Sunday, March 29, 2015

Stromboli

Stromboli is a 1950 joint Italian/American neo-realist film directed by Roberto Rossellini and starring Ingrid Bergman and Mario Vitale. I could feel the pain of this woman's isolation, but I could also feel the pain of the husband.

I watched it at Hulu with commercials, but it's no longer available free online. Here's one scene:



FilmReference.com says, "Stromboli is very much "about" Karin and the development of her consciousness. ... we come to understand the central character largely through the ways in which she is placed in and reacts to the landscape. However, the spectator looks at Karin rather than with her, and we come to understand rather than empathise with her" and discusses the production conditions:
It had always been agreed to release an Italian and an English language version of the film, both of which were to be edited by Rossellini. However, as a result of rows about the budget RKO edited the English version itself, which differs considerably from the Italian one (which Rossellini himself edited) and was disowned by the director.
DVD Talk describes the film:
In Stromboli, the story takes place post WWII. Bergman performs the role of a Lithuanian refugee who ends up becoming married to a local fisherman, and leaving a prisoner of war camp to go back to the village where the fisherman lives. In this story, Bergman's character must face her emotional connection to the war in a world that becomes more and more disheartening to her at every turn. This new location, the village that our central protagonist goes to, is on a small-population island with a volcano: it becomes a cold, isolating, and overwhelming location for her as she faces the emotional turmoil of challenging post-war issues and the cold distance between her and the fisherman she is married to, ... This is a story of one individual responding to the environment and the surrounding world post-war and it crescendos to a conclusion worthy of great analytical consideration.
Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 80% and an audience rating of 85%. TCM has an overview.

2 comments:

  1. Not sure I'll ever catch up, but I'm going to visit a few more of your posts so you don't think I've totally deserted visiting you. It's just been a hard and busy time right now.

    I think I saw that when it was free. Not sure, but it sounds like it. I couldn't get the video to load for me, so I went by what the critics wrote. I thought the film I'm thinking of was both touching and heartbreaking. And, in a sense, it showed how the effects of war don't end when peace is declared.

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    1. It's an illustration of "out of the frying pan, into the fire" in a way. And proof that a man isn't the answer to every problem. Sometimes escaping from the prison you're in doesn't lead to freedom. It's a tragic story for everybody.

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