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The Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini: His Life And Films

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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.

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.

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.