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Rome, Open CityPaisanGermany Year ZeroThe Flowers of St. FrancisVoyage in Italy
and that's all I've seen (major MoMA retro coming).
This short is nice. Isabella plays a surprisingly convincing Selznick.
Isabella Rossellini's Tribute to Her Father, Cinema's Great Neorealist Talking Belly
By CARYN JAMES
The groundbreaking Italian director Roberto Rossellini was born 100 years ago today, which makes him sound like a dusty relic. Yet he learned firsthand the perils of the age of celebrity in 1949, when Ingrid Bergman (married to someone else) became pregnant with his child, the couple's fame turned to infamy and they were effectively exiled from Hollywood.
All these years later, at least one of their children has failed to calculate how media attention can boomerang. Ingrid Rossellini has complained publicly about "My Dad Is 100 Years Old," a short film written by and starring her twin sister, the actress Isabella Rossellini, and directed by the innovative Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. Ingrid has said that the impressionistic film, in which her father is depicted only as a giant, pillowy tummy, is an inappropriate tribute for his centennial: remarks that were reported around the world, calling attention to a tiny film that might otherwise have been ignored.
Inadvertently, she did film lovers a big favor. "My Dad Is 100" is an affectionate, playful and above all artful work, which displays Isabella Rossellini's emotional attachment to her father, and presents a savvy little description of his films and his reputation. Isabella is the twin who understands fame and how to use it.
"My Dad" will be shown tonight at 7 on the Sundance Channel, followed by Roberto Rossellini's 1945 classic of neorealism, "Open City." A DVD of the short film will also be included with a slight but charming companion book by Isabella, "In the Name of the Father, the Daughter and the Holy Spirits: Remembering Roberto Rossellini" (Schirmer/Mosel, $35, to be published on May 24).
In the 17-minute black-and-white film, Isabella Rossellini appears as herself, speaks her father's words, and also portrays characters including Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini and her own mother. (The twins were born two years after their parents married; the scandalous pregnancy produced their older brother Roberto.) Offering not a biographical document but her interpretation of her father, she describes a childhood in which he seemed the maternal figure; she liked to cuddle against his belly and he pretended to be a mother sow.
The other filmmakers she portrays debate the talking belly about their opposing philosophies of what movies should do. Rossellini, who died in 1977, was more influential than popular, capturing reality in the most straightforward manner possible in films of social conscience like "Open City," with Anna Magnani as a woman resisting the Nazis.
On a set that looks like an old movie theater, the Isabella-as-Hitchcock figure argues that films are about storytelling; her David O. Selznick character says they are entertainment; most important, Fellini (one of the screenwriters of "Open City") talks about the dreamlike quality of his films, only to be called a cinematic traitor by Rossellini, the neorealist tummy.
Mr. Maddin himself is a most Felliniesque director, and one of Isabella Rossellini's smartest moves was to get him to collaborate on "My Dad." Why try to mimic her father's realism, an approach that could only seem derivative? Steeped in and evoking old movies, Maddin films (like "Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary") operate on a kind of dream logic. Isabella Rossellini appeared in his 2003 black comedy, "The Saddest Music in the World," in which she plays a wealthy woman who has glass legs filled with beer and somehow makes them seem glamorous.
Like Rossellini's films, though, Mr. Maddin's are stylistically pure and polarizing. Viewers have been known to walk out of a Maddin film in confused irritation, and to leave a Rossellini film bored to death. "My Dad" acknowledges as much. In her own voice Isabella Rossellini looks at the camera and says she thinks her father was a genius, but not everyone agrees. "Indeed, they are very slow," she says of his films. "Yet their simplicity and starkness move me profoundly."
At the end, as we peer down at the grown Isabella reclining against her dad's belly, she looks up and scolds the camera for its arty, unnatural angle, saying her father would have called it immoral. She instructs the camera to come back to eye level and his "perfectly simple Rossellini framing."
