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00:00Lino, Lino, Lino. Francesco, Francesco carona. Francesco, Francesco, Francesco.
00:11Francesco, velocity, rampartamente. Francesco, Francesco, Francesco.
00:34Rome, Open City, was the film that introduced Italian neorealism to the world.
00:40It also made internationally famous its star, Anna Magnani, and its director, Roberto Rossellini.
00:54In Paris, Rossellini is still regarded as a master,
00:57and 12 years after his death in 1977,
01:01a complete retrospective of his films is being held at the Cinémathèque Française,
01:05below the Palais de Chaillot.
01:08It was here that this great innovator in the cinema
01:11became the father to the French new wave of the 60s,
01:14who flourished under the protective gaze of the founder of the Cinémathèque, Henri Langlois.
01:21Rossellini, c'était le neorealisme, et le neorealisme, c'était plusieurs personnes,
01:25tandis qu'à partir de ce moment-là, vraiment, Rossellini, c'est un monsieur extraordinaire,
01:32qui est allé jusqu'au bout, qui n'a pas capitulé, un auteur qui sort de lui-même ces choses.
01:40Bon, c'est ce qu'il a fait de ce cinéma, il fait du cinéma comme on fait du pain,
01:45alors que les autres font des tartes à la crème ou des brioches.
01:49Lui, il fait du pain.
01:51I just went once to Hollywood, in my late 20s, it was my first time,
01:56and I have met a makeup artist who understood that I was Ingrid Bergman's daughter,
02:01but I don't think made the connection with my father.
02:04And so he said, oh, he said, Ingrid Bergman was a great actress,
02:08and she married a terrible Italian director.
02:10You know what he did, this guy?
02:12He would film a horrible thing in the street that I see every day,
02:15stepping out of my apartment, and he wants me to pay $5?
02:21After neorealism, Rossellini achieved further notoriety
02:25in his partnership with Ingrid Bergman.
02:27Tonight, Serena looks at the life and work of this charismatic and controversial director.
02:50Roberto Rossellini was born in 1906,
02:53one of four children to wealthy middle-class parents in Rome.
02:57It was a close-knit family and was to remain so.
03:00The music for most of his films was composed by his younger brother, Renzo.
03:05They received a cultural education from their father,
03:09a highly successful architect.
03:11Among his creations was one of the grandest cinemas in Rome.
03:19And it was in the Barberini, with a free pass,
03:22that the young Roberto was first dazzled
03:24by realistic portrayals of love in Murnau's Sunrise
03:28and of war in King Vidor's The Big Parade.
03:32But his own route to filmmaking was entirely casual.
03:40My father was rich, and I was a bad boy.
03:45Not doing anything, you know?
03:48So, because I was what they call today a playboy,
03:53it's funny to be at my age, I was a playboy.
03:59So, where you go, just in the world of the show,
04:04and also theatre and movie, etc.
04:07And after the death of my father, we get broken very easily,
04:11also because I spend a lot of money,
04:13so I have to earn some money and have to do something.
04:16And because that was the world, who I know very well,
04:19so I was accepted there, and they started to work there.
04:22No one then in Italian cinema
04:25could avoid the influence of the fascist government.
04:28In 1937, Mussolini himself
04:30opened the famous studio of Cinecitta.
04:35It's still today the major centre of Italian film production,
04:39and it was in this environment
04:41that Rossolini began as a scriptwriter,
04:43working for the son of Il Duce, Vittorio Mussolini.
04:48Aside from comedies and costume epics,
04:51films would frequently promote the ideology of fascism
04:54through heroic figures from the armed forces.
04:57The film of propaganda in general
04:59gave the image of the hero
05:01as somebody already on the monument,
05:04some very heroic, very monumental.
05:09The heroes of the movie of Rossolini
05:12in that time, in the country,
05:14were simple men, simple soldier.
05:18In this way, we can recognise already
05:22something of his future style.
05:25In Rossolini's first feature,
05:27The White Ship,
05:28the spectacle was tempered
05:30by scenes of the wounded sailors.
05:32In The Man of the Cross,
05:34he dealt with Italian soldiers
05:36fighting the Reds on the Russian front.
05:38The battle scenes had a remarkable documentary quality,
05:41and at the same time,
05:43Rossolini emphasised the suffering caused by the war.
05:53With Rome under Nazi occupation,
05:56Rossolini went underground.
05:58Working in secret,
05:59he put together stories of the resistance
06:00based on everyday experience.
06:03It was this that gave Rome open city
06:05its feeling of real lives
06:07in front of the camera.
