Brown University Presents Il Cinema Ritrovato

One of the great things about writing for Motif is cluing people in to theatrical events that otherwise might go unnoticed by the general film-going public. Next week the Italian Studies Department at Brown University will present a touring version of Il Cinema Ritrovato, a yearly festival held to showcase the restoration work performed by the Cineteca of Bologna, Italy. Starting Mon, March 16, they will showcase five nights of restored classics ranging from a selection of Chaplin shorts to the 1970 winner of the best foreign film Oscar Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion.

One of the great films screening will be Angst (1954), the last film Roberto Rossellini directed, starring his wife Ingrid Bergman before they were divorced. Angst concerns Irene Wagner (Bergman), a factory owner who cheated on her husband and is now being blackmailed by an ex-girlfriend of the man with whom she had the affair. As the plot twists and turns, we find out that there may be more behind the blackmail than we originally thought.

Based on a book by Stefan Zweig, Angst is a well-written and taught drama with thriller overtones, which the cast navigates perfectly. The film is also a phenomenally shot film that seemingly blends the visual styles of both film noir and neo realism. It is wonderfully shot by Carlo Carlini, who shot many great Italian films, such as The Big Gundown and one of my favorite underseen films, The Bloodstained Butterfly. Rossellini is considered to be a masterful director and this is evident even in his lesser-known films such as this one, which from what I can tell isn’t even available in the US on DVD.

Angst (La Paura) (1954); Dir: Roberto Rossellini; Starring: Ingrid Bergman, Mathias Wieman, Renate Mannhardt

Il Cinema Ritrovato runs March 16 through 20 at the Granoff Center For The Arts, 154 Angell St, Providence. All screenings start at 7pm and are free to the public. For more info on the films, head over to cineritrovatobrown.weebly.com. And if Angst sounds interesting to you it screens Wed, March 18.