STROMBOLI ("Stromboli: Terra di Dio", 1950)

Kind of a subpar honeymoon, if we're