It’s unsurprising how little-known Terminal Station is, even among fans of stars Montgomery Clift, Jennifer Jones or director Vittorio De Sica. But then it has been going by another name since it was released in a truncated version in 1954 – that would be the 63-minute Indiscretion of an American Wife, chiseled from De Sica’s 89-minute original by producer David O. Selznick in his search for a leaner, more commercial cut. But that film flopped. Strong-willed Selznick was dealing with an auteur too individualistic; it’s a pairing that should never have happened, one that birthed a schizoid conjoining of old Hollywood and Italian Neorealism. And yet De Sica’s original Terminal Station sees two styles thought immiscible clashing to create an imperfect, fascinating experiment.
Terminal Station is a romance between married American housewife Mary (Jones) and Italian bachelor Giovanni (Clift). She prepares to end her vacation in Rome, to depart for home and familial obligations in America, but he wants her to stay and start a new life with him. Set in Rome’s Stazione Termini, with the transient nature of the train station providing a setting for another fleeting, doomed movie love affair, De Sica’s film is something like a real-time romantic drama. The director captures heavy conversations and heavier silences, knowing full well this pairing must come to an end sometime during the film. Cuts to ticking clocks remind us that Mary’s train out of Rome is near, De Sica adding an element of thriller to the picture. But most interestingly, De Sica shoots Terminal Station like a Hollywood studio director discovering the place for the first time.
You can feel the commercial grip of Selznick pulling Terminal Station in the direction of Hollywood, with Truman Capote’s classy dialogue-of-the-socialites helping him along. De Sica pulls the other way – he and screenwriters Luigi Chiarini and Giorgio Prosperi paint the background in social realist colours, and the director ensures a modicum of verité remains in the rough/beautiful monochrome photography and location work. Composer Alessandro Cicognini similarly locates the film in Italia, the quivering romantic score pure Italian cinema circa the 1950s. But De Sica, forever fascinated by life on the ground, uses his two American stars as an entry point into the lives of Rome’s less fortunate.
Terminal Station‘s environment recalls that of Jacques Tati’s Playtime. Scenes are not merely built for the two stars: searching for Mary after an argument, Giovanni passes a restaurant car, where inside two chefs hold a discussion. A school of small deaf children wander by Mary as she seeks her train out of Rome. A group of priests and a pickpocket are recurring figures, complete with running mini-narratives. Poor families with world-weary patriarchs become central characters, if only for a moment. Every character big and small has worth in De Sica’s universe. Extras are treated with the reverence of stars – they appear to carry within them all the baggage of a person. The vignettes – which bore the brunt of Selznick’s cuts on his own version – though seemingly inconsequential at first, are crucial to Terminal Station‘s impact. De Sica’s intention is to help us see life outside our own narrow view of the world, beyond the tragedy of the central romance.
As Mary and Giovanni, Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift are alien to this environment. Clift doesn’t even attempt an Italian accent, while he and Jones both possess exceptional Tinseltown glamor that’s at odds with the character-filled faces swirling around them. As Giovanni, Clift is characteristically understated, and therefore more suited to the naturalistic surroundings than Jones, but there’s a vicious, self-centered heart to his trademark sensitivity that makes Terminal Station more interesting than the conventional movie romance it could’ve been. It’s to Clift’s credit that Giovanni remains sympathetic, despite the character’s manipulative streak and desperate insecurity (when Mary describes a childhood crush as “handsome,” Giovanni asks “And I’m not?”), not to mention his ingrained misogyny.
Losing Mary’s attention for just a minute to her gratingly wholesome nephew Paul (Richard Beymer), Giovanni swipes the back of his hand across Mary’s face. It’s a genuinely shocking moment; suddenly, big shuddering cracks show in the perfect ‘Hollywood’ romance at Terminal Station‘s core. But De Sica doesn’t vilify Giovanni, nor Mary, who’s likely just using the younger man as a holiday fling to distract from thoughts of steady domesticity. The director’s gift was in refusing to make characters black and white, and in finding drama where other directors would find none. He would craft a masterpiece out of a search for a stolen bike, and here minor quarrels between Giovanni and Mary have a huge impact. As the pair find themselves facing a small fine for trespassing, De Sica heightens the tension to almost unbearable levels. De Sica understands that such moments are significant. It’s the epitome of social realism.
Though not consistently successful, there is beauty to be found in Terminal Station‘s near-suicidal attempt to mesh old Hollywood and Italian Neorealism. In one scene, De Sica has his two protagonists clamber aboard an empty train, where they – in darkness – are allowed their last embrace, alone and away from the public arena of Stazione Termini. De Sica cuts to a shot of the tracks leading away from the station, as another train slowly pulls out and into beyond, day turning into night overhead. Mary, meanwhile, can still be heard sighing over the soundtrack. The effect is astonishing, the moment located somewhere in an nebula between the glitz of old Hollywood and the stark emotion of Italian Neorealism. As we sense the relationship of his two lovers coming to a close in the crepuscular glow, De Sica finds magic in Terminal Station’s unholy marriage.