06:09Rossolini
06:10Sa parlare bene lui,
06:11ma io credo che sia così,
06:13che non dobbiamo aver paura
06:15né oggi né in avvenire,
06:17perché siamo nel giusto,
06:19nella via giusta, capisci Pina?
06:21Sì, Francesco.
06:23Noi lottiamo per una cosa che deve venire,
06:26che non può non venire.
06:28Forse la strada sarà un po' lunga e difficile,
06:31ma arriveremo,
06:33e lo vedremo un mondo migliore,
06:35e soprattutto lo vedranno i nostri figli.
06:38The script was drawn from true stories
06:41of a partisan priest
06:42and of children fighting for the resistance,
06:44but Rossolini was freed from studio constraints.
06:47How much of the script was changed
06:49when you shot it, as you shot it?
06:51Every second.
06:52Every second, yes.
06:54Yes.
06:55You do a lot of improvisation
06:56in front of the group?
06:57Yes.
06:58The hero's debauched girlfriend
07:00was played by a cinema usherette,
07:02the chief of police by Rossolini's lawyer,
07:05and the Gestapo officer,
07:06a German ballet dancer.
07:08From this unconventional casting,
07:11the greatest revelations were Anna Magnani,
07:13a popular comedian at the time,
07:15and, as the priest, Aldo Fabrizzi.
07:18A hugely successful music hall comic,
07:20his sense of timing was to add some light relief
07:23to an otherwise dark film.
07:26Oh, buongiorno, reverenda.
07:28Buongiorno.
07:28Desidera?
07:30Non avreste per caso un Sant'Antonio Abate?
07:33Spiacette, ne avevamo tempo fa,
07:35ma va poco.
07:37Avrei però un San Rocco.
07:40Grazie, non mi interessa.
07:41Come?
07:42Non interessa un santo come San Rocco.
07:45Saccomoli.
07:46Venga a vedere.
07:50Venga, venga pure.
07:51È anche un bel lavoro, San Rocco.
07:52Beh, vediamo.
07:53Allora io vado, eh.
07:54Vabbè, ricordati di passare da Chiurazzi.
07:56Vabbè.
07:57Glielo do per poco.
07:59Io dovrei parlare con Francesco.
08:01Mi manda l'uomo dalle scarpe strette.
08:03Beh, attendo un momento.
08:23Ti accomodi, reverendo, lo aspettano.
08:26La storia di come l'Owen City era creatata
08:30è straordinaria,
08:31perché nessuno può immaginare
08:34il sacrificio, l'idea, l'fantazione
08:38per fare un film in una regione
08:41come Roma,
08:42dopo la guerra,
08:44e la guerra non è ancora finita.
08:47Per fare un film senza money,
08:49senza set,
08:50senza lampi,
08:51senza studios.
08:55It was an unbelievable adventure.
08:59Rossellini even had to use still camera stock
09:02bought from chemist shops
09:03and on the black market.
09:05Filming was done entirely without sound
09:07and the dialogue dubbed on later,
09:09a practice now common in Italy.
09:12Although shooting mostly on location,
09:14in the Via degli Avignonese,
09:16Rossellini found one tiny studio,
09:19which today is a betting shop.
09:24on the floor above was a brothel
09:26from which Rossellini stole electricity
09:28to power his lights.
09:29This studio was the unlikely setting
09:32for the Gestapo headquarters,
09:33where the final brutal scenes
09:35of Nazi torture were filmed.
09:40Listen, Mr. Ferraris,
09:42I've already told you,
09:43I've already told you,
09:43I've already told you,
09:43and I appreciate you very much,
09:45believe me,
09:45this proof of your courage,
09:47of your sacrifice,
09:49but you have to understand
09:50that it's no longer possible
09:51to continue.
09:52You are a communist.
09:53You are a communist.
10:06Oh, liberate.
10:08Come dite voi,
10:09saranno ancora vostri alleati
10:11questi alti ufficiali monarchici?
10:14Io vi offro di risolverlo,
10:16questo problema.
10:17Datemi i nomi dei generali patogliani,
10:19mettetemi in condizioni di arrestarli
10:21and I guarantee freedom to you and immunity to your people.
10:26So, Mr. Ferraris,
10:28you, Herr Frachterhund!
10:31You!
10:32Sit down!
10:33Sit down!
10:49Many people say it's too early to speak about these facts.
10:54In the contrary,
10:56me was one of the few people who wrote very good about the movie,
11:01because maybe I was partisan in Rome,
11:07and I appreciated the way in which he exposed,
11:12he told the story, the simple story of the simple people in that time.
11:17Despite some critical sniping,
11:20Rome Open City became the most popular Italian film of its year.
