ChiaroScuro DVD-Collection
Alphabetically sorted by Director's last name
Total number of titles: 1397
Last updated: 09 Feb 2007
(Rom, offene Stadt [de] • Open City [en])
Italy 1945
d: Roberto Rossellini
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)
Italy 1945
d: Roberto Rossellini
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)
sc: Roberto Rossellini, Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini (based on a story by Amidei and Alberto Consiglio)
c: Ubaldo Arata (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
pd: Rosario Megna
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Giuseppe Amato, Ferruccio De Martino, Roberto Rossellini (Excelsa Film [it])
w: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello Pagliero, Vito Annichiarico, Nando Bruno, Harry Feist, Giovanna Galletti, Francesco Grandjacquet, Eduardo Passarelli, Maria Michi, Carla Rovere, Carlo Sindici, Joop van Hulzen, Ákos Tolnay
pr: 27 Sep 1945
aw: Academy Awards 1947 Nominated Oscar Best Writing, Screenplay • Cannes Film Festival 1946 Grand Prize of the Festival • Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1946 Silver Ribbon Miglior Film a Soggetto; Migliore Interpretazione Femminile di Carattere • National Board of Review, USA 1946 Best Actress Anna Magnani; Best Foreign Film Italy • New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1946 Best Foreign Language Film
c: Ubaldo Arata (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
pd: Rosario Megna
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Giuseppe Amato, Ferruccio De Martino, Roberto Rossellini (Excelsa Film [it])
w: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello Pagliero, Vito Annichiarico, Nando Bruno, Harry Feist, Giovanna Galletti, Francesco Grandjacquet, Eduardo Passarelli, Maria Michi, Carla Rovere, Carlo Sindici, Joop van Hulzen, Ákos Tolnay
pr: 27 Sep 1945
aw: Academy Awards 1947 Nominated Oscar Best Writing, Screenplay • Cannes Film Festival 1946 Grand Prize of the Festival • Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1946 Silver Ribbon Miglior Film a Soggetto; Migliore Interpretazione Femminile di Carattere • National Board of Review, USA 1946 Best Actress Anna Magnani; Best Foreign Film Italy • New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1946 Best Foreign Language Film
rt: 102:58 min
dvd-rl: 05 Nov 1997
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English (burnt-in)
supp: --
dvd-rl: 05 Nov 1997
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English (burnt-in)
supp: --
Rossellini's film, one of the definitive works of the Italian neo-realist period, was shot under extremely difficult circumstances at the end of WWII. Its greatest achievement remains its study and placing of the Resistance movement - and on a wider level, the war itself - against a background of everyday events. The film evolved from a documentary about a priest serving in the Resistance, which perhaps accounts for its refusal to compromise or to entertain conventional notions of heroism.
— CPe, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
"Open City was planned in secret by Rossellini and his colleagues while the Nazis still occupied Rome. In order to avoid conscription by the Fascist government Rossellini hid in a worker's apartment with Sergio Amidei and a communist leader of the resistance. In this way they were kept up to date with the activities and tragedies of the underground, many of which they incorporated into their script. The priest, Don Pietro, was modeled on Father Don Morosini who was executed by the Nazis in 1944. "Rossellini said in 1956: 'We began our film only two months after the liberation of Rome, despite the shortage of film stock. We shot it in the same settings in which the events we recreated had taken place. In order to pay for my film I sold my bed, then a chest of drawers and a mirrored wardrobe.... Rome, Open City was shot silent, not by choice but by necessity. Film stock cost 60 liras a meter on the black market and it would have involved us in additional expense if we had recorded the sound. Also the Allied authorities had only given us a permit to produce a documentary film. After the film was edited, the actors dubbed their own voices.' "It was to some extent the warm performance by Anna Magnani as the ungainly, gesticulating, but proud and dignified Pina that made the film's international popularity. Audiences everywhere were astonished to see ordinary people in an Italian film instead of the endless parades of Black Shirts, or romantic frilly actors.... "Its realistic treatment of everyday Italian life heralded the postwar renaissance of the Italian Cinema and the development of neorealism."
— Georges Sadoul, "Dictionary of Films"
•••••
A wartime bread-riot: Pina (Anna Magnani) stoops to pick up a loaf. “You?” a man asks. “Should I starve?” she says. Then she gives him the bread; he shouldn't starve either. The raw courage, and raw terror, of individuals caught up in the implicit violence of life under fascism is made explicit in Open City. Pina is the pregnant lover of a Resistance worker; the priest who is to marry them “tomorrow,” Don Pietro, runs errands for the underground. Magnani's portrait-proud, plebeian, sardonic--struck a chord, as if a human being had never been captured on film before. Indeed, Rossellini seems to have removed the “screen”; our heroes don't even get close-ups for their death scenes. But in Aldo Fabrizi's Don Pietro, and the little boys who whistle a Resistance song to comfort him as he awaits a firing squad, this film has a redemptive power that is overwhelming.
— Judy Bloch
•••••
Filmed in austere conditions, the technical imperfections of Open City effectively contribute to the film's overall cinema verite appearance. The uneven film stock, salvaged from scrap reels, create a realistic, documentary appearance, blurring the distinction between the created story and the realized drama of postwar turmoil. The inconsistent lighting seems to reflect the frequent brownouts characteristic of fuel shortages and energy rationing. The rawness of Open City elicits a sense of realism to the film, as if experiencing an actual recorded document of a tragic period in history. It is also a testament to humanity's tenacity and perseverance, to the inexorable power of compassion and dignity. In essence, a chronicle of the soul.
— Acquarello
— CPe, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
"Open City was planned in secret by Rossellini and his colleagues while the Nazis still occupied Rome. In order to avoid conscription by the Fascist government Rossellini hid in a worker's apartment with Sergio Amidei and a communist leader of the resistance. In this way they were kept up to date with the activities and tragedies of the underground, many of which they incorporated into their script. The priest, Don Pietro, was modeled on Father Don Morosini who was executed by the Nazis in 1944. "Rossellini said in 1956: 'We began our film only two months after the liberation of Rome, despite the shortage of film stock. We shot it in the same settings in which the events we recreated had taken place. In order to pay for my film I sold my bed, then a chest of drawers and a mirrored wardrobe.... Rome, Open City was shot silent, not by choice but by necessity. Film stock cost 60 liras a meter on the black market and it would have involved us in additional expense if we had recorded the sound. Also the Allied authorities had only given us a permit to produce a documentary film. After the film was edited, the actors dubbed their own voices.' "It was to some extent the warm performance by Anna Magnani as the ungainly, gesticulating, but proud and dignified Pina that made the film's international popularity. Audiences everywhere were astonished to see ordinary people in an Italian film instead of the endless parades of Black Shirts, or romantic frilly actors.... "Its realistic treatment of everyday Italian life heralded the postwar renaissance of the Italian Cinema and the development of neorealism."
— Georges Sadoul, "Dictionary of Films"
•••••
A wartime bread-riot: Pina (Anna Magnani) stoops to pick up a loaf. “You?” a man asks. “Should I starve?” she says. Then she gives him the bread; he shouldn't starve either. The raw courage, and raw terror, of individuals caught up in the implicit violence of life under fascism is made explicit in Open City. Pina is the pregnant lover of a Resistance worker; the priest who is to marry them “tomorrow,” Don Pietro, runs errands for the underground. Magnani's portrait-proud, plebeian, sardonic--struck a chord, as if a human being had never been captured on film before. Indeed, Rossellini seems to have removed the “screen”; our heroes don't even get close-ups for their death scenes. But in Aldo Fabrizi's Don Pietro, and the little boys who whistle a Resistance song to comfort him as he awaits a firing squad, this film has a redemptive power that is overwhelming.
— Judy Bloch
•••••
Filmed in austere conditions, the technical imperfections of Open City effectively contribute to the film's overall cinema verite appearance. The uneven film stock, salvaged from scrap reels, create a realistic, documentary appearance, blurring the distinction between the created story and the realized drama of postwar turmoil. The inconsistent lighting seems to reflect the frequent brownouts characteristic of fuel shortages and energy rationing. The rawness of Open City elicits a sense of realism to the film, as if experiencing an actual recorded document of a tragic period in history. It is also a testament to humanity's tenacity and perseverance, to the inexorable power of compassion and dignity. In essence, a chronicle of the soul.
