Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini was an Italian film director and
screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist
cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.
Early life Rossellini was born in Rome. His mother,
Elettra, was a housewife born in Rovigo, Veneto, and his father, Angiolo Giuseppe
"Beppino" Rossellini, who owned a construction firm, was born in Rome from
a family originally from Pisa, Tuscany. His mother was of part French descent,
from immigrants who had arrived in Italy during the Napoleonic Wars. He lived on
the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had his first Roman hotel in 1922 when
Fascism obtained power in Italy. Rossellini's father built the first
cinema in Rome, the "Barberini", a theater where movies could be projected,
granting his son an unlimited free pass; the young Rossellini started frequenting
the cinema at an early age. When his father died, he worked as a soundmaker
for films and for a certain time he experienced all the accessory jobs
related to the creation of a film, gaining competence in each field.
Rossellini had a brother, Renzo, who later scored many of his films.
On 26 September 1936, he married Marcella De Marchis, a costume designer
with whom he collaborated even after their marriage was over. This was after
a quick annulment from Assia Noris, a Russian actress who worked in Italian
films. De Marchis and Rossellini had two sons: Marco Romano, and Renzo.
Rossellini and De Marchis separated in 1950. Although he wasn't personally
religious, he had a strong interest in Christian values in the contemporary
world; he loved the Church's ethical teaching, and was enchanted by religious
sentiment—things which he saw as being neglected in the materialist world.
Career In 1937, Rossellini made his first
documentary, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. After this essay, he was called
to assist Goffredo Alessandrini in making Luciano Serra pilota, one of the
most successful Italian films of the first half of the 20th century. In 1940
he was called to assist Francesco De Robertis on Uomini sul Fondo. His close
friendship with Vittorio Mussolini, son of Il Duce, has been interpreted as a
possible reason for having been preferred to other apprentices.
Some authors describe the first part of his career as a sequence of trilogies.
His first feature film, The White Ship was sponsored by the audiovisual
propaganda centre of Navy Department and is the first work in Rossellini's
"Fascist Trilogy", together with A Pilot Returns and The Man with a Cross. To
this period belongs his friendship and cooperation with Federico Fellini and
Aldo Fabrizi. The Fascist regime collapsed in 1943 and just two months
after the liberation of Rome, Rossellini was already preparing the anti-fascist
Roma città aperta. Fellini assisted on the script and Fabrizi played the role
of the priest, while Rossellini self-produced. Most of the money came
from credits and loans, and film had to be found on the black market. This
dramatic film was an immediate success. Rossellini had started now his so-called
Neorealistic Trilogy, the second title of which was Paisà, produced with
non-professional actors, and the third, Germany, Year Zero, sponsored by a
French producer and filmed in Berlin's French sector. In Berlin also,
Rossellini preferred non-actors, but he was unable to find a face he found
"interesting"; he placed his camera in the center of a town square, as he did
for Paisà, but was surprised when nobody came to watch.
As he declared in an interview, "in order to really create the character
that one has in mind, it is necessary for the director to engage in a battle
with his actor which usually ends with submitting to the actor's wish. Since I
do not have the desire to waste my energy in a battle like this, I only use
professional actors occasionally". One of the reasons for success is supposed
to be Rossellini's rewriting of the scripts according to the
non-professional actors' feelings and histories. Regional accent, dialect and
costumes were shown in the film how they were in real life.
After his Neorealist Trilogy, Rossellini produced two films now classified as the
'Transitional films': L'Amore and La macchina ammazzacattivi, on the
capability of cinema to portray reality and truth. In 1948, Rossellini received
a letter from a famous foreign actress 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
With this letter began one of the best known love stories in film history, with
Bergman and Rossellini both at the peak of their careers. Their first
collaboration was Stromboli terra di Dio. This affair caused a great scandal
in some countries; the scandal intensified when Bergman became pregnant
with Roberto Ingmar Rossellini. Rossellini and Bergman had two more
children, Isabella Rossellini and her twin, Ingrid Isotta. Europa '51, Siamo
Donne, Journey to Italy, La paura and Giovanna d'Arco al rogo were the other
films on which they worked together. In 1957, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian
Prime Minister at the time, invited him to India to make the documentary India
and put some life into the floundering Indian Films Division. Though married to
Bergman, he had an affair with Sonali Das Gupta, a screenwriter, herself
married to local filmmaker Hari sadhan Dasgupta, who was helping develop
vignettes for the film. Given the climate of the 1950s, this led to a huge
scandal in India as well as in Hollywood. Nehru had to ask Rossellini
to leave. Soon after, Bergman and Rossellini separated.
