Robert rossellini

Born in the Italian capital on May 8, 1906, Roberto Rossellini belonged to a fairly wealthy Catholic family, as he was one of the four children of Elettra Bellan and Angelico Giuseppe, a prestigious architect who built important Roman buildings, including the first cinema from Rome. Thanks to that, the boy could enter for free whenever he wanted, so he became a great fan. He was especially marked by Y el mundo marcha and Aleluya , by King Vidor .

From a very early age he is interested in mechanics. In his youth he built a workshop to carry out experiments, and came to build an engine that ran on water and gasoline. After the death of his father, his position ceased to be so secure, and in search of financial gain he came into contact with the world of cinema, first as a sound technician, but also as an editing assistant. At this time he shoots Prélude á l’après-midi d’un faune , his first short, just before starting to work as an assistant to directors Goffredo Alessandrini and Francesco De Santis.

In 1941 he made his feature film debut with La Nave Bianca , a propaganda documentary about a ship, financed by the Ministry of the Navy. He initiates the so-called Fascist Trilogy, which is completed with A pilot returns and L’uomo dalla croce, at the service of the government of Benito Mussolini. Rossellini is by no means an unconditional supporter of the regime, but he has lived for years influenced by his principles and has no prejudices when it comes to filming them so that his career can advance. He collaborates with Vittorio Mussolini, son of the Duce and founder of the production company Alleanza Cinematográfica Italiana, and of Cinema magazine, which had an enormous influence on the new batch of Italian filmmakers. Rossellini is not passionate about writing articles, which is why he is little involved in the header, although he always got along well with the editors.

Thanks to Vittorio Mussolini , he met Federico Fellini and Aldo Fabrizi , who would become great friends of his. Before the end of the war, preparations for Rome, an Open City would begin with them , with Fellini helping him write the script – Sergio Amidei also collaborated – and Fabrizi in the role of a priest, one of the protagonists. At that time, the carefree Rossellini became aware of the suffering caused by totalitarianism, and decided to capture it on film.

Although Rossellini does not have the necessary money to launch a film production, he uses used film, shoots without a sound system thinking of a later sound system, and with the exception of Fabrizi and the great Anna Magnani , he uses non-professional actors, Sometimes people he finds in the streets, similar to the character they are going to embody. “To create the character you have in mind, you need to engage in a battle with the actor who usually ends up winning and imposing his wishes. Since I don’t want to be wasting my energy in a battle like this, I only rarely use professional actors.” the director remembered.

Inspired by the true story of Luigi Morosini, a priest murdered by the Nazis for helping the resistance, the film intertwines the journey of various characters from the last stage of the occupation of Rome: Father Pietro, the communist engineer Manfredi, Pina, girlfriend of a typographer who fights against invaders, etc.

After illustrious predecessors that pointed to the movement such as Obsession (1943) , by Luchino Visconti , Rome, Open City officially inaugurates Italian neorealism. In fact, it has all the characteristics that would define the movement: a style close to documentary, description of the most disadvantaged of the time, etc. Since its author had no money to develop the negatives, he kept shooting until the end without being able to see how his plans were turning out. When he finished, he sold his family’s artwork to a countess, so he could develop and sound.

After its official premiere, it was highly successful, especially critically, and won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. With Fellini and Amidei he writes his next tape, Comrade , about the Allied advance in Italy. It completes the neorealist trilogy by the director Alemania, año cero , which tries to give the vision of the other side, the defeated Germans, through the adventures of Edmund, a boy who tries to survive in Berlin and help his family.

After shooting one of the two segments of Love , again with Anna Magnani, at the end of the 40s, and recreating the life of Francis of Assisi, in Francisco, minstrel of God , Rossellini receives a letter from one of the great Hollywood stars of the moment, the actress Ingrid Bergman , seduced by his cinema, who tells him that she is looking forward to working with him. The filmmaker takes advantage of the offer of the Casablanca actress , and casts her as the protagonist of Stromboli, where she plays a Lithuanian woman who, in order to get out of a concentration camp, marries a rough fisherman who takes her to live on the island mentioned in the title, threatened by a volcano (filming was complicated because the volcano erupted unexpectedly ). Faced with official cinema, which tries to give an optimistic image of Italy, as far removed as possible from what neorealist cinema taught, Rossellini continues to be committed to spreading the truth in this and his subsequent films.

Rossellini had obtained the ecclesiastical annulment of his marriage to the Russian-born actress Assia Noris , and had married Marcella De Marchis, who became a great costume designer for titles like Django . With her he had had two children, but even so he immediately fell in love with Ingrid Bergman. Since she was also married, to Dr. Petter Aron Lindström, when the affair came to light it caused a huge scandal. Rossellini and Bergman became fodder for the gossip press for a long time. The couple had three children, including the well-known model and actress Isabella Rossellini .

He turned to the actress again to star in the intense Europa 1951 , where she is a relieved woman who reflects after a tragic event and decides to help those most in need. In Joan of Arc at the Stake , the filmmaker made Ingrid Bergman the patron saint of France. In the midst of a marital crisis, Rossellini shot the practically autobiographical film I will always love you . Ingrid Bergman is a woman estranged from her husband, with whom she goes to Italy for an inheritance. She completes the ‘Bergmanian’ pentalogy, the also essential I no longer believe in love , in which the actress is a married woman with a lover, who will be blackmailed.

After definitively separating from Bergman, Rossellini pairs up with Sonali Senroy DasGupta, with whom he has another baby, and who would accompany him until his death. He shoots one of his best works, General de la Rovere , where a poor devil – an unforgettable Vittorio De Sica – agrees to go to prison and pose as a legendary general of the resistance, in order to gather information from the prisoners. But after being greeted as a hero, he ends up trying to behave like one…

After Fugitivos en la noche , Viva Italia and Alma negra , Rossellini’s career languishes. In the 1960s, he took refuge in television with titles such as The Seizure of Power by Louis XIV or Socrates , of enormous cultural interest, since the director had a utopian conception of television, as a means of mass dissemination of knowledge to the people. . When he came face to face with reality, he returned to the cinema with the biopics Year One (1974) , about the Italian politician Alcide de Gasperi and El Mesías , an irregular title about the life of Jesus.

A heart attack put an end to the life of the filmmaker, on June 3, 1977, in Rome.