Mischievous and witty, "My Dad" coexists perfectly well with films like "Open City," and even includes a glimpse of that film's climactic scene. (The short will also be included in the Museum of Modern Art's major Rossellini retrospective later this year.)
"My Dad" is not just a tribute to Rossellini, but to the rich variety of moviemaking itself. The film's most poignant, honest moments mingle fantasy and realism, family and Hollywood history. When Isabella plays her mother, whom she strikingly resembles, Ingrid Bergman is dressed in gleaming white, gazing down at her daughter from a tattered movie screen.
Isabella, dressed in black, looks up and tells her mother, "Some say that father destroyed your career."
Ingrid Bergman — at once Mama and icon — serenely replies: "No, he didn't destroy my career. I destroyed his."
This is, of course, a conversation that Isabella Rossellini is having with herself, and its unanswerable question could lead everyone in circles forever. It also represents the film's fanciful, eloquent acknowledgment that as a way to emotional truth, realism has nothing over dreams — even if Roberto Rossellini might have disagreed.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 8 May 2006 15:24 (seventeen years ago) link
― TRG (TRG), Monday, 8 May 2006 15:47 (seventeen years ago) link
― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 8 May 2006 15:50 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 8 May 2006 15:56 (seventeen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 8 May 2006 16:47 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 8 May 2006 16:51 (seventeen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 8 May 2006 17:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Monday, 8 May 2006 18:16 (seventeen years ago) link
Germany Year Zero is even grimmer than usual -- it was on TCM a couple weeks ago. I'd never even heard of The Messiah.
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 8 May 2006 18:25 (seventeen years ago) link
http://moma.org/exhibitions/film_media/2006/Rossellini.html
Since the current DVD print of Open City is pretty terrible, maybe I'll go opening night to see the restoration.
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 31 October 2006 15:05 (seventeen years ago) link
― The Redd 47 Ronin (Ken L), Tuesday, 31 October 2006 15:13 (seventeen years ago) link
http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2006/11/you-must-change-your-life-films-of.html
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 15 November 2006 18:28 (seventeen years ago) link
New Criterion war trilogy box is predictably good-looking and full of good supplements. Films still donot look 'perfect' and shouldn't.
You can redress the ILX '40s poll dis of R.R. now.
― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 January 2010 01:32 (fourteen years ago) link
to wit:
http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1436
― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 27 January 2010 03:08 (fourteen years ago) link
want this box.
― scent of a wolfman (s1ocki), Wednesday, 27 January 2010 06:47 (fourteen years ago) link
The restorations of Open City and Paisan were revelatory; they've really never SOUNDED this good.
― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 14 January 2011 01:28 (thirteen years ago) link
That's bcz you can hear them at all!
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, 14 January 2011 01:47 (thirteen years ago) link
What a strange and beautiful film Voyage in Italy is - wonder if Kiarostami knows it, parts of it def brought to mind 'Taste of Cherry' etc.
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 10 January 2013 15:11 (eleven years ago) link
heh, many pointed out that Certified Copy is kind of a remix! He most definitely knows it.
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 10 January 2013 15:13 (eleven years ago) link
ahh thanks, yeah Certified Copy is an even closer fit
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 10 January 2013 15:56 (eleven years ago) link
Been years since I've seen it.
India: Matri Bhumi is a v sensitive documentary, besides being v beautiful to look at.
