Directed by Roberto Rossellini
19 Episodes
A founder of Italian neorealism, Roberto Rossellini brought to filmmaking a documentary-like authenticity and philosophical stringency that changed the course of film history. Rossellini broke out with ROME OPEN CITY, a shattering and vivid chronicle of the Nazi occupation of Italy’s capital, followed by PAISAN and GERMANY YEAR ZERO, which round out his celebrated War Trilogy. His adulterous affair with Ingrid Bergman led to the biggest controversy of his career (they were both condemned by the United States Senate) but also to another extraordinary trilogy—STROMBOLI, EUROPE ’51, and JOURNEY TO ITALY, all starring Bergman. From then on, Rossellini experimented with different forms, including an ascetic religious film (THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS), a documentary about India (INDIA: MATRI BHUMI), and a series of historical television dramas made with a rational, almost scientific approach. Throughout his evolutions, he yearned to show life’s minutiae unadorned, bare and pure. Echoes of Rossellini’s approach to filmmaking are still felt in movements around the world, from China to Iran to South America to the United States. It’s fair to say modern cinema wouldn’t exist as we know it without him.
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1:43:23Episode 1Rome Open City
Episode 1
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1945 • Italy
Starring Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello PaglieroThis was Roberto Rossellini’s revelation, a harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it. Though told with more melodramatic flair than the films t...
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Paisan
Episode 2
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1946 • Italy
Starring Carmela Sazio, Robert Van Loon, Dots M. JohnsonRoberto Rossellini’s follow-up to his breakout ROME OPEN CITY was the ambitious, enormously moving PAISAN, which consists of six episodes set during the liberation of Italy at the end of World ...
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1:12:58Episode 3Germany Year Zero
Episode 3
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1948 • France, Italy, West Germany
Starring Edmund Meschke, Ernst Pittschau, Ingetraud HinzeThe concluding chapter of Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy is the most devastating, a portrait of an obliterated Berlin, seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy. L...
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L’amore
Episode 4
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1948 • Italy
Roberto Rosselini directs Anna Magnani in two short films about love and loneliness. In the first, a woman makes a last-ditch attempt to save her relationship over the phone. In the second, a peasant woman believes she is pregnant with the son of God.
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1:27:05Episode 5The Flowers of St. Francis
Episode 5
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1950 • Italy
Starring Brother Nazario Gerardi, Brother Severino Pisacane, Esposito BonaventuraIn a series of simple and joyous vignettes, director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly convey the universal teachings of the People’s Saint: hu...
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Stromboli
Episode 6
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1950 • Italy, United States
Starring Ingrid Bergman, Mario VitaleThe first collaboration between Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman is a devastating portrait of a woman’s existential crisis, set against the beautiful and forbidding backdrop of a volcanic isla...
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1:49:43Episode 7Europe ’51
Episode 7
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1952 • Italy
Starring Ingrid Bergman, Alexander KnoxIn the English-language version of this film, Ingrid Bergman plays a wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite racked by guilt over the shocking death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and findin...
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1:24:50Episode 8The Machine That Kills Bad People
Episode 8
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1952 • Italy
Starring Sergio Amidei, Gennaro Pisano, Marilyn BuferdRoberto Rossellini blends neorealism with fantasy in this offbeat comic fable, one of the titan director’s most unique and overlooked works. In a small fishing village on the Amalfi Coast, a stra...
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Fear
Episode 9
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1954 • Italy, West Germany
Starring Ingrid Bergman, Mathias Wieman, Renate MannhardtTinged with brooding noir atmosphere, the last of the celebrated collaborations between Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman is a tense portrait of the psychology of an extramar...
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1:25:38Episode 10Journey to Italy
Episode 10
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1954 • Italy
Starring Ingrid Bergman, George SandersAmong the most influential films of the postwar era, Roberto Rossellini’s JOURNEY TO ITALY (VIAGGIO IN ITALIA) charts the declining marriage of a couple from England (Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders) on a tri...
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1:30:51Episode 11India: Matri Bhumi
Episode 11
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1959 • Italy
Documentary and narrative merge in Roberto Rossellini’s miraculous, poetic portrait of India. Commissioned by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, INDIA: MATRI BHUMI takes us beyond the bustling streets of the cities and into the country’s...
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1:34:32Episode 12The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
Episode 12
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1966 • France
Starring Jean-Marie Patte, Raymond JourdanFilmmaking legend Roberto Rossellini brings his passion for realism and unerring eye for the everyday to this portrait of the early years of the reign of France’s “Sun King,” and in the process reinvents th...
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Socrates
Episode 13
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1971 • Italy
Roberto Rossellini may have made SOCRATES (1971) for television, but he didn't let the small screen's budget and production limitations -- drawing on the few presumed facts known about the philosopher, and with fine central performances by Jean Sylve...
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2:09:51Episode 14Blaise Pascal
Episode 14
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1972 • Italy
In this evocative, atmospheric biography, Roberto Rossellini brings to life philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who, amid religious persecution and ignorance, believed in a harmony between God and science.
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1:22:17Episode 15THE AGE OF THE MEDICI: Episode 1
Episode 15
“The Exile of Cosimo”
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1973 • ItalyRoberto Rossellini's three-part THE AGE OF THE MEDICI is like a Renaissance painting come to life: a portrait of fifteenth-century Florence, ruled by the Medici political dynasty. With a lovely score from composer Manuel de Sica...
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1:21:50Episode 16THE AGE OF THE MEDICI: Episode 2
Episode 16
“The Power of Cosimo”
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1973 • ItalyRoberto Rossellini's three-part THE AGE OF THE MEDICI is like a Renaissance painting come to life: a portrait of fifteenth-century Florence, ruled by the Medici political dynasty. With a lovely score from composer Manuel de Sica...
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1:31:36Episode 17THE AGE OF THE MEDICI: Episode 3
Episode 17
“Leon Battista Alberti: Humanism”
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1973 • ItalyRoberto Rossellini's three-part THE AGE OF THE MEDICI is like a Renaissance painting come to life: a portrait of fifteenth-century Florence, ruled by the Medici political dynasty. With a lovely score from composer Ma...
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1:13:58Episode 18CARTESIUS: Episode 1
Episode 18
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1974 • Italy
As profoundly simple as its hero's famous statement “I think, therefore I am,” Roberto Rossellini's CARTESIUS is an intimate, psychological study of obsession and existential crisis.
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1:28:10Episode 19CARTESIUS: Episode 2
Episode 19
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1974 • Italy
As profoundly simple as its hero's famous statement “I think, therefore I am,” Roberto Rossellini's CARTESIUS is an intimate, psychological study of obsession and existential crisis.
