Rossellini was born in Rome. His mother, Elettra (née Bellan), was a housewife born inRovigo,Veneto, and his father, Angiolo Giuseppe "Peppino" Rossellini, who owned a construction firm,[3] was born in Rome from a family originally fromPisa,Tuscany.[4] He lived on the Via Ludovisi, whereBenito Mussolini had[clarification needed] his first Roman hotel in 1922 whenFascism obtained power in Italy.[5]
Rossellini's father built the first cinema in Rome,[when?] the "Barberini", a theatre where movies could be projected, granting his son an unlimited free pass; the young Rossellini started frequenting the cinema at an early age. When his father died, he worked in film sound-making and for a certain time, he experienced all the ancillary jobs related to the creation of a film, gaining competence in each field. Rossellini had a younger brother,Renzo, who later scored many of his films.
Although he was not personally religious,[6] he had a strong interest inChristian values in the contemporary world;[7] he appreciatedCatholic ethics and religious sentiment—things which he saw as being neglected in the materialist world.[7]
In 1937, Rossellini shot his first film,Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, which was possibly unreleased and later lost.[8] After this film, he was called to work as assistant director onGoffredo Alessandrini's in makingLuciano Serra pilota, one of the most successful Italian films of the first half of the 20th century, and later worked onFrancesco De Robertis's 1940 filmUomini sul Fondo.[9] His close friendship withVittorio Mussolini, son ofBenito Mussolini, has been interpreted as a possible reason for having been preferred to other apprentices.
Some writers have described the first part of his career as a sequence of trilogies. His first feature film,The White Ship (1941) was sponsored by the audiovisual propaganda centre of Navy Department and is the first work in Rossellini's "Fascist Trilogy", together withA Pilot Returns (1942) andThe Man with a Cross (1943). During this period he developed relationships withFederico Fellini andAldo Fabrizi. The Fascist regime collapsed in 1943, and two months after the liberation of Rome (4 June 1944), Rossellini began preparing the anti-fascistRoma città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945), with Fellini assisting on the script. Fabrizi played the role of the priest, while Rossellini self-produced, filming commencing in January 1945. Most of the money came from credits and loans, and film had to be found on the black market. This dramatic film was an immediate success. It has been called the first film of theNeorealist Trilogy, the second title of which wasPaisà (1946), produced with non-professional actors, and the third,Germany, Year Zero (1948), was sponsored by a French producer and filmed in Berlin's French sector. In Berlin also, Rossellini preferred non-actors, but he was unable to find a face he found "interesting"; he placed his camera in the centre of a town square, as he did forPaisà, but was surprised when nobody came to watch.
As he declared in an interview "in order to really create the character that one has in mind, it is necessary for the director to engage in a battle with his actor which usually ends with submitting to the actor's wish. Since I do not have the desire to waste my energy in a battle like this, I only use professional actors occasionally".[10] One of the reasons for success is supposed to be Rossellini's rewriting of the scripts according to the non-professional actors' feelings and histories. Regional accent, dialect and costumes were shown in the film as they were in real life.
After his Neorealist Trilogy, Rossellini produced two films now classified as the 'Transitional films':L'Amore (1948) (withAnna Magnani) andLa macchina ammazzacattivi (1952), on the capability of cinema to portray reality and truth (with recalls ofcommedia dell'arte). In 1948, Rossellini received a letter from a famous foreign actress proposing a collaboration:
Dear Mr. Rossellini,
I saw your filmsOpen City andPaisan, and enjoyed them very much. If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian knows only "ti amo," I am ready to come and make a film with you.
With this letter began one of the best-known love stories in film history, with Bergman and Rossellini both at the peak of their careers. Their first collaboration wasStromboli terra di Dio (1950) (in the island ofStromboli, and its volcano quite conveniently erupted during filming). This affair caused a great scandal in some countries (Bergman and Rossellini were married to other people); the scandal intensified when Bergman became pregnant with Renato Roberto Ranaldo Giusto Giuseppe ("Robin") Rossellini. Rossellini and Bergman had two more children,Isabella Rossellini (actress & model) and her twin, Ingrid Isotta.Europa '51 (1952),Siamo Donne (1953),Journey to Italy (1954),La paura (1954) andGiovanna d'Arco al rogo (1954) were the other films on which they worked together.
In 1957,Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India at the time, invited him to India to make the documentaryIndia and put some life into the floundering Indian Films Division. Though married to Bergman, he had an affair with Sonali Senroy Dasgupta, a screenwriter, herself married to local filmmakerHarisadhan Dasgupta, who was helping develop vignettes for the film.[11] Given the climate of the 1950s, this led to a huge scandal in India as well as in Hollywood.[12] Nehru had to ask Rossellini to leave.[citation needed] Soon after, Bergman and Rossellini separated.