Love to see St Francis one day.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 10 January 2013 16:05 (eleven years ago) link
Tour dates for new print of Voyage to Italy (or whatever you wish to call it):
http://blog.criterioncast.com/post/49443154913/theatrical-dates-for-janus-films-tour-of
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 2 May 2013 16:37 (ten years ago) link
the commentary from laura mulvey on the voyage to italy dvd is excellent, although i think it is the only such critical commentary i have bothered to play for its duration
― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, 2 May 2013 16:59 (ten years ago) link
Mubi, Thomson get around to the Ingrid films
http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-ingrid-bergman-and-roberto-rossellini
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 6 May 2014 20:48 (nine years ago) link
ok, not Mubi, Christ I need an edit function
it's too bad that they didn't include "fear" on the criterion set, it's not the best of the films but neither is it the worst--it has one of the better bergman performances for sure.
i admit that nearly all of rossellini/bergman films i've seen (and even the pre- and post-bergman rossellinis) have some significant flaw(s), be it in the writing or the filmmaking or the acting, that keep me from loving them unreservedly. this is particularly true of the war films (though "paisan" is a few notches above the others) and esp. "stromboli" and "europa 51." I feel like I can embrace them as much for the films they are striving to me (or I'd want them to be) as the films they are.
the major exception of "flowers of st francis" which is pretty amazing from beginning to end, it finds a tone that i can't recall from any other film and sticks to it.
― espring (amateurist), Tuesday, 6 May 2014 21:28 (nine years ago) link
i know i just managed to write three short paragraphs without saying anything of note, sorry.
― espring (amateurist), Tuesday, 6 May 2014 21:29 (nine years ago) link
The Prof. in Journey to Italy did seem -- well not inadequate -- but not exactly adequate either.
The David Thomson mini-bk on Ingrid is worthwhile reading, has a nice 'what if they hadn't met' alternative history.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 7 May 2014 11:30 (nine years ago) link
that's a more interesting question to ask of rossellini than of bergman -- bergman basically went back to what she had been up to before she met him, albeit after having to make amends with hollywood.
at the same token, i can well imagine a non-bergmanified rossellini eventually settling into those amazing historical television films that comprise the bulk of his late-career work.
― espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2014 17:47 (nine years ago) link
also isabella rossellini might take issue with that alternate history :)
― espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2014 17:48 (nine years ago) link
well her post-RR Hollywood roles were nowhere as good as pre
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 7 May 2014 18:01 (nine years ago) link
true, but perhaps that has as much to do w/ her aging i think. then as now there aren't too many plumb roles for actresses in their mid-late 40s and up. she was certainly in several prestige productions.
― espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 May 2014 18:17 (nine years ago) link
too bad she didn't get with Sirk or Sam Fuller
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 7 May 2014 18:20 (nine years ago) link
Having a Blu-Ray player certainly gives one options. Now I get to watch Stromboli.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 19:01 (nine years ago) link
it's a mixed bag!
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 19:18 (nine years ago) link
the film that is, not blu-ray
all his films are!
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:08 (nine years ago) link
no no no no
I have that box, admittedly Voyage and Europa are the ~perfect ones.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:10 (nine years ago) link
I'd agree with that. But Stromboli's highs are right alongside.
― Eric H., Thursday, 2 October 2014 03:31 (nine years ago) link
Rome, Open City not perfect?
Also love his doc on India. Little seen tho'
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 2 October 2014 09:19 (nine years ago) link
too many evil gays in ROC
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 2 October 2014 11:19 (nine years ago) link
Didn't notice any.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 2 October 2014 11:53 (nine years ago) link
Stromboli was...OK? One of the few times I'll succumb to biographical/extra-diagetic crit: Bergman's star power makes everyone, including her cloddish husband, look wan, therefore her plight is more moving than it should be. Good proto-Antonioni bits of Bergman wandering in a daze through rocks and architecture.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 2 October 2014 22:07 (nine years ago) link
Out of curiosity, which cut did you watch?
― You and Dad's Army? (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 2 October 2014 22:47 (nine years ago) link
I need to find a German cut of Germany, Year Zero. It looks beautiful but I can't handle the Italian dubbing.
― sorry, no results found for "Sekal Has To Die" (xelab), Tuesday, 28 July 2015 18:28 (eight years ago) link
Is there no BFI DVD of it?!
