Review of Stromboli (1950) by Kevin N — 20 Dec 2012

Roberto Rossellini made films that make your soul feel heavy, and this, his first film made with muse Ingrid Bergman leading the cast, may be one of his very weightiest. It's a troubling and challenging character study strictly because neither Rossellini nor Bergman give us any easy answers as to why her character, Karin, is so distraught.

In many ways, the film points to the most disturbing answer of all: there is no explanation. I see Karin as a parallel to the little boy in Rossellini's earlier masterpiece, 'Germany Year Zero', and perhaps this is the product of what happens when an exit from this world just isn't possible.

The tall, jagged wrecked buildings of 'Germany Year Zero' inevitably lead to the dizzying heights off which the boy sees his only solution, yet here, in this even sadder study, Karin doesn't have anything high enough to leap from- or doesn't have the courage to find anything.

She constantly takes measures to try to improve her life, but even a foreign land and a husband are useless as she burrows deeper into her own sorrow. The film is thematically very heavy, and even in its brief running time it feels very, very long.

Rossellini uses the minimalist structure he used with his best neorealist films but peppers this production with ironic touches thanks to the Hollywood backing Bergman enabled him to have- though he'd never get it again after this movie, despite his continued collaboration with Bergman.