1940意大利短片
Roberto Rossellini's first film is a work of deceptive transparency. In its initial moments the film appears to be a documentary about underwater, even deep-sea, species. But soon after, the
narration, in the manner of Cocteau, unleashes a powerful "dual reality" onto the images, imbuing them not only with a narrative logic, but a kind of magic. (Let's be clear, for Rossellini there are basically
no precedents; or about those that can at least "be said to" exist this filmmaker would always be willing in turn to rejoinder, and pointedly, that the material influences for any film of merit hail from life
itself and the powers of the observer; correspondences between films might exist — but why shouldn't they, since audiences and filmmakers are all, ostensibly, alive.) Magic always resides within reality; maybe
it's better to say Rossellini "imbues" less than he unlocks. So I ask, at no-one in particular: Is the difference in method (imbue vs. unlock) why Rossellini (or Vigo, or Renoir) have, insanely, been
perpetually categorized as (excruciatingly loaded, extraordinarily wish-fulfilling and villainous phrase) "master realists," as though they were closer in form and temperament to the aggressions of a
Chernyshevsky than to the "specific details" of a Nabokov? As though Picasso's famous assertion — "I do not seek — I find" — were, after all, too "oracular" (read as: foolish, mad, cavalier, unsuitable for We
2.0) and, therefore, too domineering in service of the cause of the Individual (too self-involved!), rather than that of the marxist-christianic Social Fabric (just communist/grown-up enough!)? It is my belief
that whenever imagination and freedom stand as the core precepts of one's aesthetic, no intrusions (invited or repressed) of "political" or "social" "realities," either as plot-element, backdrop, or general
milieu, can grant Possession and Control of that work to the envious workaday critics, hack bloggers, or majordomo Ideologians. All great artists know, and from head to toe, that the big picture is the
Individual and his interior perceptions of the outside world — and that artistic generation is simply the mimetic representation, mise en abyme, of this graceful essence and its occasionally ancillary residue
(i.e., external action). For Rossellini, social realities exist in counterpoint to knowledge and fantasy, and Rossellini's Undersea Fantasy [Fantasia sottomarina, 1938] is an essay upon man's only material
reality: his origin, and the circumstances of his end.