Lots of reasons to watch Antonioni's early film The Lady Without Camelias

 Michaelangelo Antonioni's 2nd (?) film, the seldom-seen The Lady Without Camelias (1953), is by no means a great film and I'm not even sure that it was predictive of the success Antonioniha had through the long arc of his career, from Italian neo-realism to such personal statements as L'Aventura and Zabriski Point - but that said it's a lot of fun to watch. On one level it's a typical film-ingenue story: A young woman (Clara - Lucia Bose) working in a shop is spotted by a director and is an instant success, which upends her world: She marries badly, is abused and exploited by her husband, is pushed by various producers into ever-more-demeaning roles, her world's coming apart. But then, a twist: She recognizes that she can never be a star and be content w/ her life, she tells a long-time confidant that she's going to quit the business, but her persuades her to take acting lessons and to become a true actress and not just a beauty, a prop. She follows this advice, but then - surprise again! - nobody wants to cast her in serious roles, and the film ends w/ her doing some publicity still for an obviously terrible and exploitative film. Every view, I think, will get a kick out of the hilarity of a bunch of Italian directors and producers trying to put together a film that will be under budget and that will make revenue. And everyone interest in film - which would include most viewers of this piece of film history - will get a kick out of the many scenes filmed on the famous Cinecitta studios lot, with lots of scenes taking place among half-abandoned sets for other films. Antonioni indulges in some really sharp filmmaking, pushing this melodrama right to the edge: lots of shots using mirrors, complex interior shots in the multilevel ultramodern extravagance where Clara lives, some interest us of jazz piano in the score. It's kind of funny that Lollabrigida and Loren turned down the lead in this film; they obviously would not be convincing as a beautiful starlet whose career was going nowhere. Sadly, Bose is convincing in the role - she's beautiful but suitably plastic and cool-tempered, perfect for a story about a star who can't really act.