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Stromboli | |
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![]() Italian theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Roberto Rossellini |
Screenplay by | |
Story by | Roberto Rossellini |
Produced by | Roberto Rossellini |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Otello Martelli |
Edited by | Jolanda Benvenuti |
Music by | Renzo Rossellini |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 107/81 minutes |
Countries |
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Languages | Italian, English |
Budget | US$900,000 [1] |
Stromboli, also known as Stromboli, Land of God (Italian : Stromboli, terra di Dio), is a 1950 Italian-American film directed by Roberto Rossellini and starring Ingrid Bergman. [2] The drama is considered a classic example of Italian neorealism.[ citation needed ]
In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978." [3]
Bergman plays Karin, a displaced Lithuanian in Italy, who secures release from an internment camp by marrying an Italian ex-POW fisherman (Mario Vitale), whom she meets in the camp. He promises her a great life in his home island of Stromboli, a volcanic island located between the mainland of Italy and Sicily. She soon discovers that Stromboli is very harsh and barren, not at all what she expected, and the people, very traditional and conservative, many fishermen, show hostility and disdain towards this foreign woman who does not follow their ways. Karin becomes increasingly despondent and eventually decides to escape the volcanic island.
Most villagers are played by actual people from the island, as is typical of neorealism.[ citation needed ]
The film is the result of a famous letter from Ingrid Bergman to Roberto Rossellini, in which she wrote that she admired his work and wanted to make a movie with him. Rossellini and she set up a joint production company for the film, Societ per Azioni Berit (Berit Films, sometimes written as Bero Films), and she also helped Rossellini to secure a production and distribution deal with RKO and its then owner, Howard Hughes, thus securing most of the budget together with international distribution for the film. Originally, she had approached Samuel Goldwyn, but he bowed out after having seen Rossellini's film Germany, Year Zero . [4]
The terms of Rossellini's contract with RKO stated that all footage had to be turned over to RKO, which would edit an American version of the film, based on Rossellini's Italian version. However, the US version was eventually made without the director's input. Rossellini protested, and claimed that RKO's 81-minute version was radically different from his original 105-minute version. [4] Rossellini obtained support from Father Félix Morlión, who had been involved in the screenwriting. He sent a telegram to Joseph Breen, director of MPPDA's Production Code Administration, urging him to compare the original script with the RKO version, as he felt that the religious theme he had written into the screenplay had been lost. [5] The conflict eventually led to Rossellini and RKO taking legal action against each other over the international distribution rights to the film. [4] The exact outcome is unknown, but the unrestored RKO version of the film, as distributed, is 102–105 minutes long. It lists credits that were missing in the first RKO version, but it still has 1950 as the production year, and the same MPAA number as the 81-minute version. This indicates that the differences were resolved rather quickly.
Some confusion surrounds the Italian release date of the film. Modern sources list the release year as either 1949 or 1950, [4] but an Associated Press article dated March 12, 1950, reported that the film had not yet been shown publicly in Italy. [6] Apparently, few Italians had a chance to see the film until it was screened at the 11th Venice International Film Festival on August 26, 1950. [7]
Stromboli is perhaps best remembered for the extramarital affair between Rossellini and Bergman that began during the production of the film, as well as their child born out of wedlock a few weeks before the film's American release. [8] In fact, the affair caused such a scandal in the United States that church groups, women's clubs, and legislators in more than a dozen states around the country called for the film to be banned, [9] and Bergman was denounced as "a powerful influence for evil" on the floor of the US Senate by Colorado Senator Edwin C. Johnson. [10] Furthermore, Bergman's Hollywood career was halted for a number of years, until she won an Academy Award for her performance in Anastasia.