Rossellini eloped with married Sonali Das Gupta, when she was only 27 years
old and later married her in 1957 and adopted her young son Arjun, renamed Gil
Rossellini. Rossellini and Sonali had a daughter together, Raffaella Rossellini,
who is also an actress and model. In 1973 Rossellini left Sonali for a
young woman, Silvia D'Amico. In 1971, Rice University in Houston,
Texas, invited Rossellini to help establish a Media Center, where in 1970
he had begun planning a film on science with Rice Professor, Donald D. Clayton.
They worked daily for two weeks in Rome in summer 1970; but financing was
inadequate to begin filming. In 1973, he was invited to teach at Yale University
in New Haven, Connecticut, where he taught a one-semester course entitled
"The Essential Image." Roberto Rossellini died of a heart attack aged
71 in 1977. Legacy
Rossellini's films after his early Neo-Realist films — particularly his
films with Ingrid Bergman — were commercially unsuccessful, though
Journey to Italy is well regarded in some quarters. He was an acknowledged
master for the critics of Cahiers du Cinema in general and André Bazin,
François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard in particular. Truffaut noted in his 1963
essay, Roberto Rossellini Prefers Real Life that Rossellini's influence in
France particularly among the directors who would become part of the nouvelle
vague was so great that he was in every sense, "the father of the French New
Wave". His posthumous ex-son-in-law Martin
Scorsese has also acknowledged Rossellini's seminal influence in his
documentary, My Voyage to Italy. An important point to note is that out of
Scorsese's selection of Italian films from a select group of directors
Rossellini's films form at least half of the films discussed and analyzed,
highlighting Rossellini's monumental role in Italian and world cinema. The
films covered include his Neo-Realist films to his films with Ingrid Bergman
as well as The Flowers of St. Francis, a film about St. Francis of Assisi.
Scorsese notes in his documentary that in contrast to directors who often
become more restrained and more conservative stylistically as their
careers advance, Rossellini became more and more unconventional and was
constantly experimenting with new styles and technical challenges. Scorsese
particularly highlights the series of biographies Rossellini made in the 60s
of historical figures and, although he does not discuss it in detail, singles
out La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV for praise. Certain of Rossellini's film
related material and personal papers are contained in the Wesleyan University
Cinema Archives to which scholars and media experts from around the world may
have full access. Rossellini's son Renzo is producing the Audiovisual
Encyclopedia of History by Roberto Rossellini, a multi-media support
containing all of Rossellini's works, interviews, and other material from the
Rossellini archive. The Encyclopedia for now exists in prototype form.
Filmography Dafne
Prélude à l'aprés-midi d'un faune La Fossa degli angeli
Luciano Serra, Pilot La Vispa Teresa
Il Tacchino prepotente Fantasia sottomarina
Il Ruscello di Ripasottile The White Ship
A Pilot Returns The Man with a Cross
Rome, Open City Desiderio
Paisà L'Amore
Germany, Year Zero L'Invasore
Stromboli terra di Dio Francesco, giullare di Dio
Les Sept péchés capitaux La macchina ammazzacattivi
Europa '51 Siamo donne
Amori di mezzo secolo Dov'è la libertà ... ?
Viaggio in Italia La Paura
Giovanna d'Arco al rogo India: Matri Bhumi
Il generale Della Rovere Era Notte a Roma
Viva l'Italia! Vanina Vanini
Uno sguardo dal ponte Anima nera
Benito Mussolini Ro.Go.Pa.G.
Les Carabiniers The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
Da Gerusalemme a Damasco Rice University
Intervista a Salvador Allende: La forza e la ragione
Agostino d'Ippona Concerto per Michelangelo
The World Population Anno uno
Il messia Beaubourg, centre d'art et de culture
Georges Pompidou Television credits
L'India vista da Rossellini Torino nei cent'anni
L'Età del ferro La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV
Idea di un'isola Atti degli apostoli
La lotta dell'uomo per la sua sopravvivenza
Socrates Blaise Pascal
L'Età di Cosimo de' Medici Cartesius
Concerto per Michelangelo Notes
External links Roberto Rossellini at the Internet Movie
Database Roberto Rossellini at the TCM Movie
Database NY Times: The Elusive Realism of
Rossellini An Interview with Roberto Rossellini
Rossellini's India at Indian Auteur Geographical coordinates and pictures of
his grave