Stromboli (Terra di Dio) (1950)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) Do I really need to restate how much I don’t care for Italian neorealism? But here is Stromboli to remind me of how much I really don’t care for it. It speaks volumes that I watched the film not for its genre as much as for its star Ingrid Bergman – and that Bergman’s character spends much of the film being exasperated at being stuck in an uninteresting fishing village. That intention certainly translates to the viewer stuck alongside her: when will the volcano in the backdrop of the village finally erupt so that everyone will be put out of their misery? Handled by writer-director-producer Roberto Rossellini, Stromboli is not a bad movie – but it will try the patience of anyone not necessarily attuned to the specifics of Italian neorealism. The story around the film is more interesting than the film itself (and accordingly, consumes far more space on the film’s Wikipedia page than its plot summary) – it’s the film that brought Bergman and Rossellini together for a well-publicized affair (while they were both married to other people) that led to Bergman being called no less than “a powerful influence for evil” on the US Senate floor (not one of that legislative body’s finest moments) and the effective eclipse of her Hollywood career for half a decade. Talking about Stromboli is a discussion about American prejudice and censorship circa-1950s – far more interesting than the content of the film, even if the volcano does add a bit of spice to the neorealism. But what else could we expect?