Quotes from “The STROMBOLI Affair”
in MY METHOD: ROBERTO ROSSELLINI –
We ask Maestro Renzo Rossellini, the director’s brother, also present at the interview, about the working conditions in Hollywood where he was himself at work on the soundtrack of STROMBOLI. “The studios’ technical facilities are far superior to ours, he answers, “but the level of education and intelligence of their managers is way below that of any of our ushers. And that’s not all: intelligence is carefully screened out of Hollywood, and the production of a film, in all its stages, is fully entrusted to whoever seems to be the best businessman. Movie audiences have decreased, in certain places down to half of what they used to be, and films are produced on the assumption that the average mentality of the public is that of a twelve-year old. This is a law it’s absolutely forbidden to break.”
Roberto Rossellini picks up where his brother left off: “Indeed, I believe that my film was boycotted because no one could understand what it meant, the ideas that I was trying to express cinematically. An RKO executive, that is, a company committee, which therefore would have everything to gain from a sound promotion of the film, has instead released a statement containing the most absurd judgments: that Ingrid Bergman is not very ‘sensual’ (though the posters of the film they have decided to print to lure the public are practically pornographic), that STROMBOLI is not a real film but a documentary, and all this before the film’s opening date. My version of the film, the one that’s going to be shown in Europe, has been amputated of a good thirty-five minutes; it has been entirely re-edited, and I have discovered at my own expense how brutal and uncivilized Hollywood’s methods really are.* But there is one more reason for the boycotting that goes quite beyond any evaluation of my work and Ingrid’s: ‘We shall never forgive her, and she is going to pay for it.’ This is what they have said about her in Hollywood.** As for me, they will never forgive me for the films I have made unless they manage to make the public forget them.
And I am not the only victim, as the case of English cinema, literally brushed off by Hollywood, clearly proves. With the help of money, Hollywood is trying to get rid of all its most dangerous competitors. As far as I am concerned , they thought it would be easy to keep me in check since I’m small and Howard Hughes is powerful. Materialistic as they are, it never occurred to them that I would give up all my American box-office receipts in order to preserve my artistic integrity. They underrated me and clearly proved they were in the wrong. The STROMBOLI that was shown in the U.S. with my name on it is not my film. I refuse to recognize it as such and am ready to face all the legal consequences of the fact. I am a living proof of Hollywood’s brutality. And I’m not at all surprised to hear that the American press, which, by the way, has made a point of underlining my precise position, has given STROMBOLI a very lukewarm reception.”
* The European version of STROMBOLI is 105 minutes, whereas the American one is only 81.
** In 1949 Bergman met director Roberto Rossellini. She fell in love with him while performing in his film Stromboli (1950). Bergman left both her husband, Dr. Aron Petter Lindström and their daughter Pia Lindström for Rossellini, and they married and had 3 children, including twin daughters actresses Isabella Rossellini, Isotta Rossellini, and a son, Roberto Ingmar Rossellini. The affair caused a scandal both in Hollywood and with the public; Bergman, who was pregnant at the time of the marriage, was branded as “Hollywood’s apostle of degradation” and forced to leave the States. [Courtesy of the Ingrid Bergman entry at Wikipedia]