11:24When the film reached the United States and Britain,
11:27the reactions were ecstatic.
11:37I was immensely struck by the excitement of it,
11:44the style, of course,
11:47the roughness,
11:50what we would call the roughness of its style,
11:52and undoubtedly that brought the film much closer to reality
11:58than the kind of dramatic war films we'd had from Hollywood or from Britain.
12:07With the liberation of Rome, the American market opened up to Italian filmmakers.
12:12Rossellini met entrepreneur Rod Geiger, who bought the American rights to Rome Open City,
12:17and then put up money for his next film.
12:19This would follow Italians and Americans fighting side by side in the Allied campaign,
12:24with stories showing the complex new relations between the two peoples.
12:30called Paisar, or fellow countrymen,
12:33it was composed of six episodes set in six different parts of Italy.
12:38I realized that was not enough what I have done with Open City.
12:45So, you know, in reality my position was a moral position.
12:51My starting point was a moral position.
12:54So, in being a moral position,
12:56I had the feeling that I was a little bit cheating.
13:01You know?
13:02In Open City.
13:02In Open City.
13:03Not with consciousness, but, you know, by the use of the thing.
13:09So, I tried to purify the thing.
13:13To refine, to purify, to purify the thing.
13:15So, how did this breaking up into separate segments help you purify?
13:25Well, because in a short story it's much easier to be pure than in a long story.
13:33One episode is set in occupied Florence.
13:37Sp bịch, I said.
13:41And I had to go!
13:41I can't even follow the road now.
13:42You know, let me go.
13:43I have my wife and the baby in that house there up.
13:45It's a moment, let me go, I can't go.
13:48No!
13:49Calm down, calm down!
13:54My god.
14:04In a city divided between partisans and Nazis,
14:07Rossellini shows the chaos and brutality of street fighting
14:10with a directness not previously seen in the cinema.
14:33With the camera now characteristically distant,
14:36the film recreates the desperation of the partisans
14:39in reprisals against collaborators.
15:07Scenes like these were filmed entirely on location,
15:10with the crew travelling from Naples to northern Italy,
15:13just as the intrepid Rossellini had done before them.
15:18Also the purpose was to see Italy, and Italy is so different.
15:22You know, south is one thing, north is completely another thing.
15:25The behavior is so deeply different, and the things are so different.
15:30And also the situation was maturing little by little, you know.
15:35So even the political consciousness was coming up little by little, you know.
15:44Entrammo a Pisa, nella città dove abitavamo, in un cinema,
15:48devo dire quasi deserto, saranno state dieci persone,
15:52anzi, alcuni uscivano dicendo non entrate perché il film è bruttissimo.
15:56Entrammo in questo cinema e ci imbattemmo con le immagini,
16:01le grandi, potenti immagini di Pisa.
16:05E vedemmo sullo schermo riproposta quella realtà della guerra
16:10che avevamo vissuto da poco e credevamo di averla capita vivendola,
16:15ma vedendola sullo schermo, riproposta da Rossellini,
16:19comprendemmo molto di più quello che avevamo vissuto e noi stessi che l'avevamo vissuta.
16:25Ecco, dicemmo, se il cinema ha questa forza di poter riproporre
16:30e far capire una realtà con questi mezzi, con questo strumento meraviglioso,
16:36ecco, noi allora faremo il cinema.
16:38E quel giorno, proprio quel giorno, decidemmo, grazie a Rossellini,
16:44che avremmo fatto il cinema.
16:50No, non mi interessa, io vado lo stesso.
16:55Allora, I'll go over on the beach and explode that mine
16:56and attract their attention.
16:59Ok.
17:03The final story in Pisa
17:05takes place in the marshes of the Po Valley.
17:09Americans fight alongside partisans
17:10in the final winter of the war.
17:38Ciao!
18:07La prima cosa che mi viene in mente, pensando a quello che Rossellini ci ha lasciato,
18:11è il suo piazzamento della macchina da presa.
18:14Questa macchina da presa che inquadra campi lunghi, terra, cielo,
18:20gli uomini piccoli che si muovono,
18:22con una semplicità che va veramente all'essenza della cosa
18:26nel rapporto uomo-natura,
18:28che forse è la cosa più grande che Rossellini ha dato
18:31nella prima parte della sua vita.
18:43A shadow was cast over Rossellini's next film
18:46by the death of his son, Romano.
18:51Germany Year Zero was filmed in the ruins of Berlin in 1947.
18:55It portrayed a nation searching for a way out of the Nazi legacy.
18:59For the entire film, Rossellini's camera follows Edmund,
19:03a young boy trying to earn money for his impoverished family.
