A Quiet Ending

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

A BRIEF VACATION

Directed by VITTORIO DE SICA

Screenplay by CESARE ZAVATTINI

It is a small and simple thing, this last film by the late Vittorio De Sica. Clara (Florinda Bolkan) is a poor, feverishly depressed and angry woman, the sole support of a numerous, ne'er-do-well family. One day she collapses in the heat and clamor of the factory, where she works at the hardest but best-paying job. The doctor at the clinic to which she reluctantly reports diagnoses her fever as something more than a metaphor; it is a symptom of tuberculosis. Over the objections of husband and in-laws, she goes to the state-supported sanatorium in the mountains for a rest cure.

The hospital is modern and well managed, as close to a first-class resort as a poor person is ever likely to encounter. The other patients--comic in some instances, tragic in others--are all helpful in drawing her out of her anxious reserve. A decent, quiet-spoken young mechanic (Daniel Quenaud), who bought her a comforting cup of coffee when they met at the clinic back home, now offers her the possibility of a gentle romance unlike anything she has ever known.

First Night. All of this is good, but no more so than the peace of empty days after a lifetime full of crowded ones. Indeed, the most touching sequence in the film is Clara's first night in the hospital. She wonderingly explores her spacious, airy room, sits down to savor a simple attractive meal in solitude, tucks herself between crisp sheets with nothing but a book for company. The contrast between this thought-provoking silence and the numbing intrusions on her spirit that we have witnessed in the film's opening sections could not be more vividly evoked. In a directorial career devoted largely to exploring the ways poverty assaults dignity (Shoeshine, The Bicycle Thief, Umberto D), De Sica may have made more forceful statements, but never a more poignant one than he does here with the exquisite assistance of Florinda Bolkan.

Throughout the film there are reminders--the intrusion of her demanding family on her retreat, the sly sexual questing of her doctor, the desperate dreams of escape which she shares with her lover--that for people of Clara's class, even the small grace notes of existence are not something she dares get used to. For her, the pronouncement that she is cured is a kind of death sentence.

Or is it? De Sica, in his old age, allowed himself a note of ambiguity on this point, ending his film with a thoughtful closeup of Clara on the train bearing her back to reality. It seems just possible that besides restoring her physical health, her brief vacation may also have strengthened her mental balance. The energy formerly burned in impotent rage may possibly be turned outward, in an effort to make a permanent purchase on the modestly decent life she has been permitted to glimpse.

All that is left unclear. But it is certain that De Sica's last collaboration with his old colleague Cesare Zavattini is a wise, delicate and moving work, a worthy ending for an extraordinarily valuable career. qedRichard Schickel

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