JOURNEY TO ITALY / STROMBOLI

ABOUT THE FILMS:

JOURNEY TO ITALY, 1954, Dir. Roberto Rossellini, 85 Min, Janus Films, Italy

In Italian with English subtitles.

Among 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 trip in the countryside near Naples. More than just the anatomy of a relationship, Rossellini’s masterpiece is a heartrending work of emotion and spirituality. Considered a predecessor to the existentialist works of Michelangelo Antonioni and hailed as a groundbreaking modernist work by the legendary film journal Cahiers du cinéma, JOURNEY TO ITALY is a breathtaking cinematic benchmark.

FORMAT: DCP

STROMBOLI, 1950, Dir. Roberto Rossellini, 106 Min, Janus Films, Italy

In Italian with English subtitles.

The 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 island. After World War II, a Lithuanian refugee (Bergman) marries a simple Italian fisherman (Mario Vitale) she meets in a prisoner of war camp and accompanies him back to his isolated village on an island off the coast of Sicily. Cut off from the world, she finds herself crumbling emotionally, but she is destined for a dramatic epiphany. Balancing the director’s trademark neorealism—exemplified here in a remarkable depiction of the fishermen’s lives and work—with deeply felt melodrama, STROMBOLI is a revelation.

FORMAT: DCP