3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman

The real- and reel-life union of director Roberto Rossellini and actress Ingrid Bergman created much controversy during the early 1950s (their love affair began while both were married). This Criterion Collection offering compiles three of the couple's feature films: Stromboli (1950), Europe '51 (1952), and Journey to Italy (1954), all of which find Bergman cast as a neurotic, anguished foreigner in a troubled marriage, who finds herself adrift in an Italy that she cannot comprehend. While Bergman is not entirely plausible in Stromboli—playing Karen, a desperate Lithuanian refugee who is married to Antonio (Mario Vitale), a simple Sicilian fisherman—she successfully brings emotional resonance to Europe '51 as Irene Girard, an American socialite responding to tragedy with obsessive altruism, and is similarly effective in Journey to Italy, as Katherine Joyce, a brittle Englishwoman re-examining her priorities (the latter production is helped considerably by the casting of a droll George Sanders as her unhappy husband). Each film is burdened with rickety story structures and abrupt character shifts—a problem aggravated by Rossellini's penchant for improvisational filmmaking. The inept English dubbing and hack editing for the U.S. releases of Stromboli and Europe '51 significantly changed Rossellini's intentions—dooming their initial American releases to failure—but they are presented here in their original Italian versions, which are superior (Journey to Italy is in English). Released on DVD and Blu-ray, extras spread across the discs include audio commentaries, interviews (with Italian film critic Adriano Aprá and Martin Scorsese, among others), documentaries on Rossellini and Bergman, and short films—most notably, 1952's The Chicken, a piece directed by Rossellini that proved Bergman could also play light comedy. Recommended. (P. Hall)