— Acquarello
(Paisà [de])
Italy 1946
d: Roberto Rossellini
3sat TV (Region 0 de)
Italy 1946
d: Roberto Rossellini
3sat TV (Region 0 de)
sc: Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Annalena Limentani (based on stories by Victor Haines, Marcello Pagliero, Amidei, Fellini, Rossellini, Klaus Mann, Vasco Pratolini)
c: Otello Martelli (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini, Rod E. Geiger, Mario Conti (Foreign Film Productions [it] / Organizzazione Film Internazionali (OFI) [it])
w: Carmela Sazio, Robert Van Loon, Benjamin Emmanuel, Harold Wagner, Merlin Berth, Dots Johnson, Alfonsino Pasca, Maria Michi, Gar Moore, Harriet Medin, Renzo Avanzo, William Tubbs, Dale Edmonds, Cigolani, Allen Dan
pr: 10 Sep 1946
aw: Academy Awards 1950 Nominated Oscar Best Writing, Story and Screenplay • Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1947 Silver Ribbon Migliore Regia; Miglior Film a Soggetto; Miglior Commento Musicale) • Kinema Junpo Awards 1950 Best Foreign Language Film • National Board of Review, USA 1948 Best Director; Best Picture (Any Language) • New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1948 Best Foreign Language Film
c: Otello Martelli (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini, Rod E. Geiger, Mario Conti (Foreign Film Productions [it] / Organizzazione Film Internazionali (OFI) [it])
w: Carmela Sazio, Robert Van Loon, Benjamin Emmanuel, Harold Wagner, Merlin Berth, Dots Johnson, Alfonsino Pasca, Maria Michi, Gar Moore, Harriet Medin, Renzo Avanzo, William Tubbs, Dale Edmonds, Cigolani, Allen Dan
pr: 10 Sep 1946
aw: Academy Awards 1950 Nominated Oscar Best Writing, Story and Screenplay • Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1947 Silver Ribbon Migliore Regia; Miglior Film a Soggetto; Miglior Commento Musicale) • Kinema Junpo Awards 1950 Best Foreign Language Film • National Board of Review, USA 1948 Best Director; Best Picture (Any Language) • New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1948 Best Foreign Language Film
rt: 119:57 (+4%PAL= 125) min
dvd-rl: 03 Mai 2005
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian/English/German MPEG-2 2.0 Mono
st: German (fixed)
supp: --
dvd-rl: 03 Mai 2005
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian/English/German MPEG-2 2.0 Mono
st: German (fixed)
supp: --
Rossellini recounts the liberation of Italy during WWII in six distinct episodes. The film's style is the foundation on which the whole aesthetic of neo-realism was built: endless establishing shots, and long 'neutral' takes that allow each viewer to make up his own mind about the characters. But the choked-back sentimentality of much of the action (GI doesn't recognise prostitute as the girl he once loved, etc) belongs to a very much older tradition than the visual style. Only the long, final episode in the Po Valley remains wholly impressive: its view of the sheer arbitrariness of warfare anticipates some of Jancsó's abstractions.
— TR, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Paisan is a six-episode chronicle of wartime Italy recreating incidents in different locales, from Sicily at the time of the Allied invasion to the marshes of the Po Valley in the last months of the war. A triumph of neorealist method, Paisan incorporates fictional anecdotes into semi-documentary scenes of astonishing verisimilitude. The episodic structure leaves no time for illusions of completeness, or drawn-out sentimentality. Rossellini cuts to the essential human qualities of the events he pictures, always with an eye for the extraordinary aspects of "ordinary" individual acts. There is much humor and irony in several vignettes dealing with the relations (even at the level of language) between the Italian citizens and the foreign (British and American) soldiery. The last sequence, however, is stark tragedy depicting a band of partisans and O.S.S. men waging a hopeless, lonely battle in the desolate swamps of the Po delta: it is one of the most moving sequences in all cinema.
— PFA
•••••
PAISAN, perhaps Rossellini's greatest achievement, is one of those rare segmented films that never loses steam as it moves through six chronologically ordered sequences beginning with the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 and concluding with liberation in 1945. In addition to moving across time, the film transports the viewer northward throughout Italy, each episode observing a slice of regional life. In the first, a New Jersey soldier (Van Loon) gets the job of guarding a young Sicilian woman (Sazio) who refuses to say anything or betray any emotion. The story details his attempts to win her over with no knowledge of Italian. In Naples, meanwhile, a black MP (Johnson) falls into a drunken sleep and has his shoes stolen by a street urchin. He finds the boy living in a cavern with a horde of homeless Neapolitans and decides that others need his shoes more than he. In the Roman tale, an American soldier (Gar Moore) meets Francesca (Michi), a streetwalker. He drunkenly reminisces about a woman he met as his tank rolled into the city. Francesca recognizes him--she was that woman, but he is too drunk to know it. On to Florence, where an American nurse (White) and an Italian partisan (Gigi Gori) scramble through German lines in a suspensful episode which shows that John Sturges has nothing on Rossellini. In the fifth episode, three army chaplains (Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish) have an amusing yet telling ecumenical encounter with Franciscan monks at a rural monastery. And the final episode brings action: a shootout with the Germans against a group of OSS and British. The shot with the baby is stunning.
A film unlike any other the world had seen, PAISAN is OPEN CITY without the melodrama. Rossellini doesn't have De Sica's ability to coax brilliant dramatic performances out of nonprofessionals, yet there's an amazing honesty about the actors' sometimes awkward presence in this film. Despite the film's slice-of-life approach, it is anything but a flat, uninvolving newsreel. Rossellini in fact uses newsreel techniques precisely to point out the propaganda inherent in their purportedly "objective" style. PAISAN is instead a wartime portrait full of humor, pathos, romance, tension, and warmth. Handled in a seemingly direct manner, free of ornamental flourishes, PAISAN highlights the power of the neorealist style better than almost any other film.
— TVGuide
— TR, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Paisan is a six-episode chronicle of wartime Italy recreating incidents in different locales, from Sicily at the time of the Allied invasion to the marshes of the Po Valley in the last months of the war. A triumph of neorealist method, Paisan incorporates fictional anecdotes into semi-documentary scenes of astonishing verisimilitude. The episodic structure leaves no time for illusions of completeness, or drawn-out sentimentality. Rossellini cuts to the essential human qualities of the events he pictures, always with an eye for the extraordinary aspects of "ordinary" individual acts. There is much humor and irony in several vignettes dealing with the relations (even at the level of language) between the Italian citizens and the foreign (British and American) soldiery. The last sequence, however, is stark tragedy depicting a band of partisans and O.S.S. men waging a hopeless, lonely battle in the desolate swamps of the Po delta: it is one of the most moving sequences in all cinema.
— PFA
•••••
PAISAN, perhaps Rossellini's greatest achievement, is one of those rare segmented films that never loses steam as it moves through six chronologically ordered sequences beginning with the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 and concluding with liberation in 1945. In addition to moving across time, the film transports the viewer northward throughout Italy, each episode observing a slice of regional life. In the first, a New Jersey soldier (Van Loon) gets the job of guarding a young Sicilian woman (Sazio) who refuses to say anything or betray any emotion. The story details his attempts to win her over with no knowledge of Italian. In Naples, meanwhile, a black MP (Johnson) falls into a drunken sleep and has his shoes stolen by a street urchin. He finds the boy living in a cavern with a horde of homeless Neapolitans and decides that others need his shoes more than he. In the Roman tale, an American soldier (Gar Moore) meets Francesca (Michi), a streetwalker. He drunkenly reminisces about a woman he met as his tank rolled into the city. Francesca recognizes him--she was that woman, but he is too drunk to know it. On to Florence, where an American nurse (White) and an Italian partisan (Gigi Gori) scramble through German lines in a suspensful episode which shows that John Sturges has nothing on Rossellini. In the fifth episode, three army chaplains (Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish) have an amusing yet telling ecumenical encounter with Franciscan monks at a rural monastery. And the final episode brings action: a shootout with the Germans against a group of OSS and British. The shot with the baby is stunning.
A film unlike any other the world had seen, PAISAN is OPEN CITY without the melodrama. Rossellini doesn't have De Sica's ability to coax brilliant dramatic performances out of nonprofessionals, yet there's an amazing honesty about the actors' sometimes awkward presence in this film. Despite the film's slice-of-life approach, it is anything but a flat, uninvolving newsreel. Rossellini in fact uses newsreel techniques precisely to point out the propaganda inherent in their purportedly "objective" style. PAISAN is instead a wartime portrait full of humor, pathos, romance, tension, and warmth. Handled in a seemingly direct manner, free of ornamental flourishes, PAISAN highlights the power of the neorealist style better than almost any other film.
— TVGuide
(Paisà [de])
Italy 1946
d: Roberto Rossellini
Films sans Frontières (Region 2 fr)
Italy 1946
d: Roberto Rossellini
Films sans Frontières (Region 2 fr)
sc: Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Annalena Limentani (based on stories by Victor Haines, Marcello Pagliero, Amidei, Fellini, Rossellini, Klaus Mann, Vasco Pratolini)
c: Otello Martelli (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini, Rod E. Geiger, Mario Conti (Foreign Film Productions [it] / Organizzazione Film Internazionali (OFI) [it])
w: Carmela Sazio, Robert Van Loon, Benjamin Emmanuel, Harold Wagner, Merlin Berth, Dots Johnson, Alfonsino Pasca, Maria Michi, Gar Moore, Harriet Medin, Renzo Avanzo, William Tubbs, Dale Edmonds, Cigolani, Allen Dan
pr: 10 Sep 1946
aw: Academy Awards 1950 Nominated Oscar Best Writing, Story and Screenplay • Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1947 Silver Ribbon Migliore Regia; Miglior Film a Soggetto; Miglior Commento Musicale) • Kinema Junpo Awards 1950 Best Foreign Language Film • National Board of Review, USA 1948 Best Director; Best Picture (Any Language) • New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1948 Best Foreign Language Film
c: Otello Martelli (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini, Rod E. Geiger, Mario Conti (Foreign Film Productions [it] / Organizzazione Film Internazionali (OFI) [it])
w: Carmela Sazio, Robert Van Loon, Benjamin Emmanuel, Harold Wagner, Merlin Berth, Dots Johnson, Alfonsino Pasca, Maria Michi, Gar Moore, Harriet Medin, Renzo Avanzo, William Tubbs, Dale Edmonds, Cigolani, Allen Dan
pr: 10 Sep 1946
aw: Academy Awards 1950 Nominated Oscar Best Writing, Story and Screenplay • Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1947 Silver Ribbon Migliore Regia; Miglior Film a Soggetto; Miglior Commento Musicale) • Kinema Junpo Awards 1950 Best Foreign Language Film • National Board of Review, USA 1948 Best Director; Best Picture (Any Language) • New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1948 Best Foreign Language Film
rt: 120:32 (+4%PAL= 125) min
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 1999
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian/English/German Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: French; Italian (fixed on English dialogue)
supp: • Filmography Rossellini
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 1999
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian/English/German Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: French; Italian (fixed on English dialogue)
supp: • Filmography Rossellini
Rossellini recounts the liberation of Italy during WWII in six distinct episodes. The film's style is the foundation on which the whole aesthetic of neo-realism was built: endless establishing shots, and long 'neutral' takes that allow each viewer to make up his own mind about the characters. But the choked-back sentimentality of much of the action (GI doesn't recognise prostitute as the girl he once loved, etc) belongs to a very much older tradition than the visual style. Only the long, final episode in the Po Valley remains wholly impressive: its view of the sheer arbitrariness of warfare anticipates some of Jancsó's abstractions.
