Journey to Italy

Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, 1954) is Roberto Rossellini's landmark drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. English couple Katherine and Alex Joyce drive south to Naples to sell a villa left to them by an uncle.

Eight years married, they find themselves truly alone for the first time — no friends, no work, none of the London routine that used to fill the silence. And they discover they have almost nothing to say. Alex grows restless and lets his eye wander; Katherine drifts through Naples on her own, past museums, the ruins of Pompeii, halls lined with ancient statues. The old stones and the smoking volcanic ground slowly expose a crack the two had been careful not to see.

Rossellini all but abandons plot here — the film lives in faces, pauses, glances that land wrong. The young French critics who would become the New Wave, Truffaut and Rivette among them, called it the birth of modern cinema. Ingrid Bergman plays not a star but a bewildered, ordinary woman coming undone. Stream Journey to Italy online on iFILM if you'll sit with a marriage as it falls apart and quietly reassembles.