Europe '51 is a 1952 film directed by Roberto Rossellini.
Irene and George Girard (Ingrid Bergman and Alexander Knox) are a wealthy couple living in Rome, with one pre-teen son, Michele. Their lifestyle of parties and society hobnobbing is destroyed when Michele, feeling neglected, throws himself down a stairwell. He initially appears to escape this suicide attempt with nothing worse than a broken leg, but he dies from a blood clot in the hospital.
Irene is paralyzed with grief. She lies in bed for days, hardly able to move, until she's finally roused from her stupor by a visit from her cousin Andrea. Andrea is a communist, and he urges Irene to help the poor and unfortunate of Rome. Irene visits the overcrowded tenements and the wooden shacks by the river and is motivated to help improve the lives of Rome's underclass. Unfortunately for Irene, her starchy, conservative, rich family does not like this at all.
This film was released in two versions, an English version called Europe '51 and an Italian-language version called Europa '51 in which Italian actors dubbed the dialogue of Bergman and Knox. Giulietta Masina appears as Passeroto, the poor woman living in a shack with six children whom Irene takes a special interest in. She would soon become a big star by playing lead roles in the films of her husband, Federico Fellini.
Tropes:
- Blood from the Mouth: How we find out that the prostitute's hacking cough is actually TB.
- Death of a Child: Michele commits suicide, changing his mother's life forever.
- Downer Ending: Irene's do-gooderism and newfound social consciousness get her clapped into an insane asylum by her family. The board reviews her case and decides that she needs to stay. The last scene has her family leaving her there, while the poor people she helped call her a saint and cry out that her imprisonment is injustice.
- Driven to Suicide: Poor Michele, feeling neglected by his parents, jumps down a stairwell to his death.
- Fish out of Water: Irene the rich lady is very much out of place working an assembly line at a factory, but she toughs it out.
- Gilligan Cut: Irene has wrangled Passeroto a job at a factory, but Passeroto, who doesn't set priorities very well, says she wants to leave town for a couple of days to visit a boyfriend. She says "Someone would have to take my place at the factory for two days." Cut to Irene reporting for work at the factory.
- Go Among Mad People: Irene's family deals with her new class consciousness and desire to help the poor by...locking her up in an asylum.
- Heroic BSoD: After Michele dies, Irene spends ten days in bed, not moving and not even ingesting anything other than fruit juice.
- Inkblot Test: Irene does not think much of them while she's in the asylum, describing a couple but then pronouncing them all meaningless blobs.
- Miscarriage of Justice: Besides the kangaroo court that gets Irene committed to the nut house, there's also how she's found guilty of helping an armed robber escape, when all she really did was usher him out of the tenement because he was agitated and waving a gun around in the presence of his family.
- "No Peeking!" Request: In the opening scene, Irene asks her son to turn around while she gets dressed to go to a party. The fact that the only time he has to speak to his mother had to be with his back turned to her only adds to his feeling of neglect.
- Plot-Triggering Death: The tragic death of her young son sends Irene's life spinning in a wholly new direction.
- Sexy Backless Outfit: How Irene dresses for a cocktail party before tragedy upends her life.
- Streetwalker: One of the residents of the crowded tenement that Irene visits is a street prostitute. She's in the last stages of tuberculosis.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: Irene the rich socialite is shocked by seeing tenements where families sleep twelve to a room and riverside shacks without electricity or plumbing. She comes home and tells her husband "I've discovered a world I had no idea existed."