— TR, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Paisan is a six-episode chronicle of wartime Italy recreating incidents in different locales, from Sicily at the time of the Allied invasion to the marshes of the Po Valley in the last months of the war. A triumph of neorealist method, Paisan incorporates fictional anecdotes into semi-documentary scenes of astonishing verisimilitude. The episodic structure leaves no time for illusions of completeness, or drawn-out sentimentality. Rossellini cuts to the essential human qualities of the events he pictures, always with an eye for the extraordinary aspects of "ordinary" individual acts. There is much humor and irony in several vignettes dealing with the relations (even at the level of language) between the Italian citizens and the foreign (British and American) soldiery. The last sequence, however, is stark tragedy depicting a band of partisans and O.S.S. men waging a hopeless, lonely battle in the desolate swamps of the Po delta: it is one of the most moving sequences in all cinema.
— PFA
•••••
PAISAN, perhaps Rossellini's greatest achievement, is one of those rare segmented films that never loses steam as it moves through six chronologically ordered sequences beginning with the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 and concluding with liberation in 1945. In addition to moving across time, the film transports the viewer northward throughout Italy, each episode observing a slice of regional life. In the first, a New Jersey soldier (Van Loon) gets the job of guarding a young Sicilian woman (Sazio) who refuses to say anything or betray any emotion. The story details his attempts to win her over with no knowledge of Italian. In Naples, meanwhile, a black MP (Johnson) falls into a drunken sleep and has his shoes stolen by a street urchin. He finds the boy living in a cavern with a horde of homeless Neapolitans and decides that others need his shoes more than he. In the Roman tale, an American soldier (Gar Moore) meets Francesca (Michi), a streetwalker. He drunkenly reminisces about a woman he met as his tank rolled into the city. Francesca recognizes him--she was that woman, but he is too drunk to know it. On to Florence, where an American nurse (White) and an Italian partisan (Gigi Gori) scramble through German lines in a suspensful episode which shows that John Sturges has nothing on Rossellini. In the fifth episode, three army chaplains (Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish) have an amusing yet telling ecumenical encounter with Franciscan monks at a rural monastery. And the final episode brings action: a shootout with the Germans against a group of OSS and British. The shot with the baby is stunning.
A film unlike any other the world had seen, PAISAN is OPEN CITY without the melodrama. Rossellini doesn't have De Sica's ability to coax brilliant dramatic performances out of nonprofessionals, yet there's an amazing honesty about the actors' sometimes awkward presence in this film. Despite the film's slice-of-life approach, it is anything but a flat, uninvolving newsreel. Rossellini in fact uses newsreel techniques precisely to point out the propaganda inherent in their purportedly "objective" style. PAISAN is instead a wartime portrait full of humor, pathos, romance, tension, and warmth. Handled in a seemingly direct manner, free of ornamental flourishes, PAISAN highlights the power of the neorealist style better than almost any other film.
— TVGuide
— TR, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Paisan is a six-episode chronicle of wartime Italy recreating incidents in different locales, from Sicily at the time of the Allied invasion to the marshes of the Po Valley in the last months of the war. A triumph of neorealist method, Paisan incorporates fictional anecdotes into semi-documentary scenes of astonishing verisimilitude. The episodic structure leaves no time for illusions of completeness, or drawn-out sentimentality. Rossellini cuts to the essential human qualities of the events he pictures, always with an eye for the extraordinary aspects of "ordinary" individual acts. There is much humor and irony in several vignettes dealing with the relations (even at the level of language) between the Italian citizens and the foreign (British and American) soldiery. The last sequence, however, is stark tragedy depicting a band of partisans and O.S.S. men waging a hopeless, lonely battle in the desolate swamps of the Po delta: it is one of the most moving sequences in all cinema.
— PFA
•••••
PAISAN, perhaps Rossellini's greatest achievement, is one of those rare segmented films that never loses steam as it moves through six chronologically ordered sequences beginning with the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 and concluding with liberation in 1945. In addition to moving across time, the film transports the viewer northward throughout Italy, each episode observing a slice of regional life. In the first, a New Jersey soldier (Van Loon) gets the job of guarding a young Sicilian woman (Sazio) who refuses to say anything or betray any emotion. The story details his attempts to win her over with no knowledge of Italian. In Naples, meanwhile, a black MP (Johnson) falls into a drunken sleep and has his shoes stolen by a street urchin. He finds the boy living in a cavern with a horde of homeless Neapolitans and decides that others need his shoes more than he. In the Roman tale, an American soldier (Gar Moore) meets Francesca (Michi), a streetwalker. He drunkenly reminisces about a woman he met as his tank rolled into the city. Francesca recognizes him--she was that woman, but he is too drunk to know it. On to Florence, where an American nurse (White) and an Italian partisan (Gigi Gori) scramble through German lines in a suspensful episode which shows that John Sturges has nothing on Rossellini. In the fifth episode, three army chaplains (Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish) have an amusing yet telling ecumenical encounter with Franciscan monks at a rural monastery. And the final episode brings action: a shootout with the Germans against a group of OSS and British. The shot with the baby is stunning.
A film unlike any other the world had seen, PAISAN is OPEN CITY without the melodrama. Rossellini doesn't have De Sica's ability to coax brilliant dramatic performances out of nonprofessionals, yet there's an amazing honesty about the actors' sometimes awkward presence in this film. Despite the film's slice-of-life approach, it is anything but a flat, uninvolving newsreel. Rossellini in fact uses newsreel techniques precisely to point out the propaganda inherent in their purportedly "objective" style. PAISAN is instead a wartime portrait full of humor, pathos, romance, tension, and warmth. Handled in a seemingly direct manner, free of ornamental flourishes, PAISAN highlights the power of the neorealist style better than almost any other film.
— TVGuide
(Die geliebte Stimme [de])
Italy 1948
d: Roberto Rossellini
Arte TV (Region 0 de)
Italy 1948
d: Roberto Rossellini
Arte TV (Region 0 de)
sc: Roberto Rossellini, Anna Benevuti (based on the play "La voix humaine" by Jean Cocteau)
c: Robert Juillard (b/w)
e: Eraldo da Roma
pd: Christian Bérard
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini (Tevere Films)
w: Anna Magnani
pr: 21 Aug 1948
aw: Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1949 Silver Ribbon Migliore Attrice Protagonista Anna Magnani
c: Robert Juillard (b/w)
e: Eraldo da Roma
pd: Christian Bérard
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini (Tevere Films)
w: Anna Magnani
pr: 21 Aug 1948
aw: Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1949 Silver Ribbon Migliore Attrice Protagonista Anna Magnani
rt: 33:17 (+4%PAL= 35) min
dvd-rl: 16 Aug 2006
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian MPEG-2 2.0 Mono
st: German
supp: --
dvd-rl: 16 Aug 2006
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian MPEG-2 2.0 Mono
st: German
supp: --
Rossellini's two-part showcase for Magnani's operatic excess. In The Miracle, she plays a retarded goatherd who confuses her seducer with St Joseph and her illegitimate child with a new Messiah; in The Human Voice (based on Cocteau's play), a middle-aged bourgeoise abandoned by her lover and clinging to the telephone as if to a lifebuoy. Basically, the first is claptrap, the second reeks of greasepaint, but the demented virtuosity of their interpreter carries all before it.
— GAd, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Rossellini conceived of his two-part film "L'Amore" as "an homage to the art of Anna Magnani." In return, Magnani gave him two of her finest performances. "The Human Voice", Jean Cocteau's one-character drama about a woman on the telephone to her unfaithful lover, has been described as "an opera without music." Few other actresses (and what other director?) could both display and keep in check the naked emotions of Cocteau's frantic, fated romanticism. Jose Luis Guarner writes, "The camera draws back to show the woman alone and lost in her room when she thinks that she has been cut off, and her movements and gestures indicate clearly that her talking has been useless. Her words have had no effect, and she is already condemned to unremitting solitude. From here on, the interest is centered, not on the dialogue, but on her face and what she does; her grief and suffering are shown from a moral standpoint... [The film] becomes the pretext for a documentary on a woman's suffering."
— PFA
— GAd, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Rossellini conceived of his two-part film "L'Amore" as "an homage to the art of Anna Magnani." In return, Magnani gave him two of her finest performances. "The Human Voice", Jean Cocteau's one-character drama about a woman on the telephone to her unfaithful lover, has been described as "an opera without music." Few other actresses (and what other director?) could both display and keep in check the naked emotions of Cocteau's frantic, fated romanticism. Jose Luis Guarner writes, "The camera draws back to show the woman alone and lost in her room when she thinks that she has been cut off, and her movements and gestures indicate clearly that her talking has been useless. Her words have had no effect, and she is already condemned to unremitting solitude. From here on, the interest is centered, not on the dialogue, but on her face and what she does; her grief and suffering are shown from a moral standpoint... [The film] becomes the pretext for a documentary on a woman's suffering."
