Is there anything left for him? That is the question Umberto D. poses about its main character, a pensioner eking out a hand-to-mouth existence in post-WWII Italy. He has no family, no close friends, no support structure—nothing except his dingy apartment, the clothes on his back, and his dog Flike. His pension is pathetic, and is eaten whole by his rent. His landlady rents out his room to adulterers when he’s not there, and is preparing to throw him out whether or not he can pay his arrears. The only friend he has is the household maid, a girl who’s just discovered she’s pregnant and isn’t even sure which of the two soldiers she was dating is the father. She, too, will most likely be pitched out into the street.
Umberto worked for the state for thirty years—like the old man in Kurosawa’s Ikiru—but he is not only now discovering he is an irrelevancy. It has been creeping up on him for some time, and there has not been anything he could do about it anyway. He has several strategies for caring for both himself and Flike: when he goes to a local soup kitchen, he uses some sleight-of-hand to finagle extra food for the dog. He tries to hock his watch—possibly his thirty-year commemorative gift?—and sells what books he has. Even when he comes up with two-thirds of his back rent and promises the rest when his pension comes in, his landlady is still determined to get rid of him. She has pretensions about being a society woman, and grotty old-age pensioners renting rooms in her house have no place in such a vision.
