Roberto Rossellini Is 100 Years Old

all his films are!

no no no no

I have that box, admittedly Voyage and Europa are the ~perfect ones.

I'd agree with that. But Stromboli's highs are right alongside.

Rome, Open City not perfect?

Also love his doc on India. Little seen tho'

too many evil gays in ROC

Didn't notice any.

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.

Out of curiosity, which cut did you watch?

I need to find a German cut of Germany, Year Zero. It looks beautiful but I can't handle the Italian dubbing.

Is there no BFI DVD of it?!

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...!

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

Yeah the BFI version also includes L'Amore, so £12 is a decent price.

Looks great - only seen it on youtube myself. Incredibly powerful, however you get to it.

The real ruins of Berlin has got to be one of the greatest ever movie sets.

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.

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/8d/ft709nb48d/figures/ft709nb48d_00003.jpg

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I'd no idea my uni library had the Criterion edition of General della Rovere. I'm watching tonight.

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

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I watched Paisan today, don’t think I really got it

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

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!

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

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.