Lively, entertaining reviews of, and essays on, old and newer films and everything relating to them, written by professional author William Schoell.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

LA PAURA (FEAR)

Ingrid Bergman 
LA PAURA (aka Fear aka Non credo piu all'amore/1954). Director: Roberto Rossellini.

Irene Wagner (Ingrid Bergman), whose husband spent some time in jail, has drifted into an affair with Eric Baumann (Kurt Kreuger). Irene and her husband Alberto (Mathias Wieman) run a pharmaceutical company together and their children, who live in the country, are cared for by a nanny. Although Irene wants to break things off with Eric, she finds herself being blackmailed by an alleged old girlfriend of Eric's named Joanna (Renate Mannhardt). Then things get worse ... La Paura is an Italian "B" movie that has a lovely ending and is reasonably engaging without ever quite hitting a dramatic high note. The acting is good, with Bergman, as usual, giving a superior performance. Bergman left her husband and daughter four years earlier to be with the director of the film, Rossellini, but the scandal eventually died down after she divorced Rossellini [Voyage to Italy] three years after making this film and she came back to Hollywood. Based on a novel by Stefan Zweig.

Verdict: Has some suspense and intriguing situations, but decidedly minor. **1/2.

2 comments:

angelman66 said...

Need to seek this one out, have never seen any of the Bergman and Rossellini collaborations. Ingrid is solid in every movie, of course my favorites are Anastasia, Gaslight and Casablanca....
- Chris

William said...

All good choices. Hulu had all of the Bergman/Rossellini films then removed all of them before I could see any but this one.