Say what you want regarding today’s actors and influencers dating amongst themselves, none of them have chemistry to the marriages and affairs of many decades ago. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez reunited and married? Every relationship the Kardashians have been in? Not even those who have seen their marriages last a long time have come close to one of the most internationally sought-after couples. In 1950, it was considered taboo and a clash of cultures to see two different figures together. The affair threatened to ruin their lives, but both Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini would put their love on camera in a series of films that are highly regarded today.
A Letter To An Open Affair
Ingrid Bergman was an Academy Award-winner (for Gaslight) and starred in numerous hits by the late 1940s, ten years after coming over from Sweden. Her clean-cut reputation and screen persona made her symbolic of the perfect actress thanks to her performances in Casablanca, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Notorious, and Joan of Arc. Roberto Rossellini was at the forefront of the Italian neorealist movement born out of the country’s ruins following World War II. His film, Rome Open City, kickstarted a revolution in storytelling which was followed by other filmmakers and admired by many viewers. Although not religious and with close relations to Christian Democrats and socialists, Rossellini was a bridge to Catholic morals in a changing Italian society separating itself from the church. Bergman was one of those admirers who loved his work and sent him a letter in 1948. It said:
Dear Mr. Rossellini,
I saw your films Open City and Paisan and enjoyed them very much. If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian knows only “ti amo,” I am ready to come and make a film with you.
With the chance to work with one of the most beautiful and most respected actresses in the world, Rossellini invited her to Italy. In making a deal with RKO Pictures for international distribution, his next production and first with Bergman was Stromboli. In traditional neorealism, non-professional actors and locals played various roles and the movie was shot on location on the titular island with its active volcano. (During the shoot, Stromboli did erupt but nobody was seriously harmed.) The film follows a European refugee from the East who is freed from an internment camp and marries an Italian ex-POW who takes her back to his home on the island. For the woman finding a new sense of freedom, the island is harsh, the people are boorish toward the foreigner, and she becomes more isolated in her life.
Movies By Marriage
It became obvious to onlookers that the couple, both of whom were married with children, were falling in love. The relationship bore a child, a son named Robin, nine months after filming began, and it would follow later with twin daughters, Isabella and Ingrid. They would divorce their spouses and marry each other while the international press covered the romance that banished Ingrid from Hollywood as an immoral person and was even derided in her native Sweden. One U.S. Senator even denounced her on the Senate floor as a “public concubine.” However, the two would move on with their love and collaborate on several more movies together.
The first follow-up after Stromboli was the drama Europe ‘51 released in 1952. It was a post-neorealism story as it remained shot on location while using more professional actors, notably Alexander Knox, Ettore Giannini, and Giuletta Masina, wife of fellow director Federico Fellini. The film follows an industrialist’s wife who is declared insane after the tragic death of their son and then walks through Rome where she sees a more distressing side of life. It is political, charging the status quo with abandonment, including towards their own children while the working class doesn’t reap the benefits of Italy’s economic boom. It was too political for Italian censors, who asked Rosselini to edit several minutes of the film for general release. Years later, the restored version with politically sensitive content was shown.
In 1954, the last films they did together would be released, Journey To Italy and Fear. While the latter film is a noir attempt in capturing Germany’s own moral reconstruction, Journey To Italy is considered by some to be Rosselini’s masterpiece for this modernist turn of marriage in doubt. In it, Bergman and George Sanders play a couple who travel to Naples to inherit a home from a deceased relative. Bergman’s character, an Italian woman, feels distant from her English husband and suddenly discord between the two becomes apparent. The story is free-flowing and, to keep the actors on their toes, they were given their dialogue only minutes before they would shoot the scene. Imagery, like scenes in Pompeii where dead bodies are locked together, is unearthed, replacing dialogue. In a short time span, an odyssey that quickly tore the couple apart has seemed to be reattached.
Splitting Up
A reversal of fortune would come for both Rosselini and Bergman that would end the relationship. Rossellini’s possessive nature prevented her from working with other directors and saw a return to Hollywood to be ruinous for her. After several years away, Bergman would make a dramatic comeback in Hollywood when she won her second Academy Award for her performance in Anastasia. Despite the affair, it was apparent now that people were welcoming her back with open arms as those who had worked with her had been on her side the whole time. Meanwhile, the neorealist movement was long gone and Rosselini would struggle to reach the heights of his power again. The latter films were not commercially successful and critics began to tire of his movies as repetitive.
In 1957, Rosselini was invited to India to make a documentary about the emerging country post-independence. There he would begin a new affair with a writer, Sonali Senroy Dasgupta, who was married to a local film director. As with Bergman, it was a massive scandal, particularly in India, which saw Rosselini as someone who would dishonor India, forcing Dasgupta to flee to Italy. Bergman and Rosselini divorced later that year, permitting Bergman to move back to Hollywood while Rosselini and Dasgupta would marry soon after. The two would remain friends following their divorce as Bergman would go on to win a third Oscar while Rosselini, finishing his career in TV, would find himself as a cited influence to future generations of directors in Italy and around the world.
Seventy years later, the collaborative years between the two have aged well and are part of Italian cinema’s heritage. Many critics of the time blamed Rosselini for ruining her career and chose to shadow boycott any good review of later works. However, the clan from Cahiers du Cinema in France held Rosselini and these movies in high regard and more film critics looked at them with the same belief, that this was a great era for the director and his wife. Plus, Bergman always gave a performance that captured the fleeting isolation in her characters which was partly influenced by their own marriage. It ended in divorce, but the legacy of their films together is inseparable.
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