cinemajesty Smoke waves run over the opening credits. Karen, performed by Ingrid Berman is standing alone under war refugees in the barracks for females. She talks to a man through barbwire in bomb-out backyard. The man wants to kiss through the barbwire and gets cut in it. This is how "Strombolli" produced by Roberto Rossellini in 1949, opens its curtain towards a journey of a woman, who does not belong and finds a life, dancing on a volcano with the certainty of eventually eruption.Of course, Karen marries the infantile man Antonio. They set off by boat to the volcano island. When the couple arrives at the Island's shack, Karen realizes how much work needs to be done to create a kind of living. She lets herself be overwhelmed by despair of being imprisoned in a rotten cage. Direcor Roberto Rossellini masterfully build the following scene with his female protagonist encountering a boy playing in urban ruins.Karen's journey in a society microcosm of the isle follows more in encounters with a craftsman, a priest and the native women before her husband, starts working a fisherman to bring some money to the table, which is going to be in Karen's world never enough. She is different and apart, having no humility for herself. Karen seduces the priest eventually to love her. She fails, like a woman in metropolitan city looking for a shake-up as adventure in an isolated world.In a 2017 context, the film feels remarkably like an art-house version of the historical occasion of "Pompeji (79 A.D.)", which wants me to research on the Hollywood version from 2014.Nevertheless Roberto Rossellini keeps its character of Karen focused with witnessing a magnificent scene captured in 35mm live-action format of catching Tuna-Fish in an Italian cove, followed by Karen's pregnancy announcement, the volcano erupts. The evacuation of the Island begins. Karen holds a sleeping girl on her lap in a skiff under tight environmental conditions. She misses her chance to break away from Antonio, getting pulled back onto the island.The screenplay tightens its noose for Karen, who prostitutes herself to earn some money and organize her escape poorly with a route over the volcano. She loses all her luggage before Karen runs for complete exhaustion. With her whole body down in the black rock dust, she turns to prayer."Stromboli" is a picture of great simplicity in every sense. The director organized script-writing session to make it a razor-sharp script. It feels lean as a cheetah patiently crouching for its prey before the chase. The emotional journey for the spectator starts when the film is over. I'm writing this two weeks after my initial viewing. The emotional landscape sticks with the spectator. The majority of nowadays directors lack this kind of vision. Roberto Rossellini had the empathy and understanding of a universal human need and took to transcend over the medium film.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend

Jono Eshleman After watching "Rome, Open City" I was really looking forward to "Stromboli". But wow...what a whiff!Awwww, "poor" Karen!! A miserable woman complains about her miserable fortune for a miserable 107 minutes. Ingrid Bergman plays a very convincing American brat who consents to marry and live with a simple-minded fisherman. Her character uses the line, "What did I do?!? It's not my fault!" at least three times, and finds a way to whimper and cry in every scene. Because no one likes her, she tries to escape the small fishing town, but gets stuck at the top of an active volcano. Then Karen vomits out the most pitiable prayer to God, more tears, and then––"The End". Didn't get it. And I won't try to get it. Let this film go to sleep and die, as it should have back in 1950. Blah.

Dario Vaccaro Rossellini's "Stromboli, terra di Dio" is a film on the line between fiction and reality more than usual for the acclaimed director. Most of the central part, where Karin just lives in Stromboli and complains about stuff was not written as in a normal screenplay: Rossellini chose possible elements of the environment or popular habits and filmed them in the movie, putting Karen in it like an extrernal observator. This has a double effect: neorealism comes to some of its highest achievements (like the tuna fishing and the eruption of the volcano) but to the loss of a fantastic actress such as Ingrid Bergman, who always feels out of place. Careful: I didn't say KAREN, I said BERGMAN. Because as a character she should be out of place, and she is even esthetically: she's always combed and white as the moon, while the inhabitants are rusty and dirty. But the actress herself is out of place in this film, and that is not a good thing at all. Her lines are dumb, repetitive, and Bergman actually did a great job managing to not disappear in such irrelevance. She still lives the scene, but her attempt is clearly forced into a new, uncharted territory as was Italian filmmaking for an American diva. We could say then that Ingrid is just as lost as her character.What I just can't stand in this film is the necessity of squeezing the religious conversion (I'm talking about the Italian version of the film, American and International versions have slightly different endings for that time's commercial policies). It was the result of Rossellini's collaboration with powerful politicians and Church men, to be specific Giulio Andreotti and Felix Morlion, whose intention was to use a critically acclaimed author's cinema for political propaganda. I hate when other interests interfere with artistic purposes, and here the last moments are definitely flawed with an out of the blue realization of the power and existence of God for no good reason.As I said before, neorealist features are what makes this film enjoyable and a classic. Apart from the brilliant scenes I mentioned above, I really liked the harsh depiction of the patriarchy that unfortunately still exists and thrives especially in the South of Italy. I actually felt bad and angry at Antonio as he jerks his wife with no respect and beats her like an animal, but I know very well that even today that is the norm in so many families and that simply pisses me off. Kudos to Rossellini for depicting that so realistically, but then again he's a great director exactly because of scenes like those.

JLRMovieReviews I had heard mixed reviews of this and, being a die-hard Ingrid Bergman fan for years, I wanted to see everything of hers I could get my hands on. Directed by husband Roberto Rossellini, this film has Ingrid Bergman getting married to an Italian, of whom at first she turned down, but at last relented, when authorities questioned her as to how she came into Italy. During the German occupation of Yugoslavia, her husband was killed in the war and she made her way there somehow, but now she must leave. So she's off to the Italian's home island of Stromboli, which is the locale of an active volcano. Immediately, she is restless and very unhappy, despite the fact her husband is very nice looking and some women would give anything to be on an island with him. But that they might say is neither here nor there. She tries finally to change her perspective and pretty up the place and make herself more pretty with makeup and have a more positive outlook on life, as she had felt stifled and depressed on this small, lifeless remote island. But the local married women look down on women who wear cake on their faces, and call her immodest to her face. She keeps asking what she's done that is really wrong. She put away the pictures of old people that her husband had up, because they were depressing and painted a design on the walls to spice up the place, but when she is seen talking and smiling with another man by the locals and talk ensues, her husband slaps her around and says enough is enough. The place goes back the way it was. The ultimate denouement of the film is, will she leave her husband to be free of the restrictive life she has there or will she find peace? I couldn't tell you, as the ending is ambiguous. She is last seen trying to leave by way of the volcano, but is overcome by the smoke. She prays to be saved. But what does she mean? What is implied? Some ambiguous endings work, but in this case, I didn't feel it did. Throughout the film, I was entertained by the film but aware of its flaws. I felt like it was a poor man's version of "The Old Man and the Sea," as we are shown the life of her husband and his kin's way of life as fishermen. The fishing footage was very interesting to watch despite the fact Ingrid wasn't moved by being part of his life. She really made herself miserable. It's all in how you look at it. She may have wished for more and a better place in the world. But does she really belong to him and this world now? Should she reconcile herself to this? I am the type of person that loves films that show a lot of the ocean, so that plus Ingrid Bergman made this worth watching. But that ambiguous ending was a little disappointing to me. I would have preferred one ending or the other. Or, maybe she dies? But I don't think so. All in all, I think a Bergman and/or Rossellini fan would enjoy this film, flaws and all. But Ingrid Bergman is beautiful as usual. Sit back with Ingrid by the sea in Stromboli!