Review by Choice Review
In this first extensive biography of Rossellini, Gallagher provides a masterful study of a difficult and important subject. Director of 1940s neorealist classics like Open City, Paisan, and Stromboli, Rossellini went on to make such varied productions as General Della Rovers, The Rise of Louis XIV, and The Messiah. His filmmaking background started with the fascists, swung to the Left, then swung to the Right, with the result that both communists and Christian Democrats claimed him as one of their own at his funeral ceremony. Rossellini frequently misrepresented himself in order to obtain a temporary advantage, and he captured Ingrid Bergman's heart as well. Many directors were influenced by ideologies of the postwar era--e.g., as De Sica, Antonioni, Visconti, Fellini--so Gallagher is to be commended for his extensive research, interviewing skills, and critical perspective. His two chapters on neorealism are a joy to read. His extensive notes, filmography, select bibliography, and 24-page index will prove useful to the serious researcher; upper-division undergraduates may also find this volume valuable. R. Blackwood City Colleges of Chicago
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Gallagher, author of the acclaimed John Ford: The Man and His Films (1986), has pulled off another tour de force with this critical biography of the master of Italian neo-realism that sifts through the myths and rumors of Rossellini's personal life with a loving but critical eye. Following a pampered childhood and young adulthood, Rossellini discovered, upon the death of his father, that the family fortune was lost. For the rest of his life he was in serious need of money, whether to finance a movie or help support his wives, children, and mistresses. Never one to take seriously life's ups or downs, he was something of a beloved con man whose penurious adventures involved filmmaking, women, and Ferraris. Yet Rossellini courageously held fast to his own aesthetics in the face of sustained criticism and box-office failure. Gallagher discusses the technical and artistic merits and demerits of every one of Rossellini's films (the chapter on Open City is, simply, unforgettable), including contemporary critiques, and places them in their social and historical context. He not only reveals Rossellini's political and artistic philosophy--to say he was anti-Hollywood is an understatement--but examines the roots of Rossellini's beliefs, namely the writings of Benedetto Croce. --Frank Caso
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Gallagher, the author of John Ford: The Man and His Films, spent 15 years researching and writing this biography of Italian director Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977). In 1945, Rossellini's early film Open City ushered in neorealism, a profoundly influential movement in European filmmaking that eschewed standard Hollywood "entertainments" for something rawer, more naturalistic. A valuable source for film scholars, this book extensively documents the making and critical reception of Rossellini's films, as well as the political and religious turmoil of the era that spawned them. Although Gallagher's extensive film critiques may be more than the general reader really wants, there's also plenty of fascinating personal detail. The filmmaker's tumultuous liaison with actress Anna Magnani is amusingly portrayed, and then there is the infamous affaire Bergman. Rossellini bet a friend he could have the world's most famous actress "in bed within two weeks" after he met her. He evidently won the bet, and scandal ensued when she left her dentist husband to live with Rossellini and to make Stromboli (1949), the first of the commercial and critical disasters that the couple endured before their marriage ended in 1958. Gallagher has combined probing insights into a flamboyant man with a prodigiously researched and footnoted analysis of an iconoclastic filmmaker, whom François Truffaut called "the father of the New Wave." 107 illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In the period immediately following World War II, Roberto Rossellini burst onto the Italian cinema scene with raw, captured reality in "neorealist" classics like Open City and Paisan. A few years later Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman scandalized the world by having a child out of wedlock. Rossellini's philandering and the pair's conflicting temperaments eventually cooled the affair. Meanwhile, Rossellini endured the paradox of being best known for war-related films in a country trying to forget the war. Gallagher (John Ford: The Man and His Films, LJ 4/1/86) reviews the adventures of a man he calls a "tangle of contrasts," covering his difficult relationships with producers, director Federico Fellini, Open City star Anna Magnani, and, of course, Bergman. The book is generally well organized and presented, despite a wearying amount of detail and a lengthy, jarring meditation on neorealism that intrudes on the narrative. Recommended for large international film collections.Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
