I can’t even begin to stress how much I love this following video created by kogonada for Sight & Sound magazine in which he takes on the question “What is neorealism?” by comparing Vittorio De Sica‘s Terminal Station and David O. Selznick‘s Indiscretion of an American Wife, which some may describe as the same film, but as this video points out, they most certainly are not.
Released in Italy in 1953 as Terminal Station at 90 minutes in length, producer David O. Selznick cut it down to 63 minutes before releasing it as Indiscretion of an American Wife in 1954. Starring Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift, the story focuses on a married American woman attempting to break off an affair with a young Italian before leaving Rome by train.
The focus of the piece by kogonada are primarily the “in-between moments” and how Selznick’s cut seems to insist “time and place are more critical than plot or story”. He illustrates how De Sica’s editing allows the image to linger where Selznick wishes to maintain focus on the film’s lead character and how at the film’s outset he’s impatient and rushes to give the audience as much information as possible as quickly as possible.
This isn’t to say a film must be slow to be good, but how much richer it becomes when extras aren’t looked as extras, but necessities in the world the film presents.
The video runs less than five minutes long and I urge you to watch the entire thing. It’s incredibly rewarding.