— PFA
(Deutschland im Jahre Null [de])
Italy / (East) Germany / France 1948
d: Roberto Rossellini
3sat TV (Region 0 de)
Italy / (East) Germany / France 1948
d: Roberto Rossellini
3sat TV (Region 0 de)
sc: Roberto Rossellini, Carlo Lizzani, Max Kolpet (based on a story by Rossellini)
c: Robert Juillard (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
pd: Piero Filippone
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Salvo D'Angelo, Alfredo Guarini, Roberto Rossellini (DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme [de] / Produzione Salvo D'Angelo [it] / Tevere Film [it] / UGC Images [fr])
w: Edmund Moeschke, Ingetraud Hinze, Franz-Otto Krüger, Ernst Pittschau, Erich Gühne, Alexandra Manys, Babsi Schultz-Reckewell, Hans Sangen, Heidi Blänkner, Franz von Treuberg, Karl Krüger, Barbara Hintz
pr: 01 Dez 1948
aw: Locarno International Film Festival 1948 Grand Prix; Price Best Screenplay, Original
c: Robert Juillard (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
pd: Piero Filippone
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Salvo D'Angelo, Alfredo Guarini, Roberto Rossellini (DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme [de] / Produzione Salvo D'Angelo [it] / Tevere Film [it] / UGC Images [fr])
w: Edmund Moeschke, Ingetraud Hinze, Franz-Otto Krüger, Ernst Pittschau, Erich Gühne, Alexandra Manys, Babsi Schultz-Reckewell, Hans Sangen, Heidi Blänkner, Franz von Treuberg, Karl Krüger, Barbara Hintz
pr: 01 Dez 1948
aw: Locarno International Film Festival 1948 Grand Prix; Price Best Screenplay, Original
rt: 70:29 (+4%PAL= 73) min
dvd-rl: 09 Mai 2005
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: German MPEG-1 2.0 Mono
st: --
supp: --
dvd-rl: 09 Mai 2005
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: German MPEG-1 2.0 Mono
st: --
supp: --
A long opening tracking shot through Berlin's ruins under the Occupation in 1945 is both documentary and a hallucinatory voyage through a stone age city, the perfect illustration that realist film can also forge fantasy. It sparks against the story of a thirteen-year-old boy who works the black market, sells Hitler souvenirs for chewing-gum, and who will kill his sick father out of naïve mercy and regard for the whisperings of his old Nazi teacher. A horror movie that declines to tease.
— DMacp, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
In his "Dictionary of Films," Georges Sadoul notes: "The actors were all nonprofessionals. Made in the neorealist style of films like Rome, Open City and Paisan, this lyrical view of Germany in the immediate postwar period has some magnificent scenes, even though, as a whole, it does not match the earlier Rossellini films. Among the memorable scenes are the voice of Hitler on a phonograph among the ruins of the Chancellery and the death of the hero in a gutted building, accompanied by the tragic sound of a passing tram. The film was relatively unsuccessful and this prompted Rossellini to move in other directions. 'Although the story of Edmund and his family was invented by me, it is nevertheless the common story of German families. It is a mixture of reality and fiction, treated with the license that is the prerogative of any artist' (Rossellini). The film was made with French financing and the assistance of the East German film company, DEFA."
"In Germany, Year Zero, the final panel of his war triptych, Rossellini turns to post-war Berlin in an effort to shed light on the national character which gave rise to Hitler hysteria. 'The Germans were human beings, just like the rest of us. How had they come to this point, though? False morality? That's the essence of Nazism. Rejecting humility? Making a cult of heroism? Exalting strength over weakness? Pride over simplicity? This is why I chose to tell the story of a child.' (R. Rossellini) "Living in an environment where corruption and disorder pervade, 13-year-old Edmund falls under the tutelage of a pernicious schoolmaster. Unfettered by the reprehensible repercussions of fascist dogma, the teacher fills the youth with his warped morality. Taking the mentor's words on duty and heroism as gospel truth, impressionable Edmund murders his ailing father. The boy's initial illusion that his act was heroic later gives way to a troubled conscience set to work by what Rossellini termed 'the tiny flame of morality.' In the end, Edmund commits suicide to escape the pain and confusion which his crime has wrought."
— L.A. Thielen, PFA
•••••
Arguably the most harrowing and nihilistic installment of Roberto Rossellini's Trilogy of War, Germany, Year Zero is a caustic portrait of dehumanization and social disintegration. Filmed soon after the unexpected death of Rossellini's young son, Romano, in 1946, the protagonist, Edmund, becomes a tragic symbol of national guilt and personal pain: the embodiment of lost innocence; the uncertainty of profound change; the guilt of survival; the seeming hopelessness of the future. In essence, the repeated image of Edmund wandering through the devastated wasteland of postwar Berlin reflects, not only the unreconciled spirit of the German people, but also Rosselini's own attempt to come to terms with his own loss. Inevitably, like the aimless Edmund, Rossellini, too, searches for an elusive meaning to an inconsolable tragedy.
— Acquarello
— DMacp, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
In his "Dictionary of Films," Georges Sadoul notes: "The actors were all nonprofessionals. Made in the neorealist style of films like Rome, Open City and Paisan, this lyrical view of Germany in the immediate postwar period has some magnificent scenes, even though, as a whole, it does not match the earlier Rossellini films. Among the memorable scenes are the voice of Hitler on a phonograph among the ruins of the Chancellery and the death of the hero in a gutted building, accompanied by the tragic sound of a passing tram. The film was relatively unsuccessful and this prompted Rossellini to move in other directions. 'Although the story of Edmund and his family was invented by me, it is nevertheless the common story of German families. It is a mixture of reality and fiction, treated with the license that is the prerogative of any artist' (Rossellini). The film was made with French financing and the assistance of the East German film company, DEFA."
"In Germany, Year Zero, the final panel of his war triptych, Rossellini turns to post-war Berlin in an effort to shed light on the national character which gave rise to Hitler hysteria. 'The Germans were human beings, just like the rest of us. How had they come to this point, though? False morality? That's the essence of Nazism. Rejecting humility? Making a cult of heroism? Exalting strength over weakness? Pride over simplicity? This is why I chose to tell the story of a child.' (R. Rossellini) "Living in an environment where corruption and disorder pervade, 13-year-old Edmund falls under the tutelage of a pernicious schoolmaster. Unfettered by the reprehensible repercussions of fascist dogma, the teacher fills the youth with his warped morality. Taking the mentor's words on duty and heroism as gospel truth, impressionable Edmund murders his ailing father. The boy's initial illusion that his act was heroic later gives way to a troubled conscience set to work by what Rossellini termed 'the tiny flame of morality.' In the end, Edmund commits suicide to escape the pain and confusion which his crime has wrought."
— L.A. Thielen, PFA
•••••
Arguably the most harrowing and nihilistic installment of Roberto Rossellini's Trilogy of War, Germany, Year Zero is a caustic portrait of dehumanization and social disintegration. Filmed soon after the unexpected death of Rossellini's young son, Romano, in 1946, the protagonist, Edmund, becomes a tragic symbol of national guilt and personal pain: the embodiment of lost innocence; the uncertainty of profound change; the guilt of survival; the seeming hopelessness of the future. In essence, the repeated image of Edmund wandering through the devastated wasteland of postwar Berlin reflects, not only the unreconciled spirit of the German people, but also Rosselini's own attempt to come to terms with his own loss. Inevitably, like the aimless Edmund, Rossellini, too, searches for an elusive meaning to an inconsolable tragedy.
— Acquarello
(Deutschland im Jahre Null [de])
Italy / (East) Germany / France 1948
d: Roberto Rossellini
Films sans Frontières (Region 2 fr)
Italy / (East) Germany / France 1948
d: Roberto Rossellini
Films sans Frontières (Region 2 fr)
sc: Roberto Rossellini, Carlo Lizzani, Max Kolpet (based on a story by Rossellini)
c: Robert Juillard (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
pd: Piero Filippone
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Salvo D'Angelo, Alfredo Guarini, Roberto Rossellini (DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme [de] / Produzione Salvo D'Angelo [it] / Tevere Film [it] / UGC Images [fr])
w: Edmund Moeschke, Ingetraud Hinze, Franz-Otto Krüger, Ernst Pittschau, Erich Gühne, Alexandra Manys, Babsi Schultz-Reckewell, Hans Sangen, Heidi Blänkner, Franz von Treuberg, Karl Krüger, Barbara Hintz
pr: 01 Dez 1948
aw: Locarno International Film Festival 1948 Grand Prix; Price Best Screenplay, Original
c: Robert Juillard (b/w)
e: Eraldo Da Roma
pd: Piero Filippone
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Salvo D'Angelo, Alfredo Guarini, Roberto Rossellini (DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme [de] / Produzione Salvo D'Angelo [it] / Tevere Film [it] / UGC Images [fr])
w: Edmund Moeschke, Ingetraud Hinze, Franz-Otto Krüger, Ernst Pittschau, Erich Gühne, Alexandra Manys, Babsi Schultz-Reckewell, Hans Sangen, Heidi Blänkner, Franz von Treuberg, Karl Krüger, Barbara Hintz
pr: 01 Dez 1948
aw: Locarno International Film Festival 1948 Grand Prix; Price Best Screenplay, Original
rt: 70:39 (+4%PAL= 73 min (OL: 78 min)
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 1999
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: German MPEG-2 1.0 Mono
st: French
supp: • Filmography Rossellini
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 1999
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: German MPEG-2 1.0 Mono
st: French
supp: • Filmography Rossellini
A long opening tracking shot through Berlin's ruins under the Occupation in 1945 is both documentary and a hallucinatory voyage through a stone age city, the perfect illustration that realist film can also forge fantasy. It sparks against the story of a thirteen-year-old boy who works the black market, sells Hitler souvenirs for chewing-gum, and who will kill his sick father out of naïve mercy and regard for the whisperings of his old Nazi teacher. A horror movie that declines to tease.