In Italy, Stromboli was awarded the Rome Prize for Cinema as the best film of the year. [7] [11]
Initial reception for Stromboli in America, however, was very negative. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times opened his review by writing: "After all the unprecedented interest that the picture 'Stromboli' has aroused — it being, of course, the fateful drama which Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini have made — it comes as a startling anticlimax to discover that this widely heralded film is incredibly feeble, inarticulate, uninspiring and painfully banal." Crowther added that Bergman's character "is never drawn with clear and revealing definition, due partly to the vagueness of the script and partly to the dullness and monotony with which Rossellini has directed her." [12] The staff at Variety agreed, writing, "Director Roberto Rossellini purportedly denied responsibility for the film, claiming the American version was cut by RKO beyond recognition. Cut or not cut, the film reflects no credit on him. Given elementary-school dialog to recite and impossible scenes to act, Ingrid Bergman's never able to make the lines real nor the emotion sufficiently motivated to seem more than an exercise ... The only visible touch of the famed Italian director is in the hard photography, which adds to the realistic, documentary effect of life on the rocky, lava-blanketed island. Rossellini's penchant for realism, however, does not extend to Bergman. She's always fresh, clean and well-groomed." [13] Harrison's Reports wrote: "As entertainment, it does have a few moments of distinction, but on the whole it is a dull slow-paced piece, badly edited and mediocre in writing, direction and acting." [14] John McCarten of The New Yorker found that there was "nothing whatsoever in the footage that rises above the humdrum", and felt that Bergman "doesn't really seem to have her heart in any of the scenes." [15] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post lamented, "It's a pity that many people who never go to foreign-made pictures will be drawn into this by the Rossellini-Bergman names and will think that this flat, drab, inept picture is what they've been missing." [16]
In Britain, The Monthly Film Bulletin was also negative, writing that Rossellini's "extempore method is sadly out of place in a film dealing with personal relationships and, although there are indications that Karin is intended to be a complex and interesting character, these are never developed, and her motives and actions remain unpredictable. Other characters have no real identity, and hardly begin to come alive ... Ingrid Bergman makes a gallant effort with a part ill-conceived and scripted, and calling for a personality and quality which she cannot command." [17]
Recent assessments have been more positive. Reviewing the film in 2013 in conjunction with its DVD release as part of The Criterion Collection, Dave Kehr called the film "one of the pioneering works of modern European filmmaking." [8] In an expansive analysis of the film, critic Fred Camper wrote of the drama, "Like many of cinema's masterpieces, Stromboli is fully explained only in a final scene that brings into harmony the protagonist's state of mind and the imagery. This structure...suggests a belief in the transformative power of revelation. Forced to drop her suitcase (itself far more modest than the trunks she arrived with) as she ascends the volcano, Karin is stripped of her pride and reduced — or elevated — to the condition of a crying child, a kind of first human being who, divested of the trappings of self, must learn to see and speak again from a personal "year zero" (to borrow from another Rossellini film title)." [18]
The Venice Film Festival ranked Stromboli among the 100 most important Italian films ("100 film italiani da salvare") from 1942–1978. In 2012, the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound critics' poll also listed it as one of the 250 greatest films of all time. [19]
The film opened Feb. 15, 1950 in the United States [20] and was a box-office bomb, but did better overseas, where Bergman and Rossellini's affair was considered less scandalous. In all, RKO lost $200,000 on the picture. [21]
Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini was an Italian film director, screenwriter and producer. He was one of the most prominent directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing to the movement with films such as Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), and Germany, Year Zero (1948). He is also known for his films starring Ingrid Bergman, Stromboli (1950), Europe '51 (1952), Journey to Italy (1954), Fear (1954) and Joan of Arc at the Stake (1954).
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress. With a career spanning five decades, Bergman is often regarded as one of the most influential screen figures in cinematic history. She won numerous accolades, including three Academy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, four Golden Globe Awards, BAFTA Award, and a Volpi Cup. She is one of only four actresses to have received at least three acting Academy Awards. In 1999, the American Film Institute recognised Bergman as the fourth greatest female screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Italian neorealism, also known as the Golden Age, was a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class. They are filmed on location, frequently with non-professional actors. They primarily address the difficult economic and moral conditions of post-World War II Italy, representing changes in the Italian psyche and conditions of everyday life, including poverty, oppression, injustice and desperation.
Isabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini is an Italian-American actress and model. The daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, she is noted for her successful tenure as a Lancôme model and an established career in American cinema.
Anna Maria Magnani was an Italian actress. She was known for her explosive acting and earthy, realistic portrayals of characters.
Stromboli is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the north coast of Sicily, containing Mount Stromboli, one of the four active volcanoes in Italy. It is one of the seven Aeolian Islands, a volcanic arc north of Sicily, and the mythological home of Aeolus.
