Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37308 in DVD
• Formats: Import, Full Screen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Korean

Customer Reviews

For adults (in the good sense) or those who are becoming
Take it like it wasn't a movie. See no stars here. Imagine this was your grandma and grandpa in those old times travelling thru Italy to sell their enchanting house in Napoli. What a collection of wonderful, captivating views! You can see the valley of the Vesubio, houses that must have been built on top of other ruined houses, again and again. It's like you travelling those places.

Now what really astonished me is not the sense of reality I got watching those locations, it was the real characters of the husband and wife. They weren't playing any roles. They citical situation just developed normaly, the way it develops in real life. It's not acting. The married couple has been drifting apart since a long time ago, and now come to a breaking point. There are no histrionics. It's just a regular couple like any other. If you don't get it, you just ain't grown up yet. I think this is one of the best films I've evre seen, but I'm still wondering why, because there's nothing grand or spectacular about it, not even mysterious, or weird. It's just plain old time good visual story telling.

Watch also Rossellini's "stromboli". I loved both.

A gift to posterity
Though considered one of Roberto Rossellini's greatest works, this film is actually a lesser-known film of both Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, which is a pity because it is an intriguing film, and like most art films, possessed of more real quality than most commercial releases, past or present.

Aside from its story, the film itself is a gift to posterity in exhibiting authentic street scenes, countryside, and Mediterranean landscapes and renowned destinations of Naples, Pompeii, and Capri. These real-life scenes are cinematic treasures that no vintage travelogue would ever show, living tableaus of a postwar Southern Italy that is gone forever but here captured through the eyes and lens of one of Italy's native artists who is also gone forever.

What makes the film so enchanting is that the rare and uniquely filmed scenery is metaphorical with the story, for the "journey" (voyage) of the film's title is not just a physical journey but an emotional and philosophical journey as well.

The story, superficially, is about a British husband and wife who are in Naples for the purpose of selling family land. The essence of the story derives from the couple's constant bickering, which blinds them to all that is around them - all the natural and manmade beauty of Italy that is passing before them in symbols of life and death. Each of them is too self-absorbed to realize or appreciate that everything - time, culture, way of life - is passing, just like the landscape as they drive along in their Rolls Royce, and in their blindness, they repeatedly forfeit the happiness of just being alive, together, and voyaging in Italy.

Worth seeing in the film are the dated scenes of the sculpture galleries of the Naples National Archaeological Museum, also the Solfatara Crater where a guide demonstrates the vapor phenomenon to Ingrid Bergman.

But the most significant visual art of the film - absolutely most worth the film - is a moving and pivotal scene near the film's end in which the couple (and the viewer) has the opportunity to witness an actual archaeological excavation process of on-site mould casting of skeletal remains at the ruins of Pompeii. This was a real event, not staged, which makes the cinematic and metaphorical impact all the stronger. The skeletal remains are those of a man and a woman caught at the moment of instant death from the Vesuvian eruption of 79 CE.

Just as the couple wonders, the viewer also wonders what were the man and woman doing at that last moment when death took them by surprise. Bickering? Making love?

Scenes of a beautiful religious procession conclude the film, which is only 84 minutes long. The couple is forced by the procession to stop their car. As they stand, still bickering, amid the onlookers, a miracle takes place with a blind old man who suddenly (just as suddenly as Vesuvius erupted long ago) regains his sight. In all the commotion, the couple becomes separated, which for them is the miracle that reunites them.

"Journey to Italy" from S.Korea IS in ENGLISH
This excellent film is mis-labeled on the back cover of the DVD case: It is not in Italian~The whole original dialog is in English, with an additional track of really good commentary that provides a wealth of information, also in English. The Korean subtitles are removable, from the interactive DVD Menu. Sound is excellent, and so is the Black and White picture quality.