, if someone is appearing in a film, they need to make some kind of connection to the camera.  Most of these people did not, at least not for me.  Their actions and dialogue seemed forced.

The narration was largely extraneous (often simply telling us what just happened in the scene we just watched) and detracted from my enjoyment of the film.  I wanted to like it a lot more than I did.