Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Director Roberto Rossellini: Gone, Not Forgotten by Daughter Isabella.

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Roberto Rossellini was one of the most important directors of Italian neorealist cinema. He produced a Neo Trilogy, then  two films now classified as the "Transitional films": "L'Amore " (with Anna Magnani) and "La macchina ammazzacattivi," on the capability of cinema to portray reality and truth (with recalls of Commedia del Arte).

Ingrid Bergman was brought to Hollywood in 1939, by David O. Selznicks to star in "Intermezzo: A Love Story". With this move she began a career that would span five decades, win her three Oscars, two Emmys and a Tony Award, and see her image go from saint to whore and back to saint again, as Ingrid once described it herself.

In 1948 Roberto Rossellini received a letter from Ingrid Berman  proposing a collaboration: << Dear Mr. Rossellini,  I saw your films Open City and Paisan, and enjoyed them very much. If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian knows only "ti amo", I am ready to come and make a film with you. Ingrid Bergman >>

This famous letter begins one of the most popular love stories in cinema lore, with Ingrid Bergman and Rossellini both at the peak of their popularity and influence, and in August, 1949, Bergman became the centre of a major scandal when it was revealed by her husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, that Bergman had gone to live with Rossellini. This affair caused a great scandal in some countries (Rossellini was also married) ; the scandal intensified when the two started having children.

Bergman and Rossellini started working together the following year in "Stromboli terra di Dio" (on the island of  Stromboli) , whose volocano quite conveniently erupted during filming), and, in 1950, "Europa '51". In 1953 "Viaggia in Italia" completed the so-called "Ingrid's Trilogy".

Bergman was unable to work in Hollywood for seven years but made a triumphant return in "Anastasia" (1956) for which she won an Academy Award. Other successes included "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" (1958), "The Yellow Rolls-Royce" (1964) and the ' Murder on the Orient Express" (1974). Ingrid Bergman died on 29th August, 1982.

While Bergman returned to Hollywood, Rossellini was invited to India, by Prime Minister Nehru, to put some life into the floundering Indian Films Division, where Rossellini had a torrid affair with Sonali Dasgupta, a beautiful married women who he later married. Rossellini died of a heart attack in June 1977, at the age of 71.

 

 


BRIEF ENCOUNTER

Gone, not forgotten

Director Roberto Rossellini gets a memorable gift from daughter Isabella.

Los Angeles Times

Susan King
July 16, 2006

ISABELLA ROSSELLINI, the 54-year-old actress, model and cosmetics spokesperson, has been preoccupied lately with thoughts of her father, Italian neo-realist director Roberto Rossellini, who would've been 100 this year (he died at 71 in 1977).

In a whimsical, thoughtful book called "In the Name of the Father, the Daughter and the Holy Ghosts: Remembering Roberto Rossellini," she offers finely etched personal memories of her father, her family and her mother, actress Ingrid Bergman, including the correspondence between her mother and father that led to their torrid love affair, three children and six films together.

She's also created an avant-garde short film, "My Dad Is 100 Years Old," included in the book, in which she transforms herself into her mother, Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini and David O. Selznick and brings these ghosts of films past face-t! o-face with her father, who is represented in the film by a massive belly. In the fall, she'll be talking about her father once again at a retrospective of his work at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Daddy complex, anyone?

*

In your book and short film, you talk about how contemporary audiences don't remember your father. Why haven't his films such as "Open City" and "Paisan" been as accessible as those of directors like Fellini and Vittorio De Sica?

The films are very difficult to find. My father was more influential than very popular. He has never been a box-office director. Up to 15 years ago, every [film] student would see one or two neo-realistic films at school. So there was a distribution of my father's films in 16mm.

But now these prints are very old and the films have never been transferred to DVD, so it's even harder for students who are interested in the history of film to see these films. A problem with film conservatio! n, particularly with directors who didn't work with major studios, is that they worked with small companies that closed down and went bankrupt, so it's very difficult to trace the rights, to trace where the copies are.

We know where the material is, and now we are starting to clear all the rights.

*

Your book and movie are lovely birthday presents to your father.

There is a lot of material on my dad that is very academic because he's loved by film historians, but there wasn't a book that was light and filled with illustrations. Generally, when I am interviewed about my parents I am asked in the traditional factual approach to interviews. I thought I could express more what I wanted to say if I could do my own little film. And I really was using my little film as bait for younger people who don't know my dad to understand what the intention was of his films.

*

It was clever to explain your fathe! r's approach to directing by having him interact with his fellow directors.

I made different directors debate what was film to them to try in a funny way to show how directors talk about their work. They don't talk about ? at least where I grew up ? success. They don't talk in terms of careers. They think in terms of expressing themselves, telling something that is really urgent and needs to be said. That is what I wanted to express in my film. Most of the time, when you sit down and talk to press they look at films as business.

*

Is your father as popular as your mother in European circles?

My mother was more visible [here] because my father's films were not that popular in the United States. He ran into censorship problems, and also the scandal when he fell in love with my mum ?. My mum was known here because she worked nine years of her life here. In fact, my mum is only remembered for the films she had done in America.
In Europe, my father is as well-known as my mum. Unfortunately, the scandal and all that followed ? the gossip took so much the attention from their talent.

*

The films they made together, such as "Stromboli" and "Europa '51," are dramatically challenging and intense.

Their work together was beautiful. They are considered very strong in Europe. In America, Hollywood dominates so much the culture of cinema. I don't know if it's Hollywood's fault or just a general disinterest that America has for foreign art. The United States is very isolated culturally.

*

From your description, he sounded like a great dad.

He certainly was. I think like a lot of little girls have their own bond with their dad, but he was particularly tender and really liked children. He had seven of them. It was a big family.

*

Did you visit him on the sets?

Yes, a lot, especially when I was! a teenager ? the first jobs when I was out of school were on his sets.

*

Was he as tender on the set?

It was very authoritarian in a way that directors are not anymore. The directors of that generation, they screamed and yelled on the set the way that nobody would dare today to do. It was a completely different technique. He was absolutely the dictator, the great patriarch.

*

Were you able to see your father much after he and your mother divorced?

I saw more of my dad than my mum. When my parents divorced, I was about 3 or 4. We lived in Paris for four years ? both my parents were there. His films were financed a lot in France. He was very loved by Fran?ois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. So my father was hanging out a lot in Paris and my mum was living in Paris.

Then we settled in Rome when I was 8. I lived there from 8 to 18.

*

Did your father ever get to see you perform?

When I first finished school, I started working with him. Then I got a little job on Italian television and he was very happy. I was working with Roberto Benigni and we did a little comedy show together. It turned out to be very successful. We did that for three years. He was very supportive of that; he died during the first year.

*

David Lynch's "Blue Velvet," in which you star, is playing now in L.A. for its 20th anniversary. What would your parents have thought of the film?

My mom, she would have felt uncomfortable. My father would not have liked it because of the nudity. He was very prudish.

 

 

 

 

The ANNOTICO Reports are Archived at:

Italia USA: http://www.ItaliaUSA.com (Formerly Italy at St Louis)

Annotico Email: annotico@earthlink.net