— DMacp, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
In his "Dictionary of Films," Georges Sadoul notes: "The actors were all nonprofessionals. Made in the neorealist style of films like Rome, Open City and Paisan, this lyrical view of Germany in the immediate postwar period has some magnificent scenes, even though, as a whole, it does not match the earlier Rossellini films. Among the memorable scenes are the voice of Hitler on a phonograph among the ruins of the Chancellery and the death of the hero in a gutted building, accompanied by the tragic sound of a passing tram. The film was relatively unsuccessful and this prompted Rossellini to move in other directions. 'Although the story of Edmund and his family was invented by me, it is nevertheless the common story of German families. It is a mixture of reality and fiction, treated with the license that is the prerogative of any artist' (Rossellini). The film was made with French financing and the assistance of the East German film company, DEFA."
"In Germany, Year Zero, the final panel of his war triptych, Rossellini turns to post-war Berlin in an effort to shed light on the national character which gave rise to Hitler hysteria. 'The Germans were human beings, just like the rest of us. How had they come to this point, though? False morality? That's the essence of Nazism. Rejecting humility? Making a cult of heroism? Exalting strength over weakness? Pride over simplicity? This is why I chose to tell the story of a child.' (R. Rossellini) "Living in an environment where corruption and disorder pervade, 13-year-old Edmund falls under the tutelage of a pernicious schoolmaster. Unfettered by the reprehensible repercussions of fascist dogma, the teacher fills the youth with his warped morality. Taking the mentor's words on duty and heroism as gospel truth, impressionable Edmund murders his ailing father. The boy's initial illusion that his act was heroic later gives way to a troubled conscience set to work by what Rossellini termed 'the tiny flame of morality.' In the end, Edmund commits suicide to escape the pain and confusion which his crime has wrought."
— L.A. Thielen, PFA
•••••
Arguably the most harrowing and nihilistic installment of Roberto Rossellini's Trilogy of War, Germany, Year Zero is a caustic portrait of dehumanization and social disintegration. Filmed soon after the unexpected death of Rossellini's young son, Romano, in 1946, the protagonist, Edmund, becomes a tragic symbol of national guilt and personal pain: the embodiment of lost innocence; the uncertainty of profound change; the guilt of survival; the seeming hopelessness of the future. In essence, the repeated image of Edmund wandering through the devastated wasteland of postwar Berlin reflects, not only the unreconciled spirit of the German people, but also Rosselini's own attempt to come to terms with his own loss. Inevitably, like the aimless Edmund, Rossellini, too, searches for an elusive meaning to an inconsolable tragedy.
— Acquarello
— DMacp, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
In his "Dictionary of Films," Georges Sadoul notes: "The actors were all nonprofessionals. Made in the neorealist style of films like Rome, Open City and Paisan, this lyrical view of Germany in the immediate postwar period has some magnificent scenes, even though, as a whole, it does not match the earlier Rossellini films. Among the memorable scenes are the voice of Hitler on a phonograph among the ruins of the Chancellery and the death of the hero in a gutted building, accompanied by the tragic sound of a passing tram. The film was relatively unsuccessful and this prompted Rossellini to move in other directions. 'Although the story of Edmund and his family was invented by me, it is nevertheless the common story of German families. It is a mixture of reality and fiction, treated with the license that is the prerogative of any artist' (Rossellini). The film was made with French financing and the assistance of the East German film company, DEFA."
"In Germany, Year Zero, the final panel of his war triptych, Rossellini turns to post-war Berlin in an effort to shed light on the national character which gave rise to Hitler hysteria. 'The Germans were human beings, just like the rest of us. How had they come to this point, though? False morality? That's the essence of Nazism. Rejecting humility? Making a cult of heroism? Exalting strength over weakness? Pride over simplicity? This is why I chose to tell the story of a child.' (R. Rossellini) "Living in an environment where corruption and disorder pervade, 13-year-old Edmund falls under the tutelage of a pernicious schoolmaster. Unfettered by the reprehensible repercussions of fascist dogma, the teacher fills the youth with his warped morality. Taking the mentor's words on duty and heroism as gospel truth, impressionable Edmund murders his ailing father. The boy's initial illusion that his act was heroic later gives way to a troubled conscience set to work by what Rossellini termed 'the tiny flame of morality.' In the end, Edmund commits suicide to escape the pain and confusion which his crime has wrought."
— L.A. Thielen, PFA
•••••
Arguably the most harrowing and nihilistic installment of Roberto Rossellini's Trilogy of War, Germany, Year Zero is a caustic portrait of dehumanization and social disintegration. Filmed soon after the unexpected death of Rossellini's young son, Romano, in 1946, the protagonist, Edmund, becomes a tragic symbol of national guilt and personal pain: the embodiment of lost innocence; the uncertainty of profound change; the guilt of survival; the seeming hopelessness of the future. In essence, the repeated image of Edmund wandering through the devastated wasteland of postwar Berlin reflects, not only the unreconciled spirit of the German people, but also Rosselini's own attempt to come to terms with his own loss. Inevitably, like the aimless Edmund, Rossellini, too, searches for an elusive meaning to an inconsolable tragedy.
— Acquarello
(Stromboli [de])
Italy / USA 1950
d: Roberto Rossellini
Films sans Frontières (Region 2 fr)
Italy / USA 1950
d: Roberto Rossellini
Films sans Frontières (Region 2 fr)
sc: Renzo Cesana, Gian Paolo Callegari, Art Cohn, Sergio Amidei, Roberto Rossellini (religious theme inspired by Father Felix Morlion)
c: Otello Martelli (b/w)
e: Jolanda Benvenuti; Roland Gross, Alfred L. Werker (U.S. version) (uncredited)
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini (Berit Films / Bero Productions [it] / RKO Radio Pictures [us])
w: Ingrid Bergman, Mario Vitale, Renzo Cesana, Mario Sponzo
pr: 15 Feb 1950
aw: Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1951 Silver Ribbon Migliore Straniero che Abbia Lavorato in Italia Ingrid Bergman • Venice Film Festival 1950 Nominated Golden Lion
c: Otello Martelli (b/w)
e: Jolanda Benvenuti; Roland Gross, Alfred L. Werker (U.S. version) (uncredited)
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini (Berit Films / Bero Productions [it] / RKO Radio Pictures [us])
w: Ingrid Bergman, Mario Vitale, Renzo Cesana, Mario Sponzo
pr: 15 Feb 1950
aw: Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists 1951 Silver Ribbon Migliore Straniero che Abbia Lavorato in Italia Ingrid Bergman • Venice Film Festival 1950 Nominated Golden Lion
rt: 101:42 (+4%PAL= 106 min
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 1999
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian MPEG-2 1.0 Mono
st: French
supp: • Filmography Rossellini
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 1999
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian MPEG-2 1.0 Mono
st: French
supp: • Filmography Rossellini
In Rossellini's first film with Bergman, the overpowering symbol of the volcanic island almost overwhelms its delicate story: a World War II refugee (Bergman) marries a young fisherman to escape from an internment camp. Brutalised by war, but coming to loathe the terrifying savagery of the island, her drama is a conflict between self-pity and acceptance of Something Greater. Praised as an example of cinema devoid of the excesses of formal artifice, a 'lesson in humility', its achievement is less modest: a sequence of tunny-fishing remains one of the most amazing ever filmed. (The English-language version distributed by RKO was cut to 82 minutes.)
— DMacP, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Roberto Rossellini's films with Ingrid Bergman were years ahead of their time; incorporating neorealism into the professionally-acted drama, Rossellini achieved a startlingly direct and intuitive treatment of themes often skirted by the traditional plot-oriented melodrama. Stromboli, the first of these films, was shot on the volcanic island of Stromboli, with the townspeople playing a part in the drama. Bergman portrays a Lithuanian refugee, Karin, who, in order to escape the horrors of postwar internment camps, agrees to marry an Italian fisherman and live with him on his island. Tied to the traditions of married life and faced with a townspeople whose profoundly simple way of life is incomprehensible to her, she finds that her new "security" is worse than her former existence as a displaced person. Rossellini sets his tale against stunning natural imagery, including the documentary-like tuna-catch sequence and the dramatic finale, during which Karin, trying to flee the rocky island, is caught not by her husband but by a tumultuous volcanic eruption. The U.S. release version, which tells us that Karin returns to her husband, was denounced by Rossellini. Ours is the original version, which leaves this point ambiguous.
— PFA
•••••
Stromboli was the first of five features which Rossellini made with Ingrid Bergman, the others being Europa '51, Viaggio in Italia, Giovanna d'Arco al rogo and La paura. He also directed her in an episode of the portmanteau film Siamo donne. The making of Stromboli was fraught with problems and difficulties. For one thing, the film coincided with the start of the much publicised and, in the United States at least, much frowned-upon affair between Bergman and Rossellini. After the failure of Joan of Arc and Arch of Triumph, Bergman, who was becoming increasingly unhappy in Hollywood and in her marriage, was looking for a way out of both. However, she was highly bankable, and both Samuel Goldwyn and RKO's Howard Hughes showed interest in her idea of doing a picture with Rossellini. In the event Goldwyn backed out after seeing Germany, Year Zero and it was RKO which financed Stromboli. In spite of her feelings for Rossellini, Bergman found the director's improvisatory methods somewhat alien (although she coped far better than George Sanders in Viaggio), conditions on the island itself were primitive and arduous (indeed, during the final eruption sequence one of Rossellini's crew succumbed to the sulphurous fumes and died of a heart attack), the shoot was dogged by inquisitive paparazzi, and the picture went over schedule and over budget. It had always been agreed to release an Italian and an English language version of the film, both of which were to be edited by Rossellini. However, as a result of rows about the budget RKO edited the English version itself, which differs considerably from the Italian one (which Rossellini himself edited) and was disowned by the director.
