Stromboli, tierra de Dios

Even in a displaced persons camp, Ingrid Bergman, as Karen, a Lithuanian refugee, manages to dress better and look more beautiful than everyone around her. After her petition for passage to Buenos Aires is denied, she marries a POW from the adjacent camp. A native of the Italian volcanic island Stromboli, Antonio - Mario Vitale - brings her to his home. The village is a harsh place carved from the cinders of the mountainside, and half-deserted. As soon as she sets foot on the island, she can see she's made a mistake, but instead of accepting what she bargained for, she pesters Antonio to make more money so they can leave. He doesn't want to go - this is his home, and he is content even with this fussy wife. The men are fishermen, she constantly hears crying children, and the women dislike her immodesty. She redecorates the house, hiding his shrine and old photographs, putting out vases and flowers, turning her floral dresses into bright curtains. But she disregards the social rules, befriending a seamstress who's a "fallen woman" and playing in the sea with a group of boys. The inevitable clash between the peasant fisherman and the woman with aesthetic aspirations their simple life cannot satisfy, comes to a head with the eruption of the volcano. If I rated only the plot, this movie would earn a 5 - but the cinematography is magnificent. Otello Martelli's use of light and shadow, camera angle, and the restless natural world he filmed, create images that last long after the story has blown away like the fluff it is.

I enjoyed reading "erupting beauty" (The Big Combo, 2 February 2004) for a good summary of Stromboli. Zetes ("A vastly underrated masterpiece", zetes from Saint Paul, MN, 15 June 2002) and bkoganbing ("Ingrid and the volcano", bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York, 29 August 2012) both include good background about the controversies surrounding it. Cogs ("Poor old Ingrid!!", cogs from London, England, 2 February 2005) sees similarities between Rossellini and Bresson that I share. I agree with Cogs that Bresson is more interesting.

Stromboli is a showcase for Ingrid Bergman, who to my mind is easily the greatest actress in cinema. Karen's situation is Hellish. She marries to escape an Italian interment camp. She subsequently finds only misery with the desolate volcano-island that her fisherman-husband takes her to. The terrain is harsh and the locals are even worse. She discovers him to be overly simple and occasionally too beastly to bear. The finale reflects her desire for just a meager amount of happiness in such a world as this.

Visually Roberto Rossellini is superb. His visual aesthetics are unsentimental but never boring. His camera work is unobtrusive.

Two of the most memorable scenes feature a disturbing quotient of animal cruelty. In the first scene, a live rabbit is needlessly sacrificed by being placed near a ferret. Rossellini couldn't use stuffed animals. He has the audience, some of whom are animal lovers, suffer by showing the kill in detail. Of course, Rossellini is strengthening the distance between Ingrid and her fisherman husband, and identifying her with the suffering rabbit. However, I won't give Rossellini any credit for moving the story along with this thoughtless tactic.

The second scene is the justifiably famous tuna slaughter with real fisherman, nets and spears. I have eaten tuna all my life and haven't thought much where it comes from. Also, I have no doubt that all of the tuna that we see being harvested was ultimately eaten. To give Rossellini credit, he filmed it well--with Ingrid nearby witnessing it as if she was one of the unfortunate fish. I just don't think that it takes great storytelling skill to rely on animal slaughter to move an audience.

Two other scenes that are noteworthy is when Karen attempts to seduce a priest, and when she (apparently) seduces a lighthouse keeper. The character that Rosselini and Bergman are portraying is flawed, and very human. She's no saint, she's a woman with unfulfilled needs.

Overall, Stromboli is a must-see member of the Italian neo-realism canon. Very few films venture to depict life without false pretenses. Ingrid's Karen really suffers; and her actions make her a polarizing figure to viewers, isolating her further. Rossellini and Bergman are showing what life is really like as every member of the audience understands it.

