Oscar Profile #153: Roberto Rossellini

Born May 8, 1906 in Rome, Italy to a French-Italian mother and Italian father, Roberto Rossellini would become one of the world’s great filmmakers. His father, who owned a construction firm, built the first cinema in Rome which he ran, granting young Roberto a free pass to frequent the cinema at an early age. He began working on sound and other aspects of the filmmaking process as a young man, marrying film star Asia Noris (1912-1998) in 1934. The marriage was annulled in 1936 and he then married costume designer Marchella De Marchis (1916-2009) to whom he remained married until 1950 even though he had several famous affairs on the side. He and his second wife had two sons, Marco, born 1937, who died in 1946 from appendicitis, and Renzo, born 1941 who became an internationally famous producer-director in his own right.

Rossellini made his first documentary in 1937 and owing to his friendship with Benito Mussolini’s son, film critic, Vittorio Mussolini continued to thrive during the war years. He began preparing the anti-fascist Rome Open City two months after the liberation of the city in June, 1944. That film, released in 1945 (1946 in the U.S.), and Paisan, released in 1946 (1948 in New York and 1949 in L.A.) were the first of the post-war neorealist films that catapulted Rossellini to international acclaim.

Having seen both Open City and Paisan, Ingrid Bergman wrote Rossellini a letter saying how much she had been moved by the two films and would like to work with him. Rossellini flew to L.A. and met with the star, offering her the lead in Stromboli which he had previously promised to Anna Magnani, his Open City star and mistress. Bergman followed him to Italy and eventually Stromboli, a remote volcanic island off the coast of Sicily to make the film for RKO. Rossellini’s cousin, producer Renzo Avanzo (1911-1989), for whom he was supposed to have the film then backed a rival production called Volcano set on a nearby island directed by Hollywood’s William Dieterle with Magnani. The Italian newspapers had a field day setting up a rivalry between Magnani and Bergman which sparked world-wide speculation about Bergman and Rossellini’s now open affair. The ensuing scandal reached a crescendo when it was revealed that Bergman was pregnant with Rossellini’s child having left her doctor husband and daughter Pia (born 1938) behind in L.A.

Both Bergman and Rossellini then divorced their respective spouses and married in 1950. The marriage ended bitterly in 1954 and they were divorced in 1957, after which Rossellini married his fourth wife, Indian writer Sonali Senroy DasGupta. Although separated, he remained married to DasGupta until his death in 1977.

Rossellini and Bergman had three children together, their son Renato Roberto (born 1950) and twins Isabella and Isotta (born 1952). He and DasGupta had one child together, but he adopted the two children she had from previous relationships including the son she was pregnant with when they married.

Rossellini received additional critical acclaim for 1948’s Germany, Year Zero (1949 in the U.S.) and 1950’s The Flowers of St. Francis (1952 in the U.S.). His three films with Bergman were not successful with either critics or the public at the time of their initial release but all three, 1950’s Stromboli; 1952’s Europe ‘51 (released as The Greatest Love in the U.S. in 1954) and 1954’s Journey to Italy (released as Strangers in the U.S. in 1955), achieved critical cachet in the 1960s.

Although Rossellini kept working until his death of a heart attack in 1977 at 71, he had not had a hit since 1959’s General Della Rovere (1960 in N.Y., 1961 in L.A.)

ESSENTIAL FILMS

ROME OPEN CITY (1945)

Rossellini began work on his signature film, his masterpiece, while Rome was still under siege of the Nazis. He began filming after the city was liberated but while most of the country was still under Nazi control. Although the film was fictional, it was inspired by true events and filmed in the streets where similar atrocities actually occurred. The term “neorealism” or “new realism” was coined to describe the making of the film with its unflinching tribute to the men and women of the resistance – the mother who is murdered in front of her altar boy son; the Communist who is murdered in front of his friend, the priest; the priest who is then murdered in front of the children. Beloved Italian music hall star Aldo Fabrizi as the priest and fiery Anna Magnani as the martyred mother at the top of their craft are unforgettable.

PAISAN (1946)

Rossellini’s follow-up to Rome Open City is an equally unforgettable film about the Allied invasion of Italy from July 1943 to winter 1944 from Sicily north to Venice. The film is made up of six vignettes. A woman leads an Allied patrol through a mine field; she dies protecting a G.I., but the Yanks think she killed him. A street urchin steals shoes from a G.I. who tracks him to a shanty town. A G.I. meets a woman the day Rome is liberated; in six months they meet again: he’s cynical, she’s a prostitute. A US nurse braves the trip across the Arno into German fire in search of a partisan she loves. Three chaplains, including a Jew, call on a monastery north in the Apennines. Allied soldiers and partisans try to escape capture in the marshes of the Po. Rossellini received his only Oscar nomination for Best Story and Screenplay for this film.

GERMANY YEAR ZERO (1948)

Rossellini’s third film in his post-war trilogy focuses on the desperate life and times of a 12 year-old boy in war ravaged Germany. The boy must work to support his family, including a father who is sick and unable to work; an older brother, a former soldier, hiding from the authorities and a sister who goes clubbing for cigarettes and other small gifts at night. The boy’s former teacher is a pedophile whose dangerous ideas about survival of the fittest lead to murder and suicide. It’s the most despairing of the three films but just as brilliantly done. The film was named one of the 1949’s ten best by the National Board of Review which gave their Best Film award to Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief.

EUROPE ‘51 (1952)

Rossellini got his idea for the second and best of the three films he made with Ingrid Bergman while filming The Flowers of St. Francis about the life of St. Francis and his early followers two years earlier. His idea was that if a saint appeared in today’s world they would be deemed insane, is played out by Bergman as a socialite, who after the tragic death of her 12 year-old son, turns to helping the poor. Not only is she deemed crazy for her efforts by her husband, family and aristocratic friends, she is arrested by the police for helping a teenage boy escape an impending arrest. Even though the young man turns himself in, she is not released by the police until her husband convinces them that what she needs is psychiatric help. Confined to a mental institution where the doctors concur that she is insane, the film ends with the woman resigned to her fate.

GENERAL DELLA ROVERE (1959)

Rossellini returned to war themes for his last commercially successful film starring fellow neorealist Vittorio De Sica in arguably his best performance as a petty con man who is arrested by the Gestapo and coerced into impersonating a partisan leader in order to expose another resistance organizer. In the process De Sica’s Grimaldi becomes a hero impersonating a real hero. In the end he has so completely taken on the real general’s persona that he writes a letter to the general’s wife encouraging her to persevere, while he willingly faces execution by the Germans to set an example to other Italians to resist. The film was a 1961 Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay for Sergio Amidei, Diego Fabri and historian Indro Montanelli who also turned it into a novel.