The existence of two different versions makes it even more difficult to judge this particularly controversial film. With few exceptions (notably Robin Wood, Andrew Sarris, and Peter Brunette), the film has found no friends among Anglo-Saxon critics and, given the treatment meted out by them to Viaggio, it is doubtful that things would have been any different had they seen Rossellini's own version. In France, Stromboli, like the other Rossellini-Bergman collaborations, was championed by Cahiers, and especially by André Bazin, Jacques Rivette, and Maurice Schèrer (Eric Rohmer). Meanwhile, in Italy the situation was rather more complicated; those who disliked the film tended to accuse Rossellini of "abandoning neorealism" (often with the implicit suggestion that this was due to his infatuation with Ingrid Bergman), thus pushing the film's supporters into defending it as a neo-realist text, which is perhaps not the most productive or helpful way to look at Stromboli.
—Julian Petley
— DMacP, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Roberto Rossellini's films with Ingrid Bergman were years ahead of their time; incorporating neorealism into the professionally-acted drama, Rossellini achieved a startlingly direct and intuitive treatment of themes often skirted by the traditional plot-oriented melodrama. Stromboli, the first of these films, was shot on the volcanic island of Stromboli, with the townspeople playing a part in the drama. Bergman portrays a Lithuanian refugee, Karin, who, in order to escape the horrors of postwar internment camps, agrees to marry an Italian fisherman and live with him on his island. Tied to the traditions of married life and faced with a townspeople whose profoundly simple way of life is incomprehensible to her, she finds that her new "security" is worse than her former existence as a displaced person. Rossellini sets his tale against stunning natural imagery, including the documentary-like tuna-catch sequence and the dramatic finale, during which Karin, trying to flee the rocky island, is caught not by her husband but by a tumultuous volcanic eruption. The U.S. release version, which tells us that Karin returns to her husband, was denounced by Rossellini. Ours is the original version, which leaves this point ambiguous.
— PFA
•••••
Stromboli was the first of five features which Rossellini made with Ingrid Bergman, the others being Europa '51, Viaggio in Italia, Giovanna d'Arco al rogo and La paura. He also directed her in an episode of the portmanteau film Siamo donne. The making of Stromboli was fraught with problems and difficulties. For one thing, the film coincided with the start of the much publicised and, in the United States at least, much frowned-upon affair between Bergman and Rossellini. After the failure of Joan of Arc and Arch of Triumph, Bergman, who was becoming increasingly unhappy in Hollywood and in her marriage, was looking for a way out of both. However, she was highly bankable, and both Samuel Goldwyn and RKO's Howard Hughes showed interest in her idea of doing a picture with Rossellini. In the event Goldwyn backed out after seeing Germany, Year Zero and it was RKO which financed Stromboli. In spite of her feelings for Rossellini, Bergman found the director's improvisatory methods somewhat alien (although she coped far better than George Sanders in Viaggio), conditions on the island itself were primitive and arduous (indeed, during the final eruption sequence one of Rossellini's crew succumbed to the sulphurous fumes and died of a heart attack), the shoot was dogged by inquisitive paparazzi, and the picture went over schedule and over budget. It had always been agreed to release an Italian and an English language version of the film, both of which were to be edited by Rossellini. However, as a result of rows about the budget RKO edited the English version itself, which differs considerably from the Italian one (which Rossellini himself edited) and was disowned by the director.
The existence of two different versions makes it even more difficult to judge this particularly controversial film. With few exceptions (notably Robin Wood, Andrew Sarris, and Peter Brunette), the film has found no friends among Anglo-Saxon critics and, given the treatment meted out by them to Viaggio, it is doubtful that things would have been any different had they seen Rossellini's own version. In France, Stromboli, like the other Rossellini-Bergman collaborations, was championed by Cahiers, and especially by André Bazin, Jacques Rivette, and Maurice Schèrer (Eric Rohmer). Meanwhile, in Italy the situation was rather more complicated; those who disliked the film tended to accuse Rossellini of "abandoning neorealism" (often with the implicit suggestion that this was due to his infatuation with Ingrid Bergman), thus pushing the film's supporters into defending it as a neo-realist text, which is perhaps not the most productive or helpful way to look at Stromboli.
—Julian Petley
(Franziskus, der Gaukler Gottes [de] • Flowers of St Francis [en])
Italy 1950
d: Roberto Rossellini
Criterion (Region 0 us)
Italy 1950
d: Roberto Rossellini
Criterion (Region 0 us)
sc: Fr. Antonio Lisandrini, Fr. Felix Morion, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini ((based on the "Fioretti di San Francesco")
c: Otello Martelli (b/w)
e: Jolanda Benvenuti
pd: Virgilio Marchi
m: Renzo Rossellini, Fr. Enrico Buondonno
p: Angelo Rizzoli (Cineriz / Rizzoli Film [it])
w: Aldo Fabrizi, Brother Nazario Gerardi (Saint Francis, uncredited), Arabella Lemaitre (Saint Clair, uncredited)
pr: 14 Dez 1950
c: Otello Martelli (b/w)
e: Jolanda Benvenuti
pd: Virgilio Marchi
m: Renzo Rossellini, Fr. Enrico Buondonno
p: Angelo Rizzoli (Cineriz / Rizzoli Film [it])
w: Aldo Fabrizi, Brother Nazario Gerardi (Saint Francis, uncredited), Arabella Lemaitre (Saint Clair, uncredited)
pr: 14 Dez 1950
rt: 86:56 min
dvd-rl: 23 Aug 2005
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English
supp: The Criterion Collection #293
This high-definition digital transfer was created on a C-Reality from the 35mm restored internegative. The soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit from the 35mm restored track print
• Exclusive new video interviews, conducted in 2004, with Roberto Rossellini's daughter, actress Isabella Rossellini (18:08 min; film critic Father Virgilio Fantuzzi S.J. (11:45 min); and writer and film historian Adriano Apra (18:07 min)
• The non-Rossellini Giotto prologue opening from the American release of the film (6:12 min)
• 36-page booklet containing an essay by film scholar Peter Brunette, a letter from director Roberto Rossellini, an excerpt of a letter by film critic André Bazin, a note on the film's different versions, and an excerpt from a Rossellini interview
dvd-rl: 23 Aug 2005
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
st: English
supp: The Criterion Collection #293
This high-definition digital transfer was created on a C-Reality from the 35mm restored internegative. The soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit from the 35mm restored track print
• Exclusive new video interviews, conducted in 2004, with Roberto Rossellini's daughter, actress Isabella Rossellini (18:08 min; film critic Father Virgilio Fantuzzi S.J. (11:45 min); and writer and film historian Adriano Apra (18:07 min)
• The non-Rossellini Giotto prologue opening from the American release of the film (6:12 min)
• 36-page booklet containing an essay by film scholar Peter Brunette, a letter from director Roberto Rossellini, an excerpt of a letter by film critic André Bazin, a note on the film's different versions, and an excerpt from a Rossellini interview
Like "Rome, Open City" and "Paisà", this was co-written by Federico Fellini. Inspired by the 'Little Flowers of St Francis', it's the story of Francis of Assisi and his acolytes, the first Franciscans. They're a motley crew - simple, humble, joyful - quite prepared to give away anything they have (even their cassocks!) if it is required. Rossellini's film shares their qualities. How you react to it probably depends on your own state of grace... or your sense of humour.
— TCh, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Roberto Rossellini's buoyant 1950 masterpiece, a glorious hallucination of perfect harmony between man and nature. The Franciscans arrive at Assisi in the first reel and leave in the last. In between, as they say, nothing happens and everything happens. Rossellini is able to suggest the scope and rhythm of an entire lost way of life through a gradual accumulation of well-observed detail. The Franciscans are at once inspired and slightly foolish, but Rossellini maintains a profound respect for the grandeur of their delusions. A great film, all the more impressive for being apparently effortless.
— Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
•••••
A film of great harmony and natural beauty, this short historical feature from the celebrated Italian noerealist Roberto Rossellini is a tone poem comprised of physical gestures. Performed, with the exception of Aldo Fabrizi, by nonprofessionals (all of whom are real-life Franciscan monks), the film captures the brothers' purity and their desire to live in harmony with nature. More striking than the film's grand themes--man and nature, God and man, peace and defiance, love and hate, generosity and greed--Rossellini sensitively captures the monks' expressive physical movements. Illustrating one character's line of dialogue, "Souls are won over by examples, not words," Rossellini does not show us speeches or have us listen to readings from scripture. Instead we see the hands and faces of these monks, their wonder, their peace, their simplicity. As these monks can say so much with their eyes, so too can Rossellini speak volumes with a single shot.
— TVGuide
•••••
"Francesco, giullare di Dio" ... is a delicate, fascinating hybrid, a film that is self-consciously, almost militantly, naive, and, as such, something of an anomaly in Rossellini’s body of work. Never again would his films attain the directness, simplicity, even purity that is so gloriously on display here, a work poised between the theological and the historical, between the Rossellini who emerged from neorealism into the full-blown spiritual crisis manifested in "The Miracle", "Stromboli", and "Europa ’51", all set in postwar Italy, and the latter-day director whose abiding interest was in the depiction of history. Those later works often took religious subjects, but unlike in "Acts of the Apostles", "Augustine of Hippo", and "The Messiah", Rossellini in "The Flowers of St. Francis" is less concerned with creating a portrait of a particular historical figure than he is with exploring the nature of spirituality, specifically, of “Franciscanism” itself and its impact on the medieval world.
His effort to capture this spiritual essence is astonishingly holistic, with every aspect of the film’s narrative and visual style seemingly serving that end. Fundamentally, Rossellini refuses to single out Francis, thus decentering him and insisting on his status, first and foremost, as a member of a group. Similarly, while some critics have complained that Brother Ginepro, the foolish monk around whom many of the unconnected episodes revolve, is accorded too much importance in the film, at the expense of Francis, it is clear that this is a crucial and conscious tactic. ...
