Roberto Rossellini

  • Roberto Rossellini – L’Età di Cosimo de Medici AKA The Age of Medici AKA The Age of Cosimo de Medici (1972)

    1971-1980DramaItalyRoberto RosselliniTV

    Synopsis:
    This three-part saga evokes the social, economic, and religious life of fifteenth-century Florence through two of its leading lights: banker Cosimo de’ Medici and art theorist Leon Battista Alberti. The Age of the Medici is like a Renaissance painting come to life. The three episodes of approximately 90 minutes each, begins as a movie about the shrewd worldliness of the banker Cosimo de’ Medici and ends as a tribute to the scholarly humanism of the author and architect Leon Battista Alberti. “Medicis” leaves us with an impression of Quattrocento Florence as a city of sublime harmony in which art and commerce are in perfect balance, seamlessly interdependent.Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – Beaubourg, centre d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou (1977)

    1971-1980DocumentaryFranceRoberto Rossellini

    Rossellini 77
    Last images from Roberto Rossellini filming the Centre Georges Pompidou,
    February-March-April-May 1977.

    Following the steps of Roberto Rossellini on day to day basis, making the film “LE CENTRE GEORGE POMPIDOU” we could not know the issue of his last encounter with the cinéma.

    10 Hours of 16 mm coulour film, 30 hours of sound recordings… More than 2500 slides were produced as he wished :
    “to represent things as they are and stay on the field of the honesty”.
    Unique experience… 30 years after…
    From this story, as promised… a film is being born.Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – Anno uno AKA Year One (1974)

    1971-1980DramaItalyPoliticsRoberto Rossellini

    From Channel4.com:
    Rossellini’s indelible career flagged in the late 1950s for a variety of complicated reasons, and after directing commercial films and an episode in Rogopag (1962) he abandoned cinema for television. Twelve years later and near the end of his life he returned to movie-making with this film. It’s a biopic of the postwar Christian Democrat leader, Alcide De Gaspari (Vannucchi), who was responsible for keeping the Communists out of power in the years that followed the fall of fascism. An extension of Rossellini’s documentary and historical reconstruction films, this failed both critically and commercially.Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – Il tacchino prepotente (1939)

    1931-1940ArthouseFantasyItalian Cinema under FascismItalyRoberto Rossellini

    This is an anti-Fascist short Rossellini made in 1940.
    Quote:
    La vispa Teresa was rejected and, although Ferrara said that Il tacchino was distributed by Scalera under its working title, “La perfida Albione,” there were no press notices, and no one outside of Scalera is known to have seen it. According to Ferrara, Rossellini told him it was a satire in which “Perfidious Albion,” a big turkey representing England, goes around pecking at the hens representing the nations of Europe, until defied by a rooster representing Italy. “Rossellini detested it,” said Ferrara, “[though his] genius was such that he could achieve extraordinary effects out of nothing. He used to tell me, ‘It’s the only time that, through my weakness, I made a work of propaganda.’” Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – Fantasia sottomarina AKA Undersea Fantasy (1940)

    1931-1940ItalyRoberto RosselliniShort Film

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis:
    Roberto Rossellini’s first film is a work of deceptive transparency. In its initial moments the film appears to be a documentary about underwater, even deep-sea, species. But soon after, the narration, in the manner of Cocteau, unleashes a powerful “dual reality” onto the images, imbuing them not only with a narrative logic, but a kind of magic. Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – Viaggio in Italia AKA Journey to Italy [+ Extras] (1954)

    1951-1960ArthouseDramaItalian Neo-RealismItalyRoberto Rossellini

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Among the most influential films of the postwar era, Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia) charts the declining marriage of a couple from England (Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders) on a trip in the countryside near Naples. More than just the anatomy of a relationship, Rossellini’s masterpiece is a heartrending work of emotion and spirituality. Considered a predecessor to the existentialist works of Michelangelo Antonioni and hailed as a groundbreaking modernist work by the legendary film journal Cahiers du cinéma, Journey to Italy is a breathtaking cinematic benchmark.Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – Dov’è la libertà…? AKA Where is Freedom? (1954)

    1951-1960ComedyDramaItalian Neo-RealismItalyRoberto Rossellini

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis:
    A barber, murderer because of jealousy, spends twenty years in jail. He cannot, however adjust himself to a changed world and to the hypocracy of his own relatives and decides to return behind bars.
    — IMDb.Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – Era notte a Roma AKA It Was Night in Rome [Long ver.] (1960)

    1951-1960DramaItalyRoberto RosselliniWar

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    In keeping with his previous film Il generale Della Rovere, filmmaker Roberto Rossellini pursues a wartime theme in this “personal epic” Era notte a Roma.
    The film is set in Rome during the German occupation after the armistice on 8 September 1943.
    The story concerns three Allied POWS, who escape from their camp and hide out in Rome. The trio is given shelter and aid by a beautiful young woman who deals with black market disguised as a nun, her partisan boyfriend and several other people.
    The three prisoners (one is Russian, one English, one American) display a genuine warmth towards each other that probably is meant to reflect the three countries’ joint effort against Nazi Germany.
    Just as the variety of Italians involved in their protection as well as in their pursuit seems to be meant to reflect the chaos and mistrust reigning in those dark days. Acts of courage alternate with acts of treachery.
    For reasons that remain obscure, Era Notte a Roma was never initially given a widespread American release.Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – La vispa Teresa (1939)

    1931-1940ArthouseFantasyItalian Cinema under FascismItalyRoberto Rossellini

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Scalera had obtained backing for a series of animal shorts and needed someone to make them. Roberto plunged in enthusiastically. He arrived at Ladispoli with animals of all sorts distributed among pockets and cages and started sixteen documentaries, no less, all at once. A slew of titles were annouced. La foresta silenziosa (“The quiet forest”), Primavera (“Spring”), Re Travicello, and La merca; and perhaps ll brutto idraulico (“The ugly plumber”). Fellini recalls finding Roberto at Scalera kneeling under small reflectors. “Inside a small enclosure made of nets and rope were a turtle, two mice, and three or four roaches. He was shooting a documentary about insects [La vispa Teresa?], doing one frame a day, very complex and laborious, with great patience.”
    “He kept shooting for months,” Fellini adds, probably with his customary exaggeration. For in fact Roberto’s enthusiasm flagged quickly.Read More »

Back to top button