19:07He must help feed a sick father,
19:09an elder brother in hiding from the Allies,
19:11and a sister whose only source of income would otherwise be prostitution.
19:16The idea that Rossellini had was very clear.
19:20We work a lot, night and day, night and day,
19:25and at the end we had a script.
19:28The script was only 15 pages,
19:31but the 15 pages were so full of idea,
19:36and the main line was so clear
19:42that with these 15 pages we could make the movie.
19:51For example, in one page was written in three lines.
19:57A horse falls,
19:59people come and cut in piece the horse
20:02to have something to eat.
20:08That's Clay Settler's phone.
20:16The occupying forces were the main source of food and income
20:19for the desperate Berliner's.
20:31In one scene,
20:33Edmund has been given a record to sell on the black market
20:35by his former teacher, a die-hard Nazi.
20:40Yes, now you can hear it.
20:42Yes, now you can hear it.
20:44But I think so.
20:45Yes, now it's not so long.
20:46But I think so.
20:59...
21:23His first intention was to shoot all the movie in Berlin, but the
21:29difficulty of the life in Berlin in that moment. The fact also that we could not be far from Anna
21:37Magnani. Anna Magnani wanted not to come in Berlin. In that moment he was in love with Anna Magnani. Anna
21:43Magnani didn't like to fly, but so was always the life of Rossellini. He mixed always very much private life
21:52with profession. He cannot divide the two experiences.
21:59And so he did decide to go back to Rome and to move in Rome in a studio, some set.
22:08During these two months, all the group of the actors which came from Berlin, they became very fat because in
22:16Berlin they didn't eat at all or very, very little.
22:20As they arrived in Rome, they started to eat pizza, spaghetti, cappuccini, and they became very fat. But day by
22:30day we didn't realize this. We didn't realize this when we started to shoot and we have seen on the
22:42screening.
22:42And we realized, and also the editor say, but how to put together this material because we have some very
22:49thin people coming from the street and going inside the house and then they opened the door and the house
22:56comes somebody absolutely different because it's another person.
23:00It was five, five, ten kilos more. And so we have to wait to stop, really, to have the time
23:10one week to let again the actor become a little sin. And so we start again.
23:18You have to make it very dirty again.
23:20What is it? Have you got the card 2?
23:23No, they have noticed that I am not 15 years old.
23:25That's very clear. That's what I told you before. I'm actually happy that it was so. That's not work for
23:33a 13-year-old young man.
23:34But now we have to eat more. I have to wait for Karl-Heinz.
23:37Have you heard that, Karl-Heinz? Is it clear to you that your brother has the whole weight of our
23:45existence alone on his shoulders?
23:48The public stayed away from Germany year zero, unprepared for Rossellini's bleak depiction of their present suffering.
23:56Having said his final words on the war, Rossellini abandoned Neorealism.
24:00Although still married, he made a star vehicle for his lover, Anna Magnani.
24:06L'amore, or love, was in two parts. The first, an adaptation of Jean Cocteau's The Human Voice.
24:12And the second, the story of a simple woman who believes she is impregnated by St. Joseph.
24:17The Silent Saint was played by the film's scriptwriter and Rossellini's former collaborator, Federico Fellini.
24:24But although the film was to scandalize the Catholic Church, this was nothing compared to what was to come.
24:29Across the Atlantic was a potential rival to Magnani.
24:35Since Ingrid Bergman's arrival in Hollywood in 1939, she had become one of their top stars.
24:41And in her screen image, she had acquired the aura of a saint.
24:46I mean, I don't want to put words in her mouth, but she was slightly bored.
24:51And I've wondered myself if being an European and being an American during the time of the war and looking
24:58back at Europe, her own country, her mother was German, if she didn't feel very connected to the war and
25:06to these very strong feelings.
25:07And Hollywood started to look a little bit just only entertaining.
25:13I happened to see a picture called Rome, Open City, and it so struck me. It so moved me. And
25:22it was the real feeling. And the people were real. And that wonderful human feeling came across the screen that
25:31was hard to find.
25:32Now, I don't want to say that all Hollywood movies were that because I made myself so many good movies
25:38in Hollywood that I'm terribly grateful for. It was just that I was looking for something new, something different.
25:45My mother started to dream about working in films like that. And she was a very careful person. So she
25:52waited long enough to see the second film of this director. And the second film was Paisa.
25:57And she was then very impressed. And she decided to write him a letter and invite him to meet with
26:04her and do a film together.
26:05I didn't think he would ever get enough courage to write to me because, I mean, he wouldn't think that
26:11anybody that lives a luxury life in Hollywood, and I was in those days very high on top of the
26:17box office.