Even more radical is Rossellini’s formal technique, which relies overtly on discontinuity, fragmentation, and a productive tension between the extremes of realism and stylization. In narrative terms, "The Flowers of St. Francis" is utterly unconventional, with the sketch, the vignette, and the illuminating anecdote favored over a doggedly linear exposition. There is almost no plot, and scarcely more characterization.
— Peter Brunette
•••••
Shooting primarily in exterior spaces, using unobtrusive camerawork, and incorporating natural environment with a cast of non-professional actors (with monks from the Nocere Inferiore Monastery playing the roles of St. Francis and his disciples), Roberto Rossellini creates a sense of timelessness and contemporary relevance to the universal themes of humility, compassion, faith, sacrifice, and community in The Flowers of St. Francis. Depicting episodes in the life of St. Francis and the nascent Franciscan movement as mundane events in a personal search for existential purpose and inner peace, Rossellini captures a tangible and corporeal essence to spirituality and benediction: the incident at Rivo Torto, his meeting with Sister Clare (Arabella Lemaitre) who would later found the Clarissines (or Poor Clares, the second Franciscan order modeled after his doctrine of absolute poverty, charity, and service), his encounter with a leper (which historically occurs earlier in his life), his communion with nature (that led to his identification as patron saint of animals and the environment). By portraying St. Francis and his disciples within the context of everyday human struggle through all its simple joys and disappointments, celebrations and travails, the film presents a remarkably lucid and accessible portrait of the interrelation between humanity and spiritual enlightenment.
— Acquarello
— TCh, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Roberto Rossellini's buoyant 1950 masterpiece, a glorious hallucination of perfect harmony between man and nature. The Franciscans arrive at Assisi in the first reel and leave in the last. In between, as they say, nothing happens and everything happens. Rossellini is able to suggest the scope and rhythm of an entire lost way of life through a gradual accumulation of well-observed detail. The Franciscans are at once inspired and slightly foolish, but Rossellini maintains a profound respect for the grandeur of their delusions. A great film, all the more impressive for being apparently effortless.
— Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
•••••
A film of great harmony and natural beauty, this short historical feature from the celebrated Italian noerealist Roberto Rossellini is a tone poem comprised of physical gestures. Performed, with the exception of Aldo Fabrizi, by nonprofessionals (all of whom are real-life Franciscan monks), the film captures the brothers' purity and their desire to live in harmony with nature. More striking than the film's grand themes--man and nature, God and man, peace and defiance, love and hate, generosity and greed--Rossellini sensitively captures the monks' expressive physical movements. Illustrating one character's line of dialogue, "Souls are won over by examples, not words," Rossellini does not show us speeches or have us listen to readings from scripture. Instead we see the hands and faces of these monks, their wonder, their peace, their simplicity. As these monks can say so much with their eyes, so too can Rossellini speak volumes with a single shot.
— TVGuide
•••••
"Francesco, giullare di Dio" ... is a delicate, fascinating hybrid, a film that is self-consciously, almost militantly, naive, and, as such, something of an anomaly in Rossellini’s body of work. Never again would his films attain the directness, simplicity, even purity that is so gloriously on display here, a work poised between the theological and the historical, between the Rossellini who emerged from neorealism into the full-blown spiritual crisis manifested in "The Miracle", "Stromboli", and "Europa ’51", all set in postwar Italy, and the latter-day director whose abiding interest was in the depiction of history. Those later works often took religious subjects, but unlike in "Acts of the Apostles", "Augustine of Hippo", and "The Messiah", Rossellini in "The Flowers of St. Francis" is less concerned with creating a portrait of a particular historical figure than he is with exploring the nature of spirituality, specifically, of “Franciscanism” itself and its impact on the medieval world.
His effort to capture this spiritual essence is astonishingly holistic, with every aspect of the film’s narrative and visual style seemingly serving that end. Fundamentally, Rossellini refuses to single out Francis, thus decentering him and insisting on his status, first and foremost, as a member of a group. Similarly, while some critics have complained that Brother Ginepro, the foolish monk around whom many of the unconnected episodes revolve, is accorded too much importance in the film, at the expense of Francis, it is clear that this is a crucial and conscious tactic. ...
Even more radical is Rossellini’s formal technique, which relies overtly on discontinuity, fragmentation, and a productive tension between the extremes of realism and stylization. In narrative terms, "The Flowers of St. Francis" is utterly unconventional, with the sketch, the vignette, and the illuminating anecdote favored over a doggedly linear exposition. There is almost no plot, and scarcely more characterization.
— Peter Brunette
•••••
Shooting primarily in exterior spaces, using unobtrusive camerawork, and incorporating natural environment with a cast of non-professional actors (with monks from the Nocere Inferiore Monastery playing the roles of St. Francis and his disciples), Roberto Rossellini creates a sense of timelessness and contemporary relevance to the universal themes of humility, compassion, faith, sacrifice, and community in The Flowers of St. Francis. Depicting episodes in the life of St. Francis and the nascent Franciscan movement as mundane events in a personal search for existential purpose and inner peace, Rossellini captures a tangible and corporeal essence to spirituality and benediction: the incident at Rivo Torto, his meeting with Sister Clare (Arabella Lemaitre) who would later found the Clarissines (or Poor Clares, the second Franciscan order modeled after his doctrine of absolute poverty, charity, and service), his encounter with a leper (which historically occurs earlier in his life), his communion with nature (that led to his identification as patron saint of animals and the environment). By portraying St. Francis and his disciples within the context of everyday human struggle through all its simple joys and disappointments, celebrations and travails, the film presents a remarkably lucid and accessible portrait of the interrelation between humanity and spiritual enlightenment.
— Acquarello
(Liebe ist stärker / Reise nach Italien [de])
Italy / France 1953
d: Roberto Rossellini
Films sans Frontières (Region 2 fr)
Italy / France 1953
d: Roberto Rossellini
Films sans Frontières (Region 2 fr)
sc: Vitaliano Brancati, Roberto Rossellini
c: Enzo Serafin (b/w)
e: Jolanda Benvenuti
pd: Piero Filippone
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini (Francinex [fr/it] / Italia Film [it] / Junio-Speva Film / Les Films Ariane [fr] / S.E.C. / SCG / Sveva-Junior)
w: Ingrid Bergman (Katherine Joyce), George Sanders (Alexander Joyce), Leslie Daniels (Tony Burton), Natalia Ray (Natalie Burton), Anna Proclemer (Prostitute), Maria Mauban (Marie), Paul Muller (Paul Dupont), Anna Proclemer (Prostitute), Jackie Frost (Betty)
pr: 07 Sep 1954
c: Enzo Serafin (b/w)
e: Jolanda Benvenuti
pd: Piero Filippone
m: Renzo Rossellini
p: Roberto Rossellini (Francinex [fr/it] / Italia Film [it] / Junio-Speva Film / Les Films Ariane [fr] / S.E.C. / SCG / Sveva-Junior)
w: Ingrid Bergman (Katherine Joyce), George Sanders (Alexander Joyce), Leslie Daniels (Tony Burton), Natalia Ray (Natalie Burton), Anna Proclemer (Prostitute), Maria Mauban (Marie), Paul Muller (Paul Dupont), Anna Proclemer (Prostitute), Jackie Frost (Betty)
pr: 07 Sep 1954
rt: 79:24 (+4%PAL= 82) min
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 1999
ar: 1.29:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: English MPEG-2 2.0 Mono • Italian MPEG-2 2.0 Mono
st: French
supp: • Filmography of Roberto Rossellini
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 1999
ar: 1.29:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: English MPEG-2 2.0 Mono • Italian MPEG-2 2.0 Mono
st: French
supp: • Filmography of Roberto Rossellini
Some films have to be seen to be believed: the secret of this most beautiful and magical of films is 'nothing happens'. From the slight tale of a bored English couple holidaying in Italy, Rossellini builds a magnificently passionate story of cruelty and cynicism swirling into a renewal of love: life is so short, we must make the most of it... Rarely has screen chemistry worked so indefinably well; Sanders' suave, caddish businessman superbly complements Bergman's Garbo-like presence and the sensuous locations in which they feel so ill at ease. And though critics may have always praised it as 'one of the most beautiful films ever made', its genuinely romantic tenderness (it ends in 'I love you') mark it as never so unfashionable, never so moving.
— DMacp, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
The third, and, many feel, the best of the five very personal features Roberto Rossellini made with Ingrid Bergman, Voyage to Italy is the key link between neorealism and the subjective cinema of the early sixties. Bergman and George Sanders portray an English couple on a visit to Italy to sell a family mansion. The film is "about" the disintegration and regeneration of their marriage; on a deeper level, it is about the spiritual needs of modern men and women in a world in which men, due to their roles in capitalist society, are seen by Rossellini as more alienated (and psychologically handicapped) than women. If this theme anticipates Antonioni, so does the treatment which rejects "plot" for a direct, intuitive cinema that exploits the tensions between actor and character, characters and landscape, documentary and symbolic shots, in a way that is, for 1953, nothing short of revolutionary.
— PFA
•••••
VOYAGE TO ITALY was critically savaged when it was first released in the US in an English version called STRANGERS, running nearly 20-minutes shorter than the original. It was attacked as being "dull," "plodding," "slow," "hackneyed," "meandering," "poorly photographed," "poorly written," and "incompetently directed." At the same time, the French "new wave" critics called it a masterpiece: Jacques Rivette wrote that on its appearance, "all other films suddenly aged 10 years," and Jean-Luc Godard rhapsodically described it as being among "the most beautiful of films." Beyond the obvious differences of the original with the shortened version, this brings up the interesting question of what exactly "beauty" means in the context of the cinema. Is it just the presentation of pretty pictures and professional acting, artfully composed and photographed, proficiently assembled and conforming to a proscribed set of narrative conventions designed to elicit the expected responses of laughs and tears? Or is there beauty in the truthful, unmelodramatic observation of people, in an attempt to examine the human soul and such existential intangibles as life, death, history and time? If it is the latter, then VOYAGE TO ITALY really is among the most beautiful of films.
