Stromboli

Stromboli is a film with the look of Flaherty's `Man of Aran' and the dramatics of von Trier's `Breaking the Waves'. The story is the tragedy of a woman named Karin, a Lithuanian refugee after WWII and her pursuit of a better life marrying an Italian peasant and moving down with him to his birthplace, a volcanic island off the coast of southern Italy.

Rossellini portraits her heroin without sentimentalism or affection of any kind. He seems to be more interested in revealing her dark sides and miseries, but as Bergman's performance is so emotionally raw, we cannot but stick with her to the end of her journey. We do not pity her, but take pity with her. Rossellini's strong Catholicism usually forces us to live through his films as Catholics, regardless of which belief one may have.

If war was hell then the post war can be redemption time. Karin has nostalgia of her past, a lost-paradise, and all her efforts are put to restore that primal state. She's an Eva cast away from Eden, with somehow Bovarian ambitions, trying to reach prosperity at any cost. Her chances are scarce, so she takes the only opportunity she gets to leave the camp, marrying Antonio, a peasant whom she first kisses through barbed wire. She will soon realize that Antonio's island is miles away of the paradise of her dreams. The place is barren and the locals are hostile. She's trapped in a labyrinth surrounded by sea and menaced by an active volcano. Any form of relationship, even with her husband, is impeded because of a communication problem. Technically she cannot speak the language. But she cannot either penetrate a hermetic, oppressive world ruled by rites and tradition. If paradise was a state where men could speak the language of the gods in harmony with nature, Karin's pilgrimage will ultimately have to restore that dialogue, rebuild that bridge with origin.

In her symbolic descent to primitivism she learns the meaning of life in the hard way, and at the same time she follows all the phases of mankind from the first cry of the new born, to subsequent life in a cavern, cave-painting, elemental worshipping, fishing for subsistence and conversion. Karin's fault is her self-sufficiency, denying the existence of a superior order and her mundane ambition of a destiny ruled by luxury and comfort. She thinks the place is filthy and defines her belonging to `a different class'. When she realizes that there's no place for glamour in Stromboli she turns into an Eve and tempts the local priest. This behaving sooner or later will provoke the wrath of the gods, portrayed in the everlasting volcano to which the fate of the islanders is attached from immemorial days. To outcome her tragic fall, Karin should ascend the top of the mountain while getting rid of her material belongings (the money, the suitcase), rise up her head to the sky and address God. Rossellini doesn't show us if she saves her life or not because the thing is that she assumed her role of creature and thus her subordination to a supreme kind. Same as the villagers, who stoically accept the infuriated eruptions, or the fishermen that depend on the fruitful sea.

The most unforgettable sequence of the film is the one of the tuna fishing. Rossellini is so precise in the choosing of the images and the rhythm of the editing that the one feels that is seated in one of the boats bringing the prays. But the scene has much more than an aesthetic value. It works not only because it's beautiful; it is also informative for the story, dramatic in itself and in the events of the film, and symbolic both for the story and for Bergman's character, who watches the action from a neighboring boat. Such an adjustment distinguishes art from a good movie.

Rossellini's "Stromboli, terra di Dio" is a film on the line between fiction and reality more than usual for the acclaimed director. Most of the central part, where Karin just lives in Stromboli and complains about stuff was not written as in a normal screenplay: Rossellini chose possible elements of the environment or popular habits and filmed them in the movie, putting Karen in it like an extrernal observator. This has a double effect: neorealism comes to some of its highest achievements (like the tuna fishing and the eruption of the volcano) but to the loss of a fantastic actress such as Ingrid Bergman, who always feels out of place. Careful: I didn't say KAREN, I said BERGMAN. Because as a character she should be out of place, and she is even esthetically: she's always combed and white as the moon, while the inhabitants are rusty and dirty. But the actress herself is out of place in this film, and that is not a good thing at all. Her lines are dumb, repetitive, and Bergman actually did a great job managing to not disappear in such irrelevance. She still lives the scene, but her attempt is clearly forced into a new, uncharted territory as was Italian filmmaking for an American diva. We could say then that Ingrid is just as lost as her character.

What I just can't stand in this film is the necessity of squeezing the religious conversion (I'm talking about the Italian version of the film, American and International versions have slightly different endings for that time's commercial policies). It was the result of Rossellini's collaboration with powerful politicians and Church men, to be specific Giulio Andreotti and Felix Morlion, whose intention was to use a critically acclaimed author's cinema for political propaganda. I hate when other interests interfere with artistic purposes, and here the last moments are definitely flawed with an out of the blue realization of the power and existence of God for no good reason.

As I said before, neorealist features are what makes this film enjoyable and a classic. Apart from the brilliant scenes I mentioned above, I really liked the harsh depiction of the patriarchy that unfortunately still exists and thrives especially in the South of Italy. I actually felt bad and angry at Antonio as he jerks his wife with no respect and beats her like an animal, but I know very well that even today that is the norm in so many families and that simply pisses me off. Kudos to Rossellini for depicting that so realistically, but then again he's a great director exactly because of scenes like those.

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

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.