DE SICA: Religious symbolism of

In 1957, Alberto Moravia wrote Two Women, a novel that demonstrates the fallacy of the bourgeoisie’s worship of money and its resultant cycle of spiritual death and resurrection through suffering. In 1960, Vittorio De Sica adapted Moravia’s novel and directed Two Women, a film that filters reality through religious symbolism. De Sica created a version of neo-realism, linking the material poverty of war stricken Italy with the spiritual loneliness of its inhabitants. Both Moravia’s and De Sica’s artistic representations of Two Women depict lost purity and innocence, and the subsequent intense suffering of characters confronted with the reality of a world so different from that of their desires, dreams and ideals. The symbolism in these two works comes from traditional Catholic iconography (Wood 66), the understanding of which enables both readers and viewers to form a coherent narrative picture replete with imagistic representations that enhance the artists’ message.

In both the novel and the film, the setting plays an integral role in defining the imagery. The “neighborhood, the house, the furniture and the personal

Rosetta’s relationship with her mother is also suggestive of her identification as a Christ-figure. When Cesira is cradling Rosetta at the beginning of both the novel and the film, it suggests the image of Mary cradling Jesus, her son who was persecuted and killed. Rosetta is crying and Cesira is comforting her in imitation of the Pietà (McIntyre 257), “I had to take her in my arms and rock her up and down as I used to do when she was two years old . . .all the time I was stroking her and she was still sobbing (Moravia 14). The visual analogy of the Madonna and child (Prigozy 84) in the above scene clearly parallels Rosetta and Cesira with Jesus and the Virgin Mary. In the film, De Sica more obviously recalls this image by having the actresses in the same pose as the celebrated work of art by Michelangelo, with light streaming in from the window above, illuminating their frail and desecrated figures. De Sica also recalls the image of the Pietà when Cesira tells Rosetta of Michele’s death. Rosetta, “bursts into tears . . . the mother cradles her daughter in her arms, and the camera slowly zooms back (Prigozy 88). In De Sica’s presentation of this scene, Cesira and Rosetta are emblematic of the suffering shared by millions as a result the war. Concerning Rosetta’s fallen state, Cesira comments,

This saintly perfection, made up . . . chiefly of inexperience and ignorance of life, had been morally wounded by what had happened in the church; and it had then changed into an opposite kind of perfection, without any of the half measures, without the moderation and the prudence that belong to normal, imperfect, experienced people (Moravia 291),

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