So given that this is directed by Roberto Rossellini and with a title like this, I assumed this was going to be an Italian movie, but it’s actually in English, which is the language it was acted in by its stars (Ingrid Bergman, who was then married to the director; and some guy named George Sanders). Interestingly, this is a 2013 restoration of the film, and it seems like before then, it was primarily (solely?) seen in Italian, with other voice actors dubbed over Bergman and Sanders.

Anyway, the movie starts with the two of them (playing a married couple) driving down to Naples to sell a (totally sweet) villa owned by the recently deceased Uncle Homer, and also get in a vacation. And on this trip, they’ve discovered that they actually have nothing to say to each other and barely know each other at all despite being long-married, a fact which their normal workaday routine normally obscured, but which is laid bare on vacation.

The movie is basically them coming to terms with this and figuring out what they want to do. The dynamic between them is interestingly complex, because their relationship seems sterile and completely dead, and they’re horrid to each other; and yet, it’s clear that Bergman’s character at least really does feel something, and that things might have been different at some point in the past.

And so the movie follows them through cold conversations, a period where they split up (he goes off to flirt with and unsuccessfully seduce other women; she goes to museums to look at old statues and skulls), heated arguments, and then a reconciliation that seems both inevitable and inexplicable.

Apparently this movie was something of a critical bomb at its release — it was seen as a betrayal of Italian neo-realism by one of its most prominent directors — but it’s obviously been hugely influential, both on later Italian cinema and the French New Wave (apparently Truffaut and his crew were huge proponents of the movie in the face of its early criticism) and here it is on this list. And I think it belongs here — it combines the virtues of a subtle character portrait with a bit of a glamorous Italian travelogue.