Roberto Rossellini

Roberto Rossellini shot Rome, Open City on scraps of film stock while German troops were still in Italy, and neorealism starts there. He came from a wealthy Roman family that built cinemas, made propaganda documentaries under the Fascist regime, and then in 1945 filmed a story of the resistance in the streets where it had happened, with non-professionals, available light and Anna Magnani in the part that made her. Paisan and Germany Year Zero completed a war trilogy that showed occupation and its aftermath without heroes. In 1949 Ingrid Bergman wrote offering to work with him; they made Stromboli, began an affair while both were married, and the scandal had Bergman denounced on the floor of the United States Senate and effectively exiled from Hollywood for seven years. The films they made together were dismissed then and are now central to his reputation. From the 1960s he abandoned cinema for long didactic television histories, believing film had become a distraction from teaching. Rome, Open City was shot largely without synchronised sound and dubbed afterwards, partly because the equipment was gone and partly because the electricity failed. He had a son with Anna Magnani s successor Ingrid Bergman before their marriage and twins afterwards, one of whom, Isabella Rossellini, became an actress. His first wife had been married to him while he lived openly with Magnani. India Matri Bhumi, made in 1959, is the film that most divides opinion about him. His television work runs from Socrates to Descartes to the Medici, made deliberately without drama.

• Lived: 1906 CE – 1977 CE
• Nationality: Italian
• Roles: artist