While visiting Naples to close the estate of a deceased relative, two middle-aged sophisticates (Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders) are forced to acknowledge the tenuous condition of their marriage. Katherine and Alex spend much of the film apart, wandering through the rubble-strewn, post-war landscape, which is shaped by Rossellini’s camera into a kind of mythic, holy place. Each of them faces temptations of their own choosing. Each imagines the other lives they might lead. It’s no spoiler to say that the reunion in the closing minutes of the film is among cinema’s most transcendent and sacramental images.
—Darren Hughes