‘Umberto D’ or — One Man and His Dog or One Dog and His Man?
(No spoilers)
All I knew about Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Umberto D’ (1952) was that it is about an old man and his dog and that it is very sad and very moving. ”Well, one of these poor buggers is obviously going to die,” I thought. ”But which one?” Put it this way — the ending caught me by surprise.
Umberto Domenico Ferrari doesn’t have much in life except his self-respect and his dog, Flike. He is behind in his rent, which his pension can’t quite cover anymore, his nasty landlady is renting his room out to couples to have sex in when he is out and if he can’t come up with 15,000 lire by the end of the month she’s going to throw Umberto and Flike out onto the street. Everything Umberto tries to raise money seems to fail whether it’s marching to demand a raise in his pension, selling his watch or attempting to borrow money from old colleagues. To be honest, it doesn’t much matter as his nasty, aspirational, nouveau riche landlady is determined to have him and his mutt out of her house no matter what.
After admitting himself to hospital with a sore throat for a few days (a good way to save money) Umberto returns to find Flike has run away to search for his missing master. This forces Umberto to use the little money he has been saving to desperately track down his beloved pet who obviously means the world to him and when Umberto witnesses what will happen if he is too late it is truly upsetting.
Will Umberto find Flike before what happens to stray dogs inevitably happens? Even if he does, the future isn’t looking bright for either of them and Umberto has pretty much run out of options. But as long as they have each other everything will be okay, right? Right?
Much like his ‘Bicycle Thieves’ (1948), De Sica’s ‘Umberto D’ is a story that emerges then merges back into a crowd, informing us that this is only one tale, one life, in a city of a million others. An opening shot looks down on a mass of old men marching for an increase in their pension only to be swept aside by an uncaring tram, nothing more than detritus to be brushed away (vehicles are of vital importance here acting as potential transport in more ways than one). Likewise, it is not only Umberto who is suffering but also the live-in maid of his landlady who faces a fate almost as bleak as his, especially once her unwanted pregnancy can no longer be hidden and the hypocritical landlady who rents rooms to prostitutes would die of the shame of an unmarried housekeeper with child. Indeed, even Umberto can be harsh to this young maid, berating her for letting Flike escape despite the fact that he’s seen her has just being left by the father of her unborn child.
This has led some people to call Umberto unsympathetic but that is a complete misread of his personality because this is a person with a realistic character as opposed to the stereotyped, good natured old codger full of wisdom and patience. Much like Leo McCarey did in ‘Make Way For Tomorrow’ (1937), De Sica does not sentimentalise old age. Umberto is a human being who just so happens to be old, so he when something upsets him we can see he is hurt, frustrated when he is frustrated and his attempts to retain the last of his decorum are less driven out of vanity but purely because this is all he has left of his humanity; to let that go would reduce him to nothing more than an animal.
Which brings us to the end of the film and the moment of despair we all knew was coming. Will Umberto give into ultimate despair? Yet ultimate despair always has collateral damage and even when you think you’ve lost everything there is always the chance you could lose even more through the selfishness of seeking oblivion. What was shocking was that even though De Sica plays our heartstrings like a master manipulator the ending did take me by surprise and didn’t turn out how I was expecting. Instead of easy tragedy De Sica gives us something with more depth and nuance, something which provides more life which only helps to make it all even more emotionally devastating. This film contains sadness but it is also uplifting in the most unexpected way as the central relationship achieves a sort of levelling.
Of all the Neo-realist films ‘Umberto D’ might be the most Neo-realistically (?!) but it also highlights what a slippery, and sometimes inaccurate, term that can be. Hell, even ‘Rome Open City’ (1945) has a character being hit on the head with a frying pan for comic effect. How realistic is that?! So even though De Sica uses social themes, non-professional actors, documentary filming techniques and location shooting there’s also the influence of silent cinema comedy, elaborate sets filmed at Cinecitta and some gorgeous deep focus cinematography that would make ‘Citizen Kane’ sit up and take notice. And if I had to draw a comparison it would be to the quiet work of Yasujiro Ozu and how he tackles aging (but that could be because there’s not quite as much shouting in ‘Umberto D’ as other Italian movies). But at the centre of all this, what we have is a tale about a man and his dog where the smallest of incidents can mean the entire world for both of them.
‘Umberto D’ is a wonderful film. It’s captivating, sensitive and although heart-breaking it is not as depressing as I feared and even somewhat life-affirming. It just doesn’t guarantee what that life is going to be or how it will work out for you.
Oh, on a closing note there is a small, but very funny, gag regarding opera I want to mention. Umberto’s nasty, nouveau riche landlady is into opera, has it playing throughout her house (even if, initially, as a signifying of which of her rooms are “occupied”), starts holding opera recitals in her living room and sees the art form very much as a signifier of being culturally sophisticated. De Sica satirises this aspirational affectation (notice in the background life of the city the average, honest Italian is always going to the cinema instead of listening to Verdi or Puccini), puncturing the notion that all Italians are opera-lovers and that, maybe, it’s a national cliché and an attractor of snobbery instead. Even Sergio Leone, when asked why his Westerns were operatic, replied that they weren’t and that he not only didn’t like opera but found it too silly to be taken seriously. It was refreshing to see De Sica ridicule that national myth rather than fetishising opera the way some other Italian directors have done so… and yes Bertolucci, I’m looking at you.
