THE PAST IS ALWAYS PRESENT: THE EVOLUTIONARY CAREER OF ROBERTO ROSSELLINI

Commonly celebrated as the “father” of Italian neo-realism, Roberto Rossellini (1906–1977), was, in fact, much, much more than this and to label him simply as a neo-realist director is to greatly undervalue his influence on and importance to world cinema. He was constantly reinventing his filmmaking throughout his career, experimenting with new technical and stylistic challenges, changing conditions of production and the porous boundary between documentary and fiction, the present and the past. Rossellini began as a filmmaker in fascist Italy, and his early films were sometimes naive but fascinating commercial products of their time, existing within ideological and stylistic constraints but also exploring a more rounded view of humanity and society. These were then followed, in turn, by his pioneering neo-realist works, his pared back, spiritual and contemplative films with Ingrid Bergman, his attempts to combine elements of neo-realism with more speculative approaches to history, and his final, more didactic works for television focusing on key figures in European philosophy. This season takes in a diverse range of work from across the first four “phases” of Rossellini’s career and includes the pick of his early work in wartime fascist Italy, Un pilota returna (1942), the most widely celebrated and influential of his famous neo-realist “War Trilogy”, Rome, Open City (1945), two collaborations with his then wife, Ingrid Bergman, including a fascinating and rarely shown post-Hollywood return to her role as Joan of Arc, and two of the director’s best “mainstream” mid-career features: Il generale Della Rovere (1959), featuring a brilliant central performance from fellow neo-realist filmmaker Vittorio De Sica, and Viva l’Italia (1961), an absorbing companion piece to Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1963). This season highlights the extraordinary creativity, variety and restlessness of Rossellini’s cinema and also concludes with his deeply engaged documentary-fiction hybrid, India: Matri Bhumi (1959).

Presented in partnership with the Italian Institute of Culture, Melbourne.

Wednesday 5 March

7:00pm ROME, OPEN CITY

Roberto Rossellini (1945) 103 mins – M

Produced in difficult conditions toward the end of World War II, this nerve-racking melodrama largely kickstarted neo-realism as a major force and is often considered amongst the most significant works in Italian film history. Rossellini (with co-writers Federico Fellini and Sergio Amidei) was brought to international attention and hailed for his innovative use of real locations and non-actors, while Anna Magnani became an overnight sensation for her central role in this classic and deeply affecting treatment of the underground movement in Nazi occupied Rome.

35mm print courtesy of Cinecittà Luce.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Rome, Open City
by Darragh O’Donoghue

9:00pm UN PILOTA RITORNA

Roberto Rossellini (1942) 87 mins – Unclassified 15+

Based on a story by Il Duce’s son, Vittorio Mussolini, this is the second film in Rossellini’s earlier “Fascist War Trilogy”. In what was officially a propaganda film made with the direct involvement of the Italian Air Force, Rossellini manages to present a humanist vision of war, highlighting the individual struggles of soldiers and civilians on all sides. Believed lost for over 40 years, its long takes, elliptical editing and experiential detail contain the seeds of Rossellini’s neo-realist style.

Preceded by L’invidia Roberto Rossellini (1952) 17 mins – Unclassified 15+. Starring Andrée Debar and Orféo Tamburi and based on Colette’s La chatte, this visually compelling short forms the fourth part of The Seven Deadly Sins.

Wednesday 12 March

7:00pm JOAN OF ARC AT THE STAKE

Roberto Rossellini (1954) 80 mins – Unclassified 15+

Ingrid Bergman revisits her 1948 role as Joan of Arc in this filmed version of Rossellini’s adaptation of Paul Claudel and Arthur Honegger’s French oratorio. Rossellini’s first colour film is an innovative and truly distinct version of this familiar material, with its stark setting brought to life through a combination of rich cinematography by Gábor Pogány (Two Women), surrealist fantasy, rear projection and a sense of historical reality imbued with mythology.

Preceded by Ingrid Bergman Roberto Rossellini (1953) 17 mins – Unclassified 15+. Alternatively known as The Chicken and included in the five-part portmanteau film Siamo donne, Rossellini’s playful segment sees Bergman become vexed with a neighbour’s hen who has destroyed her rose garden.

35mm print of Joan of Arc at the Stake courtesy of Cinecittà Luce.

8:50pm IL GENERALE DELLA ROVERE

Roberto Rossellini (1959) 129 mins – Unclassified 15+

A petty scammer (Vittorio De Sica) is hired by the fascists to impersonate the titular Resistance figure. He is installed in prison in the hope of identifying other partisans amongst his fellow inmates. Rossellini’s gently digressive character study gains force and gravity as the film’s disreputable anti-hero gradually starts acquiring the nobility and dignity he had previously just been assuming. A rumination on the capacity of performance to define our identity, and the impact that public perception has on one’s sense of self, Indro Montanelli’s story was based on real events he witnessed while interned in Milan’s San Vittore Prison.

35mm print courtesy of Cinecittà Luce.

Wednesday 19 March

7:00pm VIVA L’ITALIA

Roberto Rossellini (1961) 129 mins – Unclassified 15+

Working with one of Rossellini’s largest budgets, this historical epic restages the 1860 conquest of Sicily led by Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi (played by Renzo Ricci). A crucial film in the director’s oeuvre, it presages the historical focus of his late work while also exhibiting his early adoption of the zoom lens, the camera often recomposing the entire frame and commenting on the process of history. It’s no surprise that Rossellini once called this the work he was most proud of, considering it “important as a work of research, the most carefully done of all my films”.

35mm print courtesy of Cinecittà Luce.

9:25pm INDIA: MATRI BHUMI

Roberto Rossellini (1959) 90 mins – Unclassified 15+

This remarkable work of docu-fiction sees Rossellini take his neo-realist filmmaking style, which he pioneered in post-World War II Italy, to India for a series of vignettes that begin in Mumbai and span out to the far reaches of rural India. Co-written by Iranian diplomat and renowned author Fereydoun Hoveyda, and featuring a cast of non-actors, the film is a poetic ethnographic study of life in India during the 1950s, beautifully captured by cinematographer Aldo Tonti who had previously worked with Rossellini on Europa ’51 and Dov’è la libertà…? in the early ’50s.

35mm print courtesy of Cinecittà Luce.