The Joyces' voyage is a spiritual journey in which the beauty, and the horror, of the Italian landscape makes them reflect on the emptiness of their lives (their need to always be with other people; Katherine's jealousy upon seeing so many pregnant women), as well as their mortality, (the increasingly disturbing trips to the ruins, culminating with the shocking Pompeii discovery). The scenes in the museums, ruins, and volcanoes have a mystical, timeless quality to them which truly are beautiful, with the camera eerily circling around the statues (a camera movement Godard copied verbatim in 1963's CONTEMPT, along with the scene of the characters sunning themselves on the roof of the Italian villa). The film is slow and plodding, but the lack of a traditional plot is exactly the point, as reflected in Alexander's constant complaints of boredom and his comment that "this country poisons you with laziness." Bergman (who was Rossellini's wife at the time) is stripped of her usual glamour, while Rossellini cuts through Sanders's cultivated facade of sarcastic disdain, presenting him as a real human being for perhaps the only time on film. By the accumulation of mundane details of everyday life--eating, driving, sleeping, quarreling--Rossellini creates a kind of scientific verisimilitude and realism that's detached, but never impassive, and the reconciliation climax is moving precisely because of its casual naturalism and lack of hyperbole. VOYAGE TO ITALY is a documentary love story about cruelty, kindness, and the brevity of life, inspiring one to examine one's own conscience and realize just how precious life really is.
— TVGuide
•••••
Roberto Rossellini creates a graceful, understated portrait on the dissolution of marriage in Voyage in Italy. A stylistic influence on the bleak industrial landscapes of Michelangelo Antonioni, Rossellini introduces the environment as a relevant, dynamic character in the lives of a married couple in crisis, and provides a visual metaphor for suppressed emotions. The echo of the Greek fortress caves and the ionization of the craters near Vesuvius become literal reflections of Katherine's physical actions. Moreover, the contained eruption just beneath the surface of "small Vesuvius", the catacombs of a village church, and the uncovered casts of human bodies at Pompeii further represent Katherine's inner turmoil and marital disillusionment. The final scene shows Katherine figuratively swept away by an environmental tide of emotional abandonment. It is in this confusion that they find themselves desperately searching for each other - hopelessly lost and unable to be together - and realize their own incompleteness and mutual need. It is a resigned reconciliation.
— Acquarello
— DMacp, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
The third, and, many feel, the best of the five very personal features Roberto Rossellini made with Ingrid Bergman, Voyage to Italy is the key link between neorealism and the subjective cinema of the early sixties. Bergman and George Sanders portray an English couple on a visit to Italy to sell a family mansion. The film is "about" the disintegration and regeneration of their marriage; on a deeper level, it is about the spiritual needs of modern men and women in a world in which men, due to their roles in capitalist society, are seen by Rossellini as more alienated (and psychologically handicapped) than women. If this theme anticipates Antonioni, so does the treatment which rejects "plot" for a direct, intuitive cinema that exploits the tensions between actor and character, characters and landscape, documentary and symbolic shots, in a way that is, for 1953, nothing short of revolutionary.
— PFA
•••••
VOYAGE TO ITALY was critically savaged when it was first released in the US in an English version called STRANGERS, running nearly 20-minutes shorter than the original. It was attacked as being "dull," "plodding," "slow," "hackneyed," "meandering," "poorly photographed," "poorly written," and "incompetently directed." At the same time, the French "new wave" critics called it a masterpiece: Jacques Rivette wrote that on its appearance, "all other films suddenly aged 10 years," and Jean-Luc Godard rhapsodically described it as being among "the most beautiful of films." Beyond the obvious differences of the original with the shortened version, this brings up the interesting question of what exactly "beauty" means in the context of the cinema. Is it just the presentation of pretty pictures and professional acting, artfully composed and photographed, proficiently assembled and conforming to a proscribed set of narrative conventions designed to elicit the expected responses of laughs and tears? Or is there beauty in the truthful, unmelodramatic observation of people, in an attempt to examine the human soul and such existential intangibles as life, death, history and time? If it is the latter, then VOYAGE TO ITALY really is among the most beautiful of films.
The Joyces' voyage is a spiritual journey in which the beauty, and the horror, of the Italian landscape makes them reflect on the emptiness of their lives (their need to always be with other people; Katherine's jealousy upon seeing so many pregnant women), as well as their mortality, (the increasingly disturbing trips to the ruins, culminating with the shocking Pompeii discovery). The scenes in the museums, ruins, and volcanoes have a mystical, timeless quality to them which truly are beautiful, with the camera eerily circling around the statues (a camera movement Godard copied verbatim in 1963's CONTEMPT, along with the scene of the characters sunning themselves on the roof of the Italian villa). The film is slow and plodding, but the lack of a traditional plot is exactly the point, as reflected in Alexander's constant complaints of boredom and his comment that "this country poisons you with laziness." Bergman (who was Rossellini's wife at the time) is stripped of her usual glamour, while Rossellini cuts through Sanders's cultivated facade of sarcastic disdain, presenting him as a real human being for perhaps the only time on film. By the accumulation of mundane details of everyday life--eating, driving, sleeping, quarreling--Rossellini creates a kind of scientific verisimilitude and realism that's detached, but never impassive, and the reconciliation climax is moving precisely because of its casual naturalism and lack of hyperbole. VOYAGE TO ITALY is a documentary love story about cruelty, kindness, and the brevity of life, inspiring one to examine one's own conscience and realize just how precious life really is.
— TVGuide
•••••
Roberto Rossellini creates a graceful, understated portrait on the dissolution of marriage in Voyage in Italy. A stylistic influence on the bleak industrial landscapes of Michelangelo Antonioni, Rossellini introduces the environment as a relevant, dynamic character in the lives of a married couple in crisis, and provides a visual metaphor for suppressed emotions. The echo of the Greek fortress caves and the ionization of the craters near Vesuvius become literal reflections of Katherine's physical actions. Moreover, the contained eruption just beneath the surface of "small Vesuvius", the catacombs of a village church, and the uncovered casts of human bodies at Pompeii further represent Katherine's inner turmoil and marital disillusionment. The final scene shows Katherine figuratively swept away by an environmental tide of emotional abandonment. It is in this confusion that they find themselves desperately searching for each other - hopelessly lost and unable to be together - and realize their own incompleteness and mutual need. It is a resigned reconciliation.
— Acquarello
Italy 1974
d: Roberto Rossellini
Opening / Fravidis (Region 2 fr)
sc: Marcella Mariani, Roberto Rossellini, Luciano Scaffa
c: Mario Montuori (Eastmancolor)
e: Jolanda Benvenuti
pd: Giuseppe Mangano
m: Mario Nascimbene
p: Carlo U. Quinterio (Ital-Noleggio Cinematografico / Rusconi Film S.p.a. [it])
w: Luigi Vannucchi, Dominique Darel, Valeria Sabel, Rita Forzano, Ennio Balbo, Luciano Gaudenzo, Renato Montanari, Paolo Bonacelli, Francesco Di Federico, Francesco Morillo, Piero Palermini, Consalvo Dell'Arti, Franco Ferrari, Renato Montalbano, Tino Bianchi
pr: 15 Nov 1974
c: Mario Montuori (Eastmancolor)
e: Jolanda Benvenuti
pd: Giuseppe Mangano
m: Mario Nascimbene
p: Carlo U. Quinterio (Ital-Noleggio Cinematografico / Rusconi Film S.p.a. [it])
w: Luigi Vannucchi, Dominique Darel, Valeria Sabel, Rita Forzano, Ennio Balbo, Luciano Gaudenzo, Renato Montanari, Paolo Bonacelli, Francesco Di Federico, Francesco Morillo, Piero Palermini, Consalvo Dell'Arti, Franco Ferrari, Renato Montalbano, Tino Bianchi
pr: 15 Nov 1974
rt: 118:13 (+4%PAL= ) min
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: French (fixed)
supp: Collection Les films de ma vie
SIDE A
• Onze Fioretti de Saint François d'Assise
• Filmography of Roberto Rossellini
SIDE B
• The Film
dvd-rl: 07 Nov 2002
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: French (fixed)
supp: Collection Les films de ma vie
SIDE A
• Onze Fioretti de Saint François d'Assise
• Filmography of Roberto Rossellini
SIDE B
• The Film
Rossellini's return to the cinema after twelve years working for television: a sympathetic, idealised - and almost universally reviled - portrait of Italy's postwar statesman Alcide De Gasperi (played by Vannucchi), the Christian Democrat leader who successfully kept the Communists out of the government, it is indeed hard to swallow. Its flaw is obvious: from 1945's chaos through anti-Communist coalitions, the historical realities are too close to bear De Gasperi's saint-like depiction. Its major saving irony is that it shows the conditions for historical choices in a much more illuminating light than its reactionary ticket would allow. So, although by no means the best, it's the most provocative of Rossellini's historical biographies, looking suspiciously like a triumph for the devil's advocate.
— DMacp, Time Out Film Guide
— DMacp, Time Out Film Guide
d = director; sc = screenplay; c = cinematographer; e = editor; pd = production design / art director;
m = music score ; p = producer; w = cast; pr = premiere; aw = awards;
rt = runtime; dvd-rl = dvd release; ar = aspect ratio; sd = soundtracks; st = subtitles; supp = supplements
m = music score ; p = producer; w = cast; pr = premiere; aw = awards;
rt = runtime; dvd-rl = dvd release; ar = aspect ratio; sd = soundtracks; st = subtitles; supp = supplements