In 1971, Rice University in Houston, Texas, invited Rossellini to help establish a Media Center, where in 1970 he had begun planning a film on science with Rice professorDonald D. Clayton.[13] They worked daily for two weeks in Rome in summer 1970, but financing was insufficient for filming to begin. In 1973, he was invited to teach at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he taught a one-semester course titled "The Essential Image."
Rossellini's final project was the documentaryBeaubourg, filmed in 1977 and first premiered in 1983.[14]
In 1934, Rossellini marriedAssia Noris, a Russian actress who worked in Italian films; the marriage was annulled in 1936. On 26 September 1936, he married Marcella De Marchis (17 January 1916, Rome – 25 February 2009, Sarteano), a costume designer with whom he collaborated even after their marriage was over. De Marchis and Rossellini had two sons: Marco Romano (born 3 July 1937 and died of appendicitis in 1946), andRenzo (born 24 August 1941). Rossellini and De Marchis divorced in 1950.
While filmingStromboli, Rossellini had an affair withIngrid Bergman (who was at the time married to Petter Lindström) in 1949. In the same month the film was released, Bergman gave birth to a boy, Renato Roberto Ranaldo Giusto Giuseppe ("Robin") Rossellini (born 2 February 1950). A week after their son was born, Bergman divorced Lindström and married Rossellini in Mexico. On 18 June 1952, she gave birth to their twin daughters Isotta Ingrid Rossellini andIsabella Rossellini.
In 1957, Rossellini had an affair withBengali screenwriter Sonali Dasgupta (née Senroy), and soon after, Bergman and Rossellini separated. Rossellini eloped with Dasgupta in 1957 when she was 27 years old. He adopted her young son Arjun, renamed Gil Rossellini (23 October 1956 – 3 October 2010), who became a New York-based film producer. Rossellini and Dasgupta had a daughter together, Raffaella Rossellini (born 1958), who is an actress and model.[12][15]
In 1973, Rossellini left Dasgupta for producer Silvia D'Amico Bendicò, but he remained married to Dasgupta until his death of a heart attack at age 71 in 1977.
Along withAlbert Einstein, Rossellini was one of the sponsors of thePeoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly (PWCA), which took place in 1950–51 at Palais Electoral,Geneva, Switzerland.[16][17]
Rossellini's films after his earlyNeo-Realist films—particularly his films with Ingrid Bergman—were commercially unsuccessful, thoughJourney to Italy is well regarded in some quarters. He was an acknowledged master for the critics ofCahiers du Cinéma in general andAndré Bazin,François Truffaut, andJean-Luc Godard in particular. Truffaut noted in his 1963 essay,Roberto Rossellini Prefers Real Life (available inThe Films in My Life) that Rossellini's influence among the directors who became part of thenouvelle vague was so great that he was in every sense "the father of the French New Wave".
His posthumous ex-son-in-lawMartin Scorsese has acknowledged Rossellini's seminal influence in his documentaryMy Voyage to Italy (the title itself a take on Rossellini'sVoyage to Italy). Among works from Italian directorsFellini,Visconti,De Sica andAntonioni, Rossellini's films form at least half of the films Scorsese discusses, highlighting Rossellini's monumental role in Italian and world cinema. The films covered include his Neo-Realist films and films with Ingrid Bergman, as well asThe Flowers of St. Francis, aboutSt. Francis of Assisi. Scorsese notes that in contrast to directors who often become stylistically restrained and conservative as their careers advanced, Rossellini became more unconventional as his career advanced, and was constantly experimenting with new styles and technical challenges. Scorsese particularly highlights the series of biographies Rossellini made in the 60s of historical figures and singles outLa Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV for praise.
Certain of Rossellini's film-related material and personal papers are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives to which scholars and media experts from around the world may have full access.[18] Rossellini's sonRenzo is producing theAudiovisual Encyclopedia of History by Roberto Rossellini, a multi-media collection containing all of Rossellini's works, interviews, and other material from the Rossellini archive. TheEncyclopedia existed in prototype form in 2011.[19]
Following the critical failure ofAnima nera and his participation in the various artists filmRo.Go.Pa.G., Rossellini began directing films for TV in 1966 withLa Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV, and continued predominately in the medium until the end of his career in 1977.
^Serri, MirellaFrom the Odeon to the Odeon: The Experience of Roberto Rossellini from Fascism to Antifascism, Kenneth Lloyd-Jones (translator)Telos Vol. 139 (Summer 2007): pp. 70–78.
^Bondanella, Peter; Bondanella, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian Peter (29 January 1993).The Films of Roberto Rossellini. Cambridge University Press. p. 174.ISBN9780521398664.Beaubourg Rossellini.
