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Customer Reviews of Stromboli

A great film with a spiritual message for pharisees and agnostics
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>This is, since I saw it last night, one of my favorite 10 films ever. It has such an emotional, passionate spiritual charge that seems to be about to erupt any time inside you. The story gets you from the start; you will grow to understand all the characters here. If you énd up hating the townfolk (the pharisees of the story) you will surely have missed the whole point, for this is a story of love and sacrifice, exactly what The Lord Jesus was all about. For, also, Ingrid Bergman grows to accept God's will by aknowledging that she can't fight "the world" by herself, thus her heartwrenching cry out to 'Dio' at the end of the film. Ms. Bergman is in the best of her career here, the role just suits her person perfectly. Pay attention to her facial expressions while contemplating how the fishermen catch the tune, how really vulnerable she looks. How well mr. Rossellini has captured her evolution from carnal superiority and selfishness to spiritual realization of herself. Her climb up the volcano extenuates the last of her physical strenght making her rely only of whatever seems to hang on those beautiful stars in the night sky. She gives herself up to God, that God she resisted to believe or rely on. But the existence of that God will afect you only if you make the great leap of faith first. And she seems to make it. A glorious moment in the history of film. A work of art. Her clim up the volcano is one of the most emotionally charged moments in the history of film. <
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>I hope someday Criterion gives the right treatment to this gorgeous movie (even only for the wonderful Sicilian settings is worth watching -it reminds me of Antonioni's La'ventura-). I wathced a cheap Region 2 edition which is a sacrilege to the quality of this film. <
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One of Bergman's best films
This film has been under-rated over the years! Forget the fact that Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini had just fallen in love and that the scandal [the love affair and then their beautiful baby, Robertino]caused her to be exiled from the USA. The film would have been rated a masterpiece today, but was about twenty years ahead of its time.It's not meant to be a story, but an account of how one woman comes to terms with the life she has chosen, as a result of marrying an Italian from a refugee camp. Karin marries Antonio because she can't get a visa to Argentina. Then she discovers what his home is like: a rugged, black, volcanic island far to the north of Sicily. Their house is in a bad state of repair, to put it mildly. At first she rails against this situation, declaring proudly that she is "from a different class". Bergman acts out her part here brilliantly and almost makes us hate her - briefly. She then desperately tries to be accepted and to make the house a home, but is thwarted by the islanders. The women say she is "not modest" and, when she asks the local loose woman to help her sew a skirt, she's really in trouble. Her husband beats her. She then tries another tack: she attempts to use seductive tactics on the local priest and then on the lighthouse keeper. Again, her acting is brilliant and throughout it all she looks stunningly beautiful. One can only conclude that this was because she was actually in love with the man who was filming her- Roberto Rossellini.
Determined to escape, she climbs the volcano, but realises her attempt to get to Ginostra, on the other side, is hopeless. That final scene is so powerful, I cannot describe it. Everyone should see this film. Who needs modern cinema, when you can have this?
Ingrid Bergman stated that she was going to retire from acting after making this one. Thank God she did not! She would have been lost without her work and we would have been so much the poorer without her films.

Mary [one of Ingrid's greatest fans - as if that were not obvious!]

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Doesn't quite erupt
The then-scandalous affair between the star and director of "Stromboli" was what set it apart from their other films. Love and the volcano erupted -- but the box office didn't. "Stromboli" clearly aspires to be a mystical, enriching film, but the plodding dialogue and meandering pace bog it down.

Karin (Ingrid Bergman) is a Czech refugee living in a camp, desperate to escape but unable to. She finds her doorway out when she meets the Italian soldier Antonio (Mario Vitale), who asks her to marry him. Karin doesn't love him back, but she agrees to get out of there. Bingo, that's what they do. They are married, and Karin leaves.

But Antonio comes from the island of Stromboli, a volcanic place occupied mostly by hardy tuna fishermen. And in some ways, it is as much a prison for her as the refugee camp. The village is backward and isolated, the people unfriendly, the mindsets narrow and Antonio seems like a stranger. Karin's desperation starts to grow, especially when she learns she is pregnant.

Rossellini's style was one of neo-realism, as much realism as a film can have while still being fictional. "Stromboli" was filmed on location (in ridiculously primitive surroundings), with most of the cast made up of local fishermen that Rossellini recruited for his movie. Bergman even had to climb the volcano and live in a shack with no electricity and plumbing.

The stark, bleak shots of the island and its tiny village are amazing, breathtaking. They help convey the black-and-white simplicity and roughness of life there. But Rossellini's peculiar filming methods take away from the bleakness of it. He improvised as he went, with no fixed script, and the resulting scenes feel poorly thought-out (Bergman gets upset over and over and over). However, this wasn't entirely Rossellini's fault; the Hollywood studio got its hedge clippers on "Stromboli," stripping away much of the atmosphere and quite a bit of the plotline.

Bergman's outstanding acting skills are what elevate the film above "mediocre." With her subtlely expressive face and eyes, she draws in our sympathy and understanding for Karin in a very trying situation, even though the character is a deeply underdeveloped one. At times, she is revealed to be also a bit selfish and manipulative. Mario Vitale does a fair job as Bergman's tradition-bound, rather close-minded husband, who has little idea of her suffering.

"Stromboli" is far from a masterpiece, but it's not a dud either. Bergman and the island are stunning, but the choppy, wandering storyline takes away from what could have been truly breathtaking.