26:19He wouldn't possibly get the idea that I would like to come to Italy and make one of his little
26:24pictures and, you know, for very little money.
26:27So I had to tell him that and I didn't know how to do it except write a letter.
26:32Dear Mr. Rossellini, I saw your films Open City and Paisa and enjoyed them very much. If you need a
26:39Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French,
26:46and who in Italian knows only Tiamo, I'm ready to come and make a film with you.
26:52Rossellini had never actually heard of Ingrid Bergman, but realised this was an extraordinary offer. The film he proposed to
27:00her was Stromboli.
27:03Her role was Karen, a Lithuanian refugee. Desperate to escape internment after the war, she marries a poor fisherman from
27:11the volcanic island.
27:16Is it always active? Yes.
27:20Bergman came with Hollywood money from RKO Studios, which Howard Hughes had acquired solely to add her to his collection.
27:27But Hollywood practice was not Rossellini's way.
27:31We had a story outline, and then the dialogue was always written as we went along, and of course it
27:38wasn't so easy to play with the amateurs on the island.
27:44New terror.
27:45My leading man came from Salerno, but he was a fisherman. He was picked up on the beach, and he
27:51thought he was going to work in the crew. He had no idea that he was going to become my
27:54leading man.
28:01I don't care about your barley, or your vine, or your new terror. I want to leave this island and
28:08go away, far away.
28:22Listen, this is my home. You're my wife. You stay here because I want to.
28:29Bergman found working with Rossellini as trying as her character Karen found life on Stromboli.
28:35She filmed this experience with her own camera, and these home movies were shown for the first time last year.
28:46Maybe when I switched from American movies to Italian movies, of course that was my own choice, but I didn't
28:52realize that he worked with amateurs.
28:54And it was terribly difficult to work with people when you had worked ten years in Hollywood, and I had
29:02worked several years before that in Sweden, where people knew their dialogue and they knew their answer.
29:08You know, they understood the lights and the spots on the floor and how they should turn because the camera
29:13is here and the sound is...
29:14All those things. And these people never knew anything. They didn't even know when they were supposed to talk.
29:19And I spoke in English and they spoke in Italian because the whole thing was going to be dubbed afterwards.
29:23And it was so difficult. And sometimes I almost gave up because Mr. Rossellini had to put, he put threads,
29:34thin, thin little cords in their feet, in their shoes.
29:38And he had them there and he played with the Marinette. He pulled them when they were supposed to talk.
29:46So he was having a great time pulling them just the right moment. But of course, he didn't pull me
29:51and I never knew really when I was supposed to come in with my dialogue.
29:55Although that was very difficult, but it was a marvelous way of getting away from everything that I wanted to
30:03get away from Hollywood.
30:04And that was all the ease. Here was nothing that was easy. In Hollywood in those days was like a
30:12dream.
30:14If you wanted pink elephants, you'd get pink elephants or you'd get trained flies or anything.
30:19I mean, there was just a ring call up and we get them for tomorrow. And all the talent was
30:24there and enormous amount of people in the crew that worked with you.
30:29And I was very spoiled. So, which was the complete difference when you came to Italy and you did everything
30:35yourself and in a very, very hard way.
30:38But that is what I wanted. And I got what I wanted.
30:44Because Berg, deeply Catholic Island, where the fishermen give thanks to the Virgin for a successful catch, Karen is bewildered
30:51by her situation.
30:54Let's go.
30:58How do you feel?
31:00Better.
31:01Did you like the fishing?
31:04No, it was horrible.
31:06What's the matter?
31:08I don't feel well.
31:09Why?
31:15You think?
31:18Maybe?
31:19Yes, it is three months now I believe I'm pregnant.
31:23Karen.
31:23Mio Dio.
31:25I am so happy.
31:29Are you?
31:31Yes.
31:32Yes, I'm happy too.
31:40Life imitated art with the birth of little Roberto in February 1950.
31:44The father of the child was Rossellini.
31:48Unfortunately, the event preceded Bergman's divorce by a week.
32:01I certainly thought that there would be some write-ups in the paper that I wanted to divorce.
32:06Being a former fascist, Bergman was dubbed Hollywood's apostle of degradation. Stromboli was a flop.
32:16In 1952, tired by press harassment, Rossellini and Bergman proudly displayed to photographers their newborn twins, Isotta and Isabella.
32:29Well, father was more of a fighter as a person, mother was more vulnerable and I think she suffered most.
32:39If you see her face in Stromboli, and if you see her face in Voyage to Italy, it is only
32:47three years between these two films.
32:49She's still a very beautiful woman, but daddy looks like, you know, 15 years have gone by.
