EUROPA ‘51(listed here as “The Greatest Love”) is one of Rossellini’s best films although you are going to have a hard time judging that. The prints that exist are in poor condition, the VO English print has poorly recorded sound with bad English dubbing for the non-Ingrid cast. Once you get past that after one or two viewings, you’ll see this as one of the great profound masterpieces of post-WWII Europe. Rossellini’s films with Ingrid Bergman were bold and challenging examinations into human behaviour, about what it means to be human in a very compartmentalized society, where people follow a series of staid rituals day in and day out and often find it difficult to provide love and compassion for their own family.

Irene(Ingrid Bergman) learns this lesson the hard way when her son tries to kill himself after the final straw of her stiffling and neglecting the boy during a high society party. The boy survives long enough for Irene to apologise to him and promise to make it up but the boy dies. What happens is that Irene goes into a kind of altered state of consciousness. Rossellini believed, “From a simple perspective, it was possible to change the whole conception of the universe.” This ethos underlined his war trilogy, THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS, his documentary INDIA – MATR BHUMI and all the subsequent histories he made in the 60s and 70s. It is however examinded in detail in this film where an ordinary upper-middle class housewife becomes as per Rossellini’s conception, “a modern day St. Francis of Assissi”. She failed to return her son’s love so she in turn gives her love to the poor, the hard working, the oppressed and the persecuted.

It is a testament to the greatness of Ingrid Bergman that she is able to depict this transformation with astounding clarity and nuance. We don’t feel she is “acting” and her natural humanity comes out stunningly.