The Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini: His Life And Films [Paperback]

Tag Gallagher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 1998

Roberto Rossellini (1906–1977)—movie-maker, bon vivant, and passionate intellectual—was the key figure of Italian neo-realism, the godfather of the French New Wave, and a television pioneer; the maker of such classics as Open City, Paisan, Stromboli, Flowers of St. Francis, Voyage in Italy, and Louis XIV; Anna Magnani's lover; Ingrid Bergman's husband; and Isabella Rossellini's father. Continually enmeshed in controversy, perhaps no other figure in the history of world cinema has been so reviled—and so revered. Tag Gallagher's masterful biography of Rossellini, the first in any language, was fifteen years in the making. It is the result of assiduous research, lengthy interviews with almost everyone who knew him, and investigations into the making and reception of his films. The cast of characters includes Vittorio Mussolini, Il Duce's son and Rossellini's Fascist-era producer; Howard Hughes, who produced Stromboli and then, in a fit of jealousy over Ingrid Bergman, butchered its American release; and dozens of other people. Combining a portrait of a dynamic and daring man with brilliant discussions of his work, Tag Gallagher tells a story as rich and moving as Rossellini's miraculous films.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gallagher, the author of John Ford: The Man and His Films, spent 15 years researching and writing this biography of Italian director Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977). In 1945, Rossellini's early film Open City ushered in neorealism, a profoundly influential movement in European filmmaking that eschewed standard Hollywood "entertainments" for something rawer, more naturalistic. A valuable source for film scholars, this book extensively documents the making and critical reception of Rossellini's films, as well as the political and religious turmoil of the era that spawned them. Although Gallagher's extensive film critiques may be more than the general reader really wants, there's also plenty of fascinating personal detail. The filmmaker's tumultuous liaison with actress Anna Magnani is amusingly portrayed, and then there is the infamous affaire Bergman. Rossellini bet a friend he could have the world's most famous actress "in bed within two weeks" after he met her. He evidently won the bet, and scandal ensued when she left her dentist husband to live with Rossellini and to make Stromboli (1949), the first of the commercial and critical disasters that the couple endured before their marriage ended in 1958. Gallagher has combined probing insights into a flamboyant man with a prodigiously researched and footnoted analysis of an iconoclastic filmmaker, whom Francois Truffaut called "the father of the New Wave." 107 illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In the period immediately following World War II, Roberto Rossellini burst onto the Italian cinema scene with raw, captured reality in "neorealist" classics like Open City and Paisan. A few years later Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman scandalized the world by having a child out of wedlock. Rossellini's philandering and the pair's conflicting temperaments eventually cooled the affair. Meanwhile, Rossellini endured the paradox of being best known for war-related films in a country trying to forget the war. Gallagher (John Ford: The Man and His Films, LJ 4/1/86) reviews the adventures of a man he calls a "tangle of contrasts," covering his difficult relationships with producers, director Federico Fellini, Open City star Anna Magnani, and, of course, Bergman. The book is generally well organized and presented, despite a wearying amount of detail and a lengthy, jarring meditation on neorealism that intrudes on the narrative. Recommended for large international film collections.?Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 850 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (October 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306808730
• ISBN-13: 978-0306808739
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #918,916 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Entire Works of Rossellini, at last..., June 19, 2000

By 

Toshifumi Fujiwara (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini: His Life And Films (Paperback)

Roberto Rossellini is one of the most influencial figure in film history. A few of his films changed the way movies are made. Open City and Paisan shocked the world. Voyage in Italy changed the lives of many filmmakers, from Jean-Luc Godard to Martin Scorsese. Yet, no serious study was done about his entire body of work, before this book. Rosselini is a mysterious figure. His style changes from a decade to another. Also, many of his films, like Vanina Vanini or Blaze Pascal, are rarely screened. His carrer is also sort of tarnished because of his affair and marriage with Ingrid Bergman. In fact, most f not-so-serious movie fans know his name as only the guy who brought her to Italy. The truth is, they made some of the most beautiful films in film history: Voyage in Italy, Stromboli, Europe 1951... Gallagher, who is also known with his magnificent work about John Ford, applied the same tactics to write about Rossellini: to carefully study each film, from shot to shot. It is an impressive book. It takes a lot of time to read, perhaps, but not aslong as the author took to write (20 years). His argument is sober and careful, yet you can feel the passion behind it, just as you can feel from the later works of Rossellini himself. In studying each film with great attention, the author finds out, and explains to us, that in spite of the differences in their appearance, there is a single, unique, coherent style, logic, and genius behind this impressive body of works. It is one of the most impressive book about cinema. One regretable thing is that, most of the films disscussed in this book, we can't see them.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fasten your seat belt, July 7, 2001

By 

T. Matrullo "Kafkavius" (FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini: His Life And Films (Paperback)

Stepping into these adventures is like getting into the passenger seat of Rossellini's Ferrari - it will take you far, fast. Rossellini was not simply one of the greatest filmmakers, he was also a modern Ulysses whose life was the stuff of fable and whose fables were his life spliced into 24 frames per second. Tag Gallagher has done a superb thing by not attempting to divorce them, and the result is a work of art in its own right that has more to say about the 20th century than a boatload of "important" novels and sententious tomes. On top of that, it's a damn good read.

3 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Biassed as though written by great Rossellini's fan, July 17, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini: His Life And Films (Paperback)

This book seems a frivolous essay of Rossellini's art and life and must have been written by a great Rossellini's fan and destined to pour the balm on his fans' souls. But it's much too biassed to other filmmakers, considered even more prominent than Rossellini. The author devoted many words to stress the battle and dislike between Rossellini and Visconti and to demolish the latter's reputation as a director and as a man (a homosexual, a sadist, a maniac Communist....). The question is "Why?" The answer is "Ordinary envy" as the one made only three well-known movies and didn't steped out the limits of neorealism and the other stretched the neorealism to the philosophical multy-layerd parable (as "La terra trema" is) and then became one of the most prominent world's filmmakers. God will judge Mr. Galagher for his opus that succumbs even to slander (that Visconti asked Magnani to have an abortion in order to take part in his Ossessione) but I'll never take this book in my hands any more.