Stromboli: Roberto Rossellini

The island of Stromboli is dying. The end of World War Two saw many of this small Italian island's men either killed or forced abroad to find work. The island's volcano towers over the remaining population, choking the air with soot and smoke. The earth is barren and lifeless. The few men remaining work thankless hours fishing for tuna. Though there are some children left, the island of Stromboli seems doomed for abandonment. It is this environment that Karin, a Lithuanian refuge who married one of the island's fishermen as a means to escape an internment camp, finds herself in. Unendurable monotony, inescapable poverty, and the hostility of the other locals drives Karin almost mad. But in her desperation, Karin will undergo nothing less than a spiritual transformation. This is the plot of Roberto Rossellini's Stromboli, the first collaboration between the legendary pioneer of Italian neorealism and actress Ingrid Bergman. Much like their later collaborations like Europe '51 (1952) and Journey to Italy (1954), the film tells a story of emotional and spiritual interiors set against Italy's majestic exteriors. The island of Stromboli is vast and imposing. The islanders, many of whom were actual residents of the island, are harsh and hardy. A brilliant sequence where the men work together to bring in a catch of tuna provides a rare glimpse of explosive kineticism, the kind which must have once been the rule instead of the exception on Stromboli. And at the center is Bergman, brilliant and believable as a woman forced by circumstances beyond her control into a life which she cannot help but view as a dead end. Many of her scenes, particularly the spiritual rebirth sequence on the volcano's rim near the end of the film, required her to act by herself with little to no dialogue. Carrying a scene with nothing but body movements and facial expressions takes a kind of talent rarely seen in screen actors outside of the silent era. Critics of the time dismissed her performance, but in hindsight we can see it for what it was: brilliant.

8/10