Country: Italy
Year: 1950
Duration: 105âââ
Karin, a young
woman from the Baltic
States, marries Antonio, a fisherman from Stromboli, so she can get
away from
the prison camp. But life in her husband's village is brutal,
the people are
hostile and Karin becomes desperate and decides to escape from
everything by
climbing up the volcano that looms over the island.
"This
film isn't about war anymore,
but it shows a person who has left the war, an extremely cynical person
who is
convinced she can overcome any difficulty that could crush her, with
the
cynicism and the techniques she has had to learn in order to defend
herself
from the fatality of persecution. At a certain point, this person finds
herself
so enmeshed in her own schemes that she has absolutely no way of
escaping
anymore and when she realizes there is no way to get out of the
situation, she
does something extremely human and humble: she starts to sob and asks
for
mercy. The story is all there. It isn't an allegory about the
problem of
pardon, but another step along the pathway of research." (R.
Rossellini)
Biography
film director
Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Italy, 1906-1977) began working in cinema during Fascism. During the post-war period, he created neo-realistic masterpieces like Rome Open City (1945), Paisà (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1947). He then made films which studied solitude, alienation and marital crisis – Stromboli (1950), The Greatest Love (1952) and Journey to Italy (1954). His films are backed up by an experimental style and study reality with a subjective outlook. In 1960s he began working in television, dedicating himself to historical and didactic cinema.
FILMOGRAFIA
filmografia essenziale/essential filmography
La nave bianca (1941), Un pilota ritorna (1942), L’uomo della croce (1943), Roma città aperta (1945), Paisà (1946), Germania anno zero (1947), L’amore (ep. Una voce umana, 1948), La macchina ammazzacattivi (1948), Stromboli terra di Dio (1950), Francesco giullare di Dio (1950), Europa 51 (1952), Dov’è la libertà (1953), Viaggio in Italia (1954), Giovanna d’Arco al rogo (1954), La paura (1954), Le psychodrame (1956), India (1958), Il generale Della Rovere (1959), Era notte a Roma (1960), Viva l’Italia (1960), Vanina Vanini (1961), Anima nera (1962), La presa del potere da parte di Luigi XIV (tv, 1966), Atti degli apostoli (tv, 1968), Socrate (tv, 1970), Pascal (tv, 1971), Agostino d’Ippona (tv, 1972), Anno uno (1974), Il Messia (1975).