32:54She's still a child when she does Stromboli. She has still her round cheeks and a very naive, innocent look.
33:00And I always wondered, as a daughter, if it wasn't the suffering of all the scandal that made her age
33:06so fast in such short time.
33:12Bergman continued to show faith in Rossellini by appearing in his Italian films.
33:21In Voyage to Italy, she again plays an unhappily married woman, this time an English tourist in Naples.
33:28It was found in the woods. It is a good thing they exist no longer. They were very dangerous.
33:35This is the drunken fall. He is about to fall asleep.
33:40Sleep is a wonderful habit.
33:49Here we have a young dystustral, a Greek.
33:54George Sanders, no Mediterranean youth, but the epitome of the suave Englishman, was cast by Rossellini as Bergman's irritable husband.
34:02The so-called Anglo-Saxon world, you know, is completely different in behaviour and thinking and feeling from us.
34:11So, I think it was a good comparison to put two English people inside Italy, to get emmerited the house
34:20in Italy.
34:21Everything is shocking, you know, for that.
34:24Not knowing where the story was leading, the Hollywood-trained actors were severely tested by Rossellini's refusal to follow a
34:31fixed script.
34:35Brancati and Roberto, they were maybe in the evening, they were writing something for the day next.
34:49So, every morning, everybody was asking the director of production, what are we going to do today?
34:59I remember George Sanders coming from Hollywood.
35:04He was completely mad about the system, because he was completely, he could not understand that people could shoot a
35:17picture without script and without preparation.
35:22One night, I remember, he put me at four o'clock in the morning.
35:27I said, what happened?
35:28So, I have decided, I commit suicide.
35:31I think it's a good idea.
35:35Because he was unhappy in the film.
35:37So, it's too much to commit suicide.
35:39So, I said, well, what is wrong?
35:41If we do a bad film, it can be another bad film, it's no damage for you, for me, for
35:46anybody in the world.
35:47So, why do you want to commit suicide? I think it's too dramatic.
35:51So, he got a little hurt against me, and he ate me deeply, and he made a lot of interviews
35:56saying a lot of bad things.
35:58And that's all.
36:02I'm terribly thirsty. It's this food, you know. I'm not used to all those sauces.
36:07What do you want?
36:09Something to drink.
36:10If you want, you're going to take a pill, why don't you take a pill? Why don't you take a
36:13pill?
36:14Uh, well, but, I just want you to fill it up.
36:18You understand? What's going on? What's going on?
36:21This wine is excellent, you know, but I'd just like you to fill it up.
36:25I don't want to bicarbonate. I can't serve you. I don't have the cellar.
36:30But, uh, you misunderstand me. I want to fill it up with wine.
36:35Ah, yes, he doesn't understand. Why do you make such confusion?
36:38Bring it to the signor, Tony. He doesn't understand what I'm saying.
36:41Okay.
36:42Rossellini appears to draw Sanders' performance out of the actor's real discomfort,
36:47as if the film is in part a documentary on the troubled Englishman.
36:51Come on!
36:52How dare you speak to me like that?
36:54Come on, signorina, come on! Come on! Come on!
36:58I have a notion, a very clear notion of the story, and I have a very clear idea about what
37:04I want to say. That's one thing.
37:08But when you do the scene, you are in front of a reality that is absolutely impossible to guess in
37:16a table, sitting in another place.
37:18You have the elements there, so you must adapt to those elements.
37:23During the picture, one day, Roberto had a telephone call from the director of the Pompeian Museum,
37:35saying that they were going to discover something very special.
37:43So Roberto, he thought immediately that it was very important to go there.
37:48So we have been rushing there with a camera and everything, with a few lights, and we have been shooting
37:56like a documentary.
38:05It's on this spot that they found a hollow space.
38:09When the men find hollow ground, they make a number of holes, and through these they pour plaster.
38:15The plaster fills out the hollow space left in the ground by the body, which has disintegrated.
38:21The shapes of bodies or objects buried for over two thousand years are reconstructed this way.
38:34Look, you can begin to see something.
38:36What is it?
38:40See?
38:42Looks like a leg.
38:44This discovery was the vindication of Rossellini's method, a chilling parallel to the characters' inner lives.
38:57Two people, just as they were, at the moment they died.
39:03A man and a woman.
39:08Perhaps husband and wife, who knows, may have found death like this together.
39:17What's happened to Mrs. Joyce?
39:19I don't know.
39:20Is there anything I can do?
39:22No, I'll talk to her.
39:27Catherine, what's the matter? What's happened to you?
39:31Oh, Alex, this is too much. I can't stand it any longer.
39:34Please take me home. I want to go home. I don't want to stay here any longer.
