Roberto Rossellini

There are two versions of this film: the Italian theater version, and the extended version presented at Cannes 1960, both in Italian. This is the latter.

PLOT SYNOPSIS:
In keeping with his previous film Generale Della Rovere, filmmaker Robert Rossellini pursues a wartime theme in his “personal epic” Era Notte a Roma.
The story concerns three Allied POWS, who escape from their camp and hide out in Rome. The trio is given shelter by a beautiful young woman. With something tangible to fight over, the three prisoners’ national chauvinism (one is Russian, one English, one American) simmers to a boil.
For reasons which remain obscure, Era Notte a Roma was never given a widespread American release.
(Wikipedia)Read More »

Quote:
India runs counter to all usual cinema: here the image is only the complement of the idea that provokes it. India is a film of absolute logic, more Socratic than Socrates. Each image is beautiful not because it is beautiful in itself, like a shot in [Eisenstein’s] Que viva Mexico!, but because it is the splendor of the true and because Rossellini starts with the truth. There where the others won’t arrive except in twenty years perhaps, he has already gone on from.India embraces world cinema, as the theories of Riemann and Planck embrace geometry and classical physics. In a coming issue [of Cahiers du Cinéma], I shall prove why India is the creation of the world.
Jean-Luc GodardRead More »

Funny cinematic exercise made by Rossellini before his first feature. Something between a Discovery Channel animal documentary and a fable under the sea.
Worth seeing for its historical status.Read More »

Two related vignettes which deliberate on the nature of human love and emotional attachment, both starring Magnani in the key role. In ‘The Miracle,’ a suggestible, innocent young mother-to-be deeply believes that her child was divinely conceived. A woman adjusts to her newfound solitude after her lover leaves in ‘The Human Voice,’ based on the one-act play by Jean Cocteau. The film is an homage to the great Anna Magnani, Roberto Rossellini’s two-part film features the Italian actress in Cocteau’s one-act play “The Human Voice,” in which she speaks to an unseen lover on the phone, and the controversial “The Miracle,” which casts her as a peasant who believes she has given birth to the new Messiah.
— www.virtualitalia.comRead More »

Detailed plot summary of the five episodes
“Concorso 4 Attrici 1 Speranza” (“Four stars and a starlette”)
Anna Amendola decides to leave her home to become an actress, even though her mother says that she can not come back if she does. She goes to Cinecittà, where a casting is taking place to find a girl to be included in a segment of Siamo donne. The contest begins with the girls walking through a line, where they are checked for certain requirements, especially age. The ones who pass this stage are given a meal by the studio, while a spotlight scans through the tables, finding girls for the screen test stage. Amendola passes through these stages. Then, there are a series of screen tests, where several girls are asked questions about their dreams and ambitions. The results of the screen tests are not decided until the next day; therefore, Amendola sleeps at a neighbor’s house, since she does not want to go home and forfeit her chances of winning the contest. The next day, she is called up as a finalist, along with Emma Danieli. The story ends with the two finalists about to give interviews.Read More »

Description: This consists of four short films by different directors. Rosselini’s ‘Chastity’ (‘Illibatezza’) deals with an attractive air hostess who receives the unwelcome attentions of a middle aged American. Godard’s ‘New World’ (‘Il Nuovo Mondo’) illustrates a post-apocalypse world the same as the pre-apocalyptic one but for an enigmatic change in attitude in most people, including the central character’s girlfriend. In Pasolini’s ‘Curd Cheese’ (‘La Ricotta’), a lavish film about the life of Jesus Christ is being made in a poor area. The impoverished people subject themselves to various indignities in the name of moviemaking in order to win a little food. Finally comes Gregoretti’s ‘Free Range Chicken’ (‘Il Pollo Ruspante’) in which a family of the materialist culture inadvertantly illustrate the cynical, metallic voiced doctrine of a top sales theorist.Read More »