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 28 July 2015 21:02 (eight years ago) link
Is the BFI release German? I don't mind occasionally buying stuff, though admittedly that happens infrequently these days. I should have re-phrased my initial question as I need to find a torrent of...!
― sorry, no results found for "Sekal Has To Die" (xelab), Tuesday, 28 July 2015 21:27 (eight years ago) link
Yeah, the very recent BFI DVD is in German w/ English subs:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Germany-Year-Zero-Anna-Magnani/dp/B00P6R2QK4/ref=sr_1_6?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1438158570&sr=1-6&keywords=rossellini+war+trilogy
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 29 July 2015 08:31 (eight years ago) link
Yeah the BFI version also includes L'Amore, so £12 is a decent price.
― xelab, Wednesday, 29 July 2015 08:52 (eight years ago) link
Looks great - only seen it on youtube myself. Incredibly powerful, however you get to it.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 29 July 2015 09:00 (eight years ago) link
The real ruins of Berlin has got to be one of the greatest ever movie sets.
― xelab, Wednesday, 29 July 2015 09:25 (eight years ago) link
Interesting story behind the financing of Rome, open City on wiki. It isn't quite as powerful as Germany Year Zero, but it is still a great movie. Giovanna Galletti's cold blooded, manipulative gestapo agent is so horribly brilliant.
― xelab, Tuesday, 13 October 2015 22:55 (eight years ago) link
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/8d/ft709nb48d/figures/ft709nb48d_00003.jpg
― xelab, Tuesday, 13 October 2015 22:58 (eight years ago) link
tick.jpg
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 14 October 2015 09:26 (eight years ago) link
I'd no idea my uni library had the Criterion edition of General della Rovere. I'm watching tonight.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 April 2017 17:27 (six years ago) link
Possibly the funniest thing I've ever read. Anna Magnani, when asked by Franco Zeffirelli if notorious ladykiller Roberto Rossellini was "very well endowed": "No, he's a son of a bitch. That's why we all fall for him. He's a cunt."— ℑ 𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲 (@NickPinkerton) July 19, 2019
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 21 July 2019 16:08 (four years ago) link
Clauderains.jpg
― Ask Heavy Manners (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 21 July 2019 17:25 (four years ago) link
I watched Paisan today, don’t think I really got it
― Dan S, Sunday, 3 May 2020 23:32 (three years ago) link
interesting to read that Germany Year Zero was mostly shot in a studio and used rear screen projections, it didn’t seem obvious to me watching the film. Also I didn’t know that critics at the time compared it negatively to Rome Open City and Paisan and considered it unrealistic
it was grim but I thought it was beautiful. of the three films in the WWII trilogy though, my favorite is still Rome Open City
― Dan S, Tuesday, 19 May 2020 00:05 (three years ago) link
But a two-month delay in shooting because of financial problems and, according to Lizzani, "an emotional storm with Magnani" who had become Rossellini's mistress, led to unforeseen problems. During the month that they were in Rome, the starving German cast had begun to eat so much pasta that they grew immense: "The pieces didn't go together on the editing table, because the tall and thin gentleman walking the streets in Berlin, and approaching a door, when the door was opened was another person, well fed, and with the face of well-being." Filming was suspended for two weeks while the Germans went on a diet.
I remember reading somewhere that carbolic acid was injected into any fruit that was part of the set, to stop starving Germans from eating it all!
― calzino, Tuesday, 19 May 2020 19:29 (three years ago) link
The Flowers of St. Francis is lovely, a film about kindness and faith, exactly what I needed right now. I was surprised to see that it’s mostly an amateur cast of monks
― Dan S, Saturday, 4 July 2020 23:08 (three years ago) link
I watched Open City around 20 years ago and I liked it. Didn't watch any more of his films until I watched Voyage in Italy 5 months ago, then watched Stromboli yesterday. Why did I take so long to get to these? Great stuff. Now I need to watch the rest of his major movies.
― wasdnuos (abanana), Thursday, 15 July 2021 02:03 (two years ago) link