The Many Faces of Stromboli

Multiple versions are a common tale throughout Roberto Rossellini’s career. But this fact assumes much greater proportions in the case of his six films with Ingrid Bergman. To begin with, all of them exist in at least double versions (and sometimes double negatives as well): an Italian one for the domestic market and an international cut for foreign markets, as the presence of the Hollywood star made the production hope for distribution abroad, particularly in the United States. Moreover, for these films, additional alternate versions were often made as a consequence of contemporary political realities; they were all released during the first half of the 1950s—difficult years for Italian cinema, marked by Cold War ideological conflicts—and Rossellini knew he would need to negotiate both censorship and political consent, especially with the Catholic powers then ruling Italy. These conflicts particularly affected the most political of the films, Europe ’51 (as discussed in my video essay included in this release), but they had an impact on Stromboli as well. What is specific to that first film of Rossellini’s starring Bergman, though, is that it was equally affected by difficulties arising from its Hollywood coproduction.