Roberto Rossellini, a famous Italian director, the important work "Rome, the Undefended City" - the biggest masterpiece of World War II cinema, the foundation of neorealism. "General della Rovere" won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the 24th Venice Film Festival, in collaboration with Jussip Rovere. De Santis, Luceno Visconti and Vittorio de Sicatong are known as the four major players of Italian neorealist cinema.
Robert Rossellini
Rossellini's grandfather and father were both famous architects, and Rome's famous high-end residential area was developed and beautified by the two. Because of his wealthy family and the eldest son, Roberto was loved, he was very curious, and he could do whatever he wanted. As a teenager, like his predecessors, he was particularly interested in machinery and often immersed himself in his laboratory. By the time I graduated from high school, I was suddenly very enthusiastic about movies. So, I gave up going to college, entered the film industry, and began to work on sets. Later, he studied photography and editing. Like many film lovers of his time, he asked his mother for money to make films, and from 1930 he directed six short documentary films, which were well attended. When filming "Fantasia Under the Sea", in order to capture the various wonders of the seabed, he specially built a small aquarium, collected a variety of fish, and tied them to long hair to control their swimming. It was a difficult task, but Rossellini was very patient and insisted on achieving the goal, which showed his superhuman talent and perseverance.
In 1948, he had a sensational relationship with the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, when Bergman was deeply moved by his famous work "Rome - The Undefended City" and wrote him a letter expressing his hope to cooperate with it, Rossellini was also moved, and the two later fell in love with 1950 when they collaborated on "Stromboli", Ingrid Bergman and pregnant with Rossellini's child, when she also maintained a marriage relationship with the Swedish doctor Peter Lindstron. Despite much of the reputational criticism, Bergman soon divorced Lindstrom and married Rossellini. As a result, the two were boycotted by the hollywood-led film industry, and most of the films they later collaborated on were well-known in the industry but difficult to meet with the audience. But the relationship ended in divorce in 1958. Rossellini married an Indian girl and left a few years later. The pioneering film guru never left film until the end, and in May 1977 he became chairman of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and died of heart paralysis on June 3, after the festival.
In 1934, he wrote a film story inspired by Debussid's music "Pastoral Afternoon" and then made it into a movie. Some of the scenes were too explicit to be censored and were not released in Italy. In his catalogue of works, he is listed as works from 1937 or 1938. He directed several documentaries from 1936 to 1940 at a state-run company that specialized in newsreels and documentaries, but there was little information available. His catalogue generally lists his second feature film, The Fish's Fantasy Tale, as the first. His debut novel "Pastoral Afternoon Prelude" creatively uses fresh visual expression of ballet, but it was banned. Rossellini did not lose heart and shot the second part with all his might. He built a small studio in a villa on the outskirts of Rome, hoping to turn his dreams into images, trying to turn the dreams of poetry into images. In the film, he describes the changes and crises that two fish encounter in their daily lives. He also built a small aquarium, collected various fish, and tied the fish with long hair to control the movement, although it was very difficult, he continued to carry it through, and finally made the film completed in 1937, and the release was very successful. Since then, he has directed many short films, and by 1940 he had filmed 6 of them at his own expense. These short films, especially "The Fantasy Story of the Fish", have received high praise.
Robert Rossellini and Ingmar Bergman
In 1938, he was invited to write a war film script depicting air force pilots. In 1941, the commander of the Navy asked him to shoot a naval battle documentary, he shot thousands of feet of film before and after, felt that it was a pity to use it as a documentary, and finally decided to change it to a feature film, that is, his first feature film, depicting the interpersonal relationship in a hospital ship, which was very praised after the release. Rossellini's younger brother, Renzio, scored and has been working together ever since. In 1942, he directed Vittorio Mussolini (the son of the ruler and producer of his previous films) conceived Antonioni's The Return of the Pilot, which depicts the story of an Air Force pilot fleeing from a concentration camp. In 1943, he directed "The Man with the Cross" by a military priest on the Russian front. After that, he directed a film depicting the life of a prostitute, but was stopped due to the war.
During World War II, Rome was occupied by the Germans, and while on the run, he was determined to make the days into a movie. As soon as the Allies liberated Rome in 1945, he began to move. At that time, Italy was divided into north and south, and the equipment was seriously insufficient, and in such a difficult situation, he used documentary techniques to photograph the hardships of the citizens of Rome and the disasters faced by the citizens and children due to the Nazi sweep. Rossellini used a technique that Le had never seen before, using the image as a real reality, and his pre-war approach to reality blossomed in the film. This film is the biggest masterpiece of World War II films, "Rome, the Undefended City", and at the same time the foundation of a new realist film. The film won an award at the Cannes International Film Festival, which became the beginning of neorealism. Its international success has led to a worldwide impact on neorealist cinema. The following year, his "Guerrilla" won another prize at the Venice International Film Festival. After that, he began to direct films showing the spiritual emptiness and degeneration of the bourgeoisie, and germany year zero (1948) was considered by European and American critics to be one of his post-war trilogies and an important neorealist masterpiece. The film mainly tells the disaster brought to the people by the war, which not only makes the people fall into hunger and poverty, but also deforms the psychology of children. The protagonist of the film is a child who poisons his bedridden, heart-attacking father because he thinks he is useless to society. Afterwards, he committed suicide because of his inner turmoil. The film ostensibly blames a teacher's educational errors on the child's father-killing and suicide, but in fact exposes Nazism in Germany as the root cause of all this evil. The film has caused extensive and fierce discussion in the heyday of Italian neorealism, and it occupies an important place in the history of Italian cinema.
In 1959, Rossellini's general della Rovere won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the 24th Venice Film Festival, a World War II film that also received a good market response. Rossellini in the 1960s was more free-flowing, and the director's work was mostly controversial, such as 1966's The Rise of Louis XIV, which was considered too dull. However, Rossellini did not heed these opinions, and there are many fans who love this style.