The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, September 16-22
Umberto D. (1952)
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
De Sica called Umberto D. “uncompromising,” though everyone onscreen is compromised: Umberto, a retired civil servant, is hopelessly in debt; his landlady’s young maid is pregnant, with neither potential dad glad to hear the news. The landlady herself, a battleship blonde, wishes to have Umberto finally evicted, and rents by the hour to adulterous couples looking for room to tryst. In postwar Rome, all (excluding Flyke the dog, Umberto’s sole companion) is vanity. De Sica reached no compromise with the Italian audience, either: even more so than Bicycle Thieves, another of his collaborations with screenwriter Zavattini, at home the movie tanked. But the New York Film Critics Circle liked it well enough to give it the Best Film Award in 1955; ours is a city that can relate acutely to a rent crisis. Elina Mishuris (September 22, 23, 2:30pm, 8:30pm; September 25, 26, 2:30pm, 6:30pm at Film Forum’s De Sica series)