Joan of Arc is a 1948 American hagiographic epic film directed by Victor Fleming, and starring Ingrid Bergman as the eponymous French religious icon and war heroine. It was produced by Walter Wanger and is based on Maxwell Anderson's successful Broadway play Joan of Lorraine, which also starred Bergman, and was adapted for the screen by Anderson himself, in collaboration with Andrew Solt. It is the only film of an Anderson play for which the author wrote the film script. It is the last film Fleming directed before his death in 1949.
Rome, Open City, also released as Open City, is a 1945 Italian neorealist war drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini and co-written by Sergio Amidei, Celeste Negarville and Federico Fellini. Set in Rome in 1944, the film follows a diverse group of characters coping under the Nazi occupation, and centers on a Resistance fighter trying to escape the city with the help of a Catholic priest. The title refers to the status of Rome as an open city following its declaration as such on 14 August 1943. The film is the first in Rosselini's "Neorealist Trilogy", followed by Paisan (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1948).
My Voyage to Italy is a personal documentary by acclaimed Italian-American director Martin Scorsese. The film is a voyage through Italian cinema history, marking influential films for Scorsese and particularly covering the Italian neorealism period.
Friedel Pia Lindström is a Swedish television journalist, and the first child of actress Ingrid Bergman.
Stromboli is a volcanic island off the north coast of Sicily, Italy.
The Flowers of St. Francis is a 1950 film directed by Roberto Rossellini and co-written by Federico Fellini. The film is based on two books, the 14th-century novel Fioretti di San Francesco and La Vita di Frate Ginepro, both of which relate the life and work of St. Francis and the early Franciscans. I Fioretti is composed of 78 small chapters. The novel as a whole is less biographical and instead focuses on relating tales of the life of St. Francis and his followers. The movie follows the same premise, though rather than relating all 78 chapters, it focuses instead on nine of them. Each chapter is composed in the style of a parable and, like parables, contains a moral theme. Every new scene transitions with a chapter marker, a device that directly relates the film to the novel. On October 6, 1952, when the movie debuted in America, where the novel was much less known, the chapter markers were removed.
Europe '51, also known as The Greatest Love, is a 1952 Italian neorealist film directed by Roberto Rossellini, starring Ingrid Bergman and Alexander Knox. The film follows an industrialist's wife who, after the death of her young son, turns towards a rigorous humanitarianism. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."
Paisan is a 1946 Italian neorealist war drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini. In six independent episodes, it tells of the Liberation of Italy by the Allied forces during the late stage of World War II. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and received numerous national and international prizes.
Ingrid Bergman was a multilingual, Academy Award-winning actress born in Stockholm, conversant in Swedish, German, English, Italian, and French. She had been preparing for an acting career all her life. After her mother Frieda died when she was three years old, she was raised by her father Justus Samuel Bergman, a professional photographer who encouraged her to pose and act in front of the camera. As a young woman, she was shy, taller than the average women of her generation, and somewhat overweight. Acting allowed her to transcend these constraints, enabling her to transform herself into a character. She first appeared as an uncredited extra in the film Landskamp (1932), and was accepted into the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Stockholm as a scholarship student in 1933.
Journey to Italy, also known as Voyage to Italy, is a 1954 drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini. Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders play Katherine and Alex Joyce, a childless English married couple on a trip to Italy whose marriage is on the point of collapse until they are miraculously reconciled. The film was written by Rossellini and Vitaliano Brancati, but is loosely based on the 1934 novel Duo by Colette. Although the film was an Italian production, its dialogue was in English. The first theatrical release was in Italy under the title Viaggio in Italia; the dialogue had been dubbed into Italian.
Fear is a 1954 German-Italian drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini and starring his wife Ingrid Bergman. It is loosely based on the Stefan Zweig novella Fear. Rossellini created it because he wanted to explore the reconstruction of Germany from both a material and moral standpoint ten years after making his previous German film Germany, Year Zero. The film is noirish with aspects reminiscent of Hitchcock and German Expressionism.
Volcano is a 1950 Italian drama film directed by William Dieterle and starring Anna Magnani, Rossano Brazzi, and Geraldine Brooks. It was filmed on location on Salina Island, in the Aeolian Islands, and in the city of Messina on Sicily.
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Mario Vitale (1923–2003) was an Italian film actor. Vitale was a fisherman chosen by Roberto Rossellini to star alongside Ingrid Bergman in the 1950 film Stromboli. He played prominent roles in several other films until the mid-1950s.