39:38Voyage to Italy was to have a greater influence on the French New Wave than any other Rossellini film.
39:45But the Bergman period was sadly misunderstood at the time.
39:51In a Roma che non capisce, ha subito faticosamente la vita dell'alta società.
39:57La scena a cui il regista dà il via si svolge in un gabinetto di psicanalisi.
40:02Da suo marito. Lei potrebbe...
40:04If I went back home, I would save neither myself nor the others.
40:09Un primo piano di smarrito struggimento.
40:12La crisi di questa donna è stata provocata dal suicidio del suo bambino.
40:16Accompagnata dall'intellettuale, cercherà di ritrovarsi girando le borgate di Roma
40:20per conoscere la vita nella sua crudezza.
40:23Per ora continua il dialogo col psicanalista.
40:26La scena a più di loro, senza essere salvati da loro.
40:31La scena a più di loro.
40:33La scena a più di loro, senza essere liberi.
40:36La scena a più di loro.
40:39La scena a più di loro.
40:41La scena a più di loro.
40:45La scena a più di loro.
40:46Rossellini non allò di arte di libertà di Bergman.
40:49Non allò di lui lavorare con altri direttori.
40:56Di Charlottesco.
41:00La scena a più di rilass
41:21at the stake.
41:57This theatrical venture wasn't enough to sustain their partnership.
42:01They both began to look further afield.
42:09At a certain point in 1955-56 he decides to go to India, which well of course that brings
42:17me about because that's where I met my mother.
42:20Rossellini fell in love again.
42:22Her name was Sonali Dasgupta and unfortunately she was already married to the producer of
42:27his latest project.
42:30The Rossellini-Bergmann romance was over.
42:35It was a typical move for Rossellini to voyage to the far ends of the world.
42:40With his career in European cinema at its lowest point, he found renewed inspiration in the
42:45life and culture of India.
42:57The film he made there was like a return to Paisa, a series of episodes merging documentary
43:02footage with staged scenes.
43:04These were also based on his own observations while travelling around the country.
43:14The film expressed his continuing passion for introducing one culture to another.
43:42It's quite an important movie because it's sort of like the first touch of what would come
43:48later in the 60s, which is the abandoning of cinema for television, leaving fiction behind
43:55and going towards the history of mankind.
43:59I think in 1961 he said cinema is dead.
44:03A lot of people laughed of course when he said that, but for him it was dead certainly.
44:09After making a handful of films for the commercial cinema, he tired of the constraints of producers.
44:15Rossellini decided he was better served by television, where he could reach a larger audience and have
44:20greater freedom.
44:23He wanted to take episodes of characters from history that were extremely significant to him and
44:33tell their stories in a very sober way.
44:37The aesthetics have always been very important.
44:39When you're making an historical movie, whether it be about the Romans or the Egyptians, we've
44:44always been used to seeing these movies that are based on great photography and huge sets
44:49and extras and incredible and probably improbable costumes.
44:54Instead, he started with a very accurate research and the movie would start three years before
44:59it would be shot.
45:00What is touching, what is exciting, what is curious is to see what man, what is the real behaviour
45:08of man, to do the character, you have to build the character on him.
45:13So you have to stay a little bit with him to discover what are the attitudes.
45:21Each one of us do certain kind of gestures, certain kind of rhythm in the voice or the choice
45:30of certain words, etc.
45:31So if you adapt the thing that you have to do to those kinds of things and you suggest
45:38to him…
45:39Perhaps he has no talent to say the lines, that you're not worried about.
45:43I mean, he has no talent to perform as an actor would perform.
45:46No.
45:47What are some of the devices that you would use to make him move and create what you want?
45:52To move.
45:52To move.
45:53To move.
45:53To move.
45:53You say, well, you come from here, you go there.
45:56When you are there, you turn.
45:57You go there.
45:58You go there.
45:59That's purely physical movement.
46:01Your films people talk a lot.
46:04There is a problem with getting them out of there.
46:06It all depends on the kind of film that you make.
46:09If it's a show, if it's theatre, you must interpret the thing.
46:14You must underline the thing.
46:15You must give any sort of significance to the thing.
46:19When you do the filming, you do that with the camera.
46:22He would shoot a scene with a big master and that was it.
46:26No close-ups, not many setups for a scene.
46:30The camera with the operator would be moving back and forth, always very slowly.
46:34And he would be sitting with this little instrument that he invented,
46:37which was nothing but a remote control of the zoom lens,
46:40which he used to operate without looking at the camera.
46:43At that point, he knew exactly what was in the viewfinder
46:46and he never needed to look in the viewfinder.
