IFF Film Review: "Stromboli" ("Stromboli, terra di Dio") (1950).

"Raging Island...Raging Passions!" This is Stromboli (Stromboli, terra di Dio). This Italian-American film directed by Roberto Rossellini and written by Sergio Amidei, Gian Paolo Callegari, Art Cohn and Renzo Cesana. Lithuanian Karin flees her war-ravaged home country and winds up in Italy, where she's sent to an internment camp. There, she meets Antonio, a POW who's just been freed. They enjoy a brief romance, punctuated by Antonio's marriage proposal, and Karin, seeing her chance to escape the camp, accepts. But Antonio takes her back to Stromboli, the volcanic island he lives on, and Karin struggles with a language barrier, brutal living conditions and her outsider status.

The film is the result of a famous letter from Ingrid Bergman to Rossellini, in which she wrote that she admired his work and wanted to make a movie with him. Rossellini worked with no written screenplay but a handful of personal notes. 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 (1948). The film 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. 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. Furthermore, Bergman's Hollywood career was halted for a number of years, until she won an Academy Award for her performance in Anastasia (1956). Modern sources list the release year as either 1949 or 1950, but an Associated Press article dated March 12, 1950, reported that the film had not yet been shown publicly in Italy. 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. On February 15, 1950, the film was released in the United States 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.

The film stars Bergman, Mario Vitale, Renzo Cesana and Mario Sponzo. Despite all the irritating behavior exhibited by the characters, especially Bergman's, the film is ultimately a work of great compassion.

The film is a delicately and delightfully crafted exploration of relationships, complacency, and the evocation of our connections to our anthropological roots. The film is a searing portrait of love turning sour under the Italian sun and a bold adventure in a new kind of filmmaking.

Simon says Stromboli (Stromboli, terra di Dio) receives:

Also, see my IFF review for Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta).