672-675 3 Films by Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman

[movielocke]

I didn't find her character any more sympathetic than the typical Hollywood female villain lead, but Rossellini did seem to be making an interesting commentary on those types. Bergman's character was like a less extreme Scarlett O'Hare, a character I'd describe as an unsympathetic mostly evil reprobate oozing bile and leaving wide ranging destruction and human tragedy in her wake.

[Gregory]

Scarlett O'Hare

[movielocke]

Europe '51 was a stunning improvement, in my opinion. Or perhaps I just prefer Hollywood's social consciousness genre to Hollywood's female melodrama genre. In both cases, Rossellini seems to be critiquing (and making better versions of) those hollywood approaches you would typically find a Bergman in, like The Snake Pit.

What makes this film work so much better than the typical Gentleman's agreement or The Snake Pit is that it's not just an 'oh my god, the humanity' approach to some an advocacy issue. Rather than manipulating the audience, instead the film is about Bergman's social consciousness transformation. She's internalizing the conflict that these sorts of film usually externalize.

By the end, the approach becomes saint like in its reverence for Bergman, and it's uncompromising and rather realistic portrayal of just how much society would dislike something as inconvenient as that. so I was unsurprised, after reading the back cover, to see that it was related to the Flowers of St. Francis. I was a bit surprised, that Bergman doesn't become a nun, as you might expect in a happier ending film, and that she rather explicitly refuses joining a religious order, it seemed like the natural progression, but perhaps that would give the catholicness of it too much dominance over the story and ruin the balance between church and society she's navigating. The communism elements of the film seemed muted by comparison to the church, but perhaps that is just because I'm watching it in another era and the contexts don't all carry over. Speaking of cultural contexts, throughout the film my thoughts were constantly drifting towards Pope Francis, and I think my brain was twigging me to the Flowers of St. Francis, subconsciously, I need to pull that one out again, sometime soon.

[knives]

Couldn't have said it better. Surely what makes, for me, Rossellini's films so great despite their overwhelming catholic-ness is that he approaches these issues more from the point of morality than religion. The supposed madness of Bergman is just a case of trying to relieve herself of the contradictions the state (and other apparatuses) make as necessity to survive within. There's a strange sort amorality like a wall which is decayed yet grows to these institutions which render a sort of hopelessness for the modern age at least as Rossellini envisions it (though as you point out Rosselini has the leper show in the earlier ages a similar perverse unwillingness to be healed). At the same time I can't call these films absolutely pessimistic since such as with Bergman here Rossellini has a great deal of admiration for his fighters.

[knives]

You're right that perverse is the wrong word. I was getting too wrapped in the metaphor at that point I like Tourneur, but I'm curious which films you're specifically referring to. I can see it for I Walked With a Zombie, but outside of that I'm not sure unless you mean the elder.

[movielocke]

In any case to me this all wildly surpasses simplistic Relgio-social readings.

Hah. I've spent the last year or so trying to correct my often overblown tendencies to skew mystical in my responses to films. So I deleted two or three paragraphs of babble about Grace, Selflessness, All-Encompassing Love, Sanity (I had a line about how she seems to get more sane the more she submits to Grace, that the moral, ethical and only sane, correct thing to do when you encounter someone dying is to give them all the aid and comfort you are able), and some screeds about society. And then I deleted it all because I thought I was being too inarticulate and vague, talking less and less about the film's contents as I went on. I brought up religion and communism so explicitly because Rossellini did, in his introduction, it's a shame he took such a simplistic religio-social reading.

[Matt]

Am I perverse or would Europe '51 be a great double-feature with Viridiana? Both films about the impossibility of trying to be a "good" person without completely being taken advantage of or being thought insane. I thought Buñuel could have worked particular wonders with the sequence where Bergman goes to work at the factory so that Masina could make it with her new beau without losing her job.

I knew nothing about Europe '51 before seeing it and so was very impressed when what I thought was starting out to be something of a Communist utopian propaganda film took a left turn into being something very different. Whatever happened to films like this (and Bergman's and Bresson's films about faith)? I am a non-believer, but I can't get enough of films like this that are portraits of a struggle toward grace or a wrestle with faith. I suppose the history of the last several decades has made cynics of us all.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, Tree of Life is more abstract, but felt like what you're describing here, and moved me on a level comparable with the really great films of the genre (though I think The Passion of Joan of Arc will probably always be the capstone.)

[Kauno]

You are perverse alright, but there's thought in what you are saying.

[knives]

Am I perverse or would Europe '51 be a great double-feature with Viridiana? Both films about the impossibility of trying to be a "good" person without completely being taken advantage of or being thought insane. I thought Buñuel could have worked particular wonders with the sequence where Bergman goes to work at the factory so that Masina could make it with her new beau without losing her job.

I knew nothing about Europe '51 before seeing it and so was very impressed when what I thought was starting out to be something of a Communist utopian propaganda film took a left turn into being something very different. Whatever happened to films like this (and Bergman's and Bresson's films about faith)? I am a non-believer, but I can't get enough of films like this that are portraits of a struggle toward grace or a wrestle with faith. I suppose the history of the last several decades has made cynics of us all.

I always thought Boudu would make the best two for Viridiana. I suspect the failings of future Rossellini's etc is the movement society has gone away from any sort of academic popular approach which they seem to thrive on. Really only Reygadas and Malick seem to have any interest on that front and I feel often their approach dumbs down a lot of what they are aiming for.

[Matt]

Well, Tree of Life is more abstract, but felt like what you're describing here, and moved me on a level comparable with the really great films of the genre (though I think The Passion of Joan of Arc will probably always be the capstone.)

Yes, I hadn't thought of Tree of Life, but it definitely does have that same searching quality as these films. It did lose me (and many others, I suspect) with its explicitly paradisiacal ending. I guess I prefer my religious films to remain earthbound and a little more ambiguous. Faith seems to be a more radical act without the explicit guarantee of a big family reunion in the sky when you die.

[Matt]

Am I perverse or would Europe '51 be a great double-feature with Viridiana?

I always thought Boudu would make the best two for Viridiana.

I think they would make a good double-feature, but for reasons of class than religion. I've always avoided drawing parallels between Jesus and Boudu (though maybe that was just a reaction to having that particular interpretation imposed on the film by the prof when we were studying the film in college). Boudu, for me, is kind of the ultimate hippie. He absolutely rejects the values of bourgeois society and often favors their exact inverse. Coming back to the Rosellini, someone should make a sequel that follows Bergman's character and her inability to remain appropriately saintlike to her gaggle of followers. She becomes drudge, nanny, and nurse to all those ragamuffin kids and dies within 6 months of tuberculosis. Or she stays in the looney bin and becomes a kingpin.

[knives]

Oh, I don't think Boudu is related to jesus or religion at all. I think at the core of both films is a suspicion of the benign appearing charity of bourgeoisie who expect to be met with gratitude in return making it not a real charity.

[movielocke]

The interview with Ingrid and Isabella on Voyage to Italy starts with a fade up from black and soundless lip flap and then the sound cues up after about two seconds of lip flap to Ingrid mid-sentance. Unlike all the other extras on the disc, this one doesn't have any title right away, it just starts as I described. Is this just something weird going on with my player? or is this happening with everyone's and it's an error? if I reverse or chapter back it does the same thing, as it is, it's the beginning of the feature, as best I can see.

[movielocke]

I'm still mulling over the magnificent Journey to Italy, but My Father is 100 Years Old was tremendous fun, witty, engaging, and managed to encompass so much of the content about Rossellini and his place in history and film-dom that the other extras also cover (though they take a much longer time to do it).

The booklet is also superb, probably their best compilation of material since the Trilogy of Life. In particular I loved the two interviews with Rossellini from the Cahiers Cohort and then from Apra, excellent insights into the man and his work, it's impressive what an excellent interviewer Truffaut was, and I was wanting to pull out my copy of Truffaut Hitchcock after reading that one.

[manicsounds]

So what is the difference with the English/Italian versions of "Stromboli"? I watched the English version which is a mix of English and Italian, with Bergman's character having difficulty communicating because many villagers only speak Italian.

If the language barrier is removed, does the Italian version make a very different story?

Also, I thought the English version was 80 minutes, drastically cut, but on this disc is 106 minutes, yet retains the RKO logo for the credits.

[tag gallagher]

There are three editions:
1) The unauthorized RKO US release which is c. 81 minutes, mutilates the film, adds a voice over and an ending.

2) The international edition, in English, Rossellini's cut, which played at Venice and was distributed in Europe, has RKO logo, c. 105 minutes. Partly in direct sound.

3) The Italian edition, dubbed in Italian for Italians (as always in Italy with every film: never subtitles!), Rossellini's cut and Rossellini's revisions, c. 97 minutes.

The latter two are in the Criterion box.

[manicsounds]

Thanks Mr Gallagher,
So what about the difference in story due to language? With the International version, Karin has a hard time communicating with the locals because of the language barrier, but what happens in the Italian cut? (I know, I should just watch it already, right?)