46:48At an editing place, they would sync up dailies for him
46:51and they would send it to the house.
46:52And then it was very simple for him.
46:54And I was sitting next to him.
46:56It was fascinating for me.
46:58I was 12, 13 years old when the machine came in the house.
47:02And he would just put one scene after another.
47:05You put scene one, then you take out the scene two,
47:06and you put scene three.
47:07There is no close-ups, intercuts.
47:09It was quite simple.
47:21In 1974, Rossellini returned to the cinema with Italy Year One,
47:26in which he recreated the post-war period he had once filmed while it was happening.
47:45On set with his sister, his grandson, and his very first wife,
47:49Rostellini surrounded himself with his family.
47:56After years spent simplifying his technique,
47:59he had lost his enthusiasm for the actual shooting of a film.
48:06I could tell you to the last of him.
48:09I could tell you about that last of him.
48:10We could tell you that last of him.
48:12We could tell him about this.
48:13We could tell you about this.
48:14No, that's not from here.
48:15It's from there.
48:16And tell him to the other side,
48:17and go to the other side.
48:18and go to the other side.
48:19Don'tный bathe.
48:20Don't wait for you to mess with your f*****gλέ.
48:34Rossolini was directing another non-professional in the role of De Gasperi, the Christian Democrat
48:40who dominated Italian politics after the war. This sympathetic portrait of the man was attacked
48:46by all political parties, including the film's sponsors, the Christian Democrats themselves.
48:51I think that Rossolini was a man who believes in men, in individual men, more than in ideology.
49:05He was, in a certain time, even the leader of the film office of Democrazia Cristiana,
49:13but it had nothing to do with his movie.
49:22His movies, there was never an attitude of conformism, of religious conformism.
49:31He didn't believe in dogma. He believes in the capacity of the man to react to facts.
49:40Also, in the worst moment of the history, to have the courage to say no, as the hero of
49:48Rome of One City, as the hero of all his movies.
49:54I have people around me, who are very respectful, because they are there with a faith
50:04that we can't be done without it, even if he has the courage to do it.
50:09I'm not sure what it is.
50:09I insist on it, I insist on it, I insist on it, I insist on it, I insist on it,
50:12I insist on
50:12it, I insist on it, you all do it every day, to learn something new, every day, to
50:18do it every day, to do your work, to diminish your ignorance. If you do it, everything
50:21becomes completely wrong.
50:24He went back to school. He went to Rice University. And his purpose was to do films on science.
50:30And he did little experiments in the kitchen when we were in Italy.
50:36And I remember once he sent me out to fish some orchard.
50:40And I had to come back home with a bucket full of water and orchards.
50:46And then we would cut them and find the male and female and mix the eggs with the sperms
50:51and try to film, right in the kitchen, trying to film the first division of the eggs as they are
50:56fertilized.
50:57So it was a very kind of rudimental, very experimental, home-made science film.
51:04But that was his goal, that he died too soon to be able to ever make a film about it.
51:12Aside from his fascination with the simplest forms of life,
51:15Rossellini also planned films on Karl Marx and the history of Islam.
51:19His final completed production was A Life of Christ.
51:23In 1977, Rossellini made his last public appearance as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.
51:29Against strong opposition, he fought for the Taviani brothers' film Padre Padrone to win the Golden Palm.
51:36For him, it was a film that kept faith with his principles.
51:39It also had the merit of originally being a television production.
51:43It was a film, despite his austerity, Padre Padrone, which has earned the gold palm.
51:49When we met him, after the premio, he told us that he was happy?
51:56And we said yes.
51:58And he said, now be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful,
52:02be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful.
52:09Be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful for all my life.
52:16The only force, the only scud that I have used to defend myself
52:22was to not ever cede from me,
52:26and to say, as Vittorio said before,
52:29to always look for the truth.
52:31And the last thing he said,
52:33forget me, forget me,
52:36and do only and only your way.
52:39You will be more alone,
52:40but this is what we ask every man.
52:42And we are trying to do it.
52:45Freedom is a very exciting thing, you see.
52:48And I have tried my best,
52:50passing through the world,
52:52to be free, always.
52:54I never was caught really in the system,
52:57but sometimes it's very, very hard.
53:02But it's even fine because it's exciting,
53:06so I must say,
53:08never had a boring moment in my life anyway,
53:12you know, so many troubles,
53:13so no time to be bored.
53:23And that's the only thing.
53:24I never thought,
53:25but I am awake,
53:27because it's terrible.
53:28It is always bad.
53:28it's not afraid.
53:29It's not a bad idea.
53:29It's a bad idea.
53:29It's a bad idea.