"La terra e dura qui." Ingrid Bergman is a powerhouse in this film (perhaps out of love and devotion to the director), but she still can't match the power of the menacing volcano on this remote island off the coast of Italy. Bergman plays a prisoner of war with a checkered past stuck in a women's camp, who marries a Strombolian in order to provide herself with the security she needs. Trouble awaits her, and the first sign we get of that is when she starts to complain of being cold on the boat that is taking her to her new life. What she finds is not up to her high Continental standards, and her attitudes towards the locals and the place itself diminish her already low stature as an outsider. It is less the people however, than the general character of the place that turns her off. The volcano, unnamed by the villagers, always awaits in the background, and setting itself becomes one of the main characters (thus the importance of the title), a force to be reckoned with, much like her character.

Although this film is not noir in any way, and Rossellini himself would probably turn in his grave for hearing me say this, Bergman's character certainly does not hesitate in using her female "wiles" to get what she wants and needs. She survived a world war on what we take are wits and flexible morals, so she will also make it through this and I love her for it.

She even attempts to seduce the local priest by cooing "I knew you were the only person who could help me." Having that attempt fail, she tries with the village lighthouse keeper seen at right, and I don't even have to explain the power of her touch. As she asks for help to escape from the village, she softly touches his foot with hers, and creates an unbelievably palpable feeling of erotic energy, something unheard of in mainstream movies today. I know, that's such a cliché, but it's true.

Anyway, I won't discuss the ending, which angered me as a modern woman (even Bergman didn't seem to be buying it), but I will say that the film impressed me with its use of setting comprising plot, character, mise-en-scene, and theme. The film IS setting. It's also worth it just to see the non-actors performing a yearly tuna fishing ritual that dates back to the Phoenecians. Rossellini films are never just stories, they are historical documents. And I love him for that.

cococravescinema.blogspot.com

I wanted to take the time to write of this work by my grandparents Rossellini and Bergman, as it has always been a film of both great emotion and confusion for me personally. If anything, there is much to be said for my grandmother moving from Hollywood to a deserted volcanic island with meager means and low production capacity. This speaks to her love not only of my grandfather's work, but also to her sense of adventure and courage, looking for new ways to express herself as an actress. When it comes to my grandfather, this is his most impulsive directorial work. He was in a both stressful and joyous time in his life and i can only imagine the feelings of both anguish and happiness that he felt. All of these swirls and jests of emotion are apparent, they are as evident as the very powerful setting itself. Though the film is certainly not perfect, and at times even slow and overtly dramatic, it is nonetheless sincere and beautiful. It is a work of love made by two people in love.

Other recent commentaries on this film call it a "masterpiece". I strongly disagree. When it opened the reviews were as bleak and indifferent to it as Karen (Ingrid Bergman) is to the island of Stromboli. No one considered it up to Rossellini's "Open City" or "Paisan" in terms of genuine artifice. It was termed bleak and undistinguished with a plodding script that could only be called simplistic in terms of dialogue.

Fine B&W cinematography of a desolate island and scenes of an actual volcano eruption are not enough to make a 107-minute movie tailored to demonstrate the neo-realism of Ingrid Bergman's acting now that she had shed her Hollywood glamour. Bergman is ill served by a poorly developed character and embarrassingly inept scenes between her and her Italian fisherman husband (Mario Vitale).

There is startling realism in the tuna fishing sequence and harsh realism in the desolate landscape and close-ups of island people, but Rossellini did not seem to have a well developed or finished script in mind when he began shooting what others have called a "masterpiece". There is no doubt that had he the advantage of a well structured and conceived screenplay he might have been effective in telling this kind of story. But with the camera lingering on an anguished Ingrid Bergman sobbing in scene after scene of emotional isolation, the viewer is left with the feeling that this is little more than a post-war documentary in search of a coherent plot.

The unresolved ending used in the U.S. print is not the original ending, by the way, and leaves the viewer with the feeling he has witnessed an unfinished screenplay. It is said that Rossellini began shooting without a complete script on a day to day basis that must have been a strain on Bergman. It shows when he spends an inordinate amount of time on a fishing sequence that has little to do with furthering the slight plot. Too bad he didn't start the project with a finished script and a firm focus for his content.

The background music is oddly silent during some of the most emotional moments and despite Italian chants of fishermen the soundtrack remains mostly barren of any interesting content.