[tag gallagher]

Yes, please watch both editions and report back to us! Thanks.

[manicsounds]

So, watched parts of the Italian version, and I guess it doesn't make much difference to the story. The International version dialogue scenes when the husband says some Italian dialogue and Karin responds in English with "I don't understand", the Italian version, she responds with "I don't know what you mean" as in she i confused by why he would ask such a thing. Or the dialogue is tweaked a bit so it seems like everyone is speaking the same language with no barrier. Even in the Argentina Visa scene in the Italian version they say she is "Lithuanian, but can speak Italian".

Although there is one scene that doesn't seem to work: When the ladies come to front door while Karin is painting, she asks them to come inside, in which they just stand there. After failing to communicate, she asks the neighboring man to tell them translate in Italian to come inside.

In the Italian version, she does the same, and then asks the neighboring man to tell the ladies to come inside. It makes Karin's character a bit more stuck up in that one scene, by asking someone else, "Hey, tell these ladies what I just said to them for me."

[tag gallagher]

Yeah, thanks. The problem for me is that if Karin can speak Italian so well, then it's less likely that she would so blindly outrage local morality. I mean, I can't imagine an actual Italian woman doing the things Karin does.

[manicsounds]

Yeah, thanks. The problem for me is that if Karin can speak Italian so well, then it's less likely that she would so blindly outrage local morality. I mean, I can't imagine an actual Italian woman doing the things Karin does.

That's a problem when a multilingual movie is dubbed into one language. (James Quandt's video essay has a section about the language misunderstandings.) The worst example I've seen is the Japanese dub of "Lost In Translation" in which everyone speaks Japanese, yet for some reason Bill Murray even though speaking Japanese can't understand what anyone is saying. (A way it could have been fixed, dub Bill and Scarlett to Japanese, and have all the Japanese people around them speak English!)

Anyway, almost finished with the boxset (just the bonus disc to go, so yes I did see your video essay Mr Gallagher, excellent), and these 3 films are quite the definitions of art imitating life / life imitating art with Rossellini and Bergman's relationship closely being related to the relationships of the characters on screen. Excellent extras, probably has the most comprehensive extras I've seen recently. (Although no trailers?)

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The worst example I've seen is the Japanese dub of "Lost In Translation" in which everyone speaks Japanese, yet for some reason Bill Murray even though speaking Japanese can't understand what anyone is saying. (A way it could have been fixed, dub Bill and Scarlett to Japanese, and have all the Japanese people around them speak English!)

I've seen things like this in Mandarin dubs, including characters "interpreting" originally Mandarin dialogue into dubbed Mandarin for the benefit of characters also speaking dubbed Mandarin. I asked a Chinese friend about it and he said that the Chinese viewer simply imagines the foreign characters are really speaking English (or Japanese or Russian or whatever)—only the audience hears their dialogue in Mandarin, not the characters in the film. This all sounds pretty odd to me, but I suspect it's a common rationalization in dubbing-friendly countries.

(Of course this can really wreak havoc when the dialogue hinges on specific peculiarities of the original language. How did they handle the "rip my stocking" bit in the Japanese dub?)

[manicsounds]

(How did they handle the "rip my stocking" bit in the Japanese dub?)

She tells him "Stocking wo 'rippu' shite", she uses the English word "rip" instead of the Japanese word "Yabuite", to which Bob has no idea what that word means. Then she shows him, so he says (my translation) "Why didn't you just say 'yabuite'?"

Anyway, lets get this thread back to Rossellini/Bergman.
What are the chances of their collaboration of "Joan of Arc" to be released by Criterion? Possibly with the 1948 Victor Fleming directed version also starring Ingrid Bergman?

[MichaelB]

The Cinema Ritrovato Awards for 2014 have just been announced, including:

BEST BLU-RAY BOX SET: 3 FILMS BY ROBERTO ROSSELLINI STARRING INGRID BERGMAN
(Stromboli, Europe '51, Journey to Italy, 1950-1954) – Criterion

A superb, definitive edition of three very personal masterworks, with a good many critical, biographical, and historical supplements by many of the best Rossellini scholars and critics, including Adriano Aprà, Richard Brody, Fred Camper, Elena Dagrada, Tag Gallagher, Dina Iordanova, Laura Mulvey, James Quandt, and Paul Thomas, not to mention pertinent contributions by Guy Maddin, Martin Scorsese, and both Rossellini and Bergman and many family members.

(Full press release and other winners here)