Stromboli

STROMBOLI   ***

Roberto Rossellini

1950

IDEA:  Denied a visa to immigrate to Argentina after WWII, an Eastern European woman marries an Italian fisherman in order to be released from an internment camp. She travels with him to his home on the volcanic island Stromboli, where she feels immediately out of place.

BLURB:  Stromboli centers on a simple but forceful allegory for the societal subjugation of a woman: being trapped on a remote volcanic island with an abusive husband, her every action judged with hostility and skepticism by the provincial villagers. Rossellini makes her alterity on this island palpably felt in his casting of Ingrid Bergman in the role. The Hollywood star’s tall, glamorous, cosmopolitan appearance is an incongruity Rossellini plays up within his signature neorealist framework; whether wandering through crumbling, maze-like pathways, witnessing the ritual communal netting of massive tuna, or staggering up a volcano, Bergman clashes productively with her environment, underscoring her character Karin’s geopolitical dislocation and spiritual isolation. While the topography serves as an outward manifestation of her psyche, Karin’s crisis remains mostly internal, and Bergman is tasked with conveying the character’s profound anguish and desperation in long, often wordless scenes in which melodrama comes to the forefront. The actress is a pro, but Rossellini sometimes doesn’t give her enough variation to play, the thinness of his story and characterizations forcing the scenery and milieu to do too much of the heavy-lifting. Rossellini achieves his greatest effect in time for the denouement, when Bergman’s star persona and the physical reality of Stromboli both reach their limits, facilitating a spiritual breakthrough for Karin that’s at once a reassertion and a question of faith.