Rossellini, Roberto (1906-1977), was an Italian motion-picture director and screenwriter. He is remembered as a key figure in the movement called Neorealism in Italy after World War II (1939-1945). Neorealist films depicted everyday life in a realistic, unromantic fashion. Rossellini directed three important Neorealist films: Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), and Germany: Year Zero (1947). They all dealt with the war and its immediate aftermath with almost documentary realism.
Rossellini was born in Rome on May 8, 1906. In 1934, he entered the motion-picture industry as a sound technician and later became an editor. The first feature film he directed, White Ship (1941), drew criticism from the Italian government because of its antiwar spirit and had to be released anonymously. In 1949, Rossellini began a love affair with the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, who starred in such Rossellini films as Stromboli (1950) and Voyage to Italy (1953; also known as The Lonely Woman). Rossellini and Bergman were both married to other people, but they left their spouses and married each other in 1950. The American actress Isabella Rossellini is their daughter. Roberto Rosellini’s romantic relationship with Bergman and later with the Indian screenwriter Somali Das Gupta created international scandals that severely damaged the director’s career in the 1950’s.
Rossellini returned to popular and critical success with General Della Rovere (1959), a story about a petty criminal who impersonates a general during World War II. Starting in 1964, Rossellini devoted himself to making biographical television documentaries. Among the most notable of them was one on Socrates, made in 1970. Rossellini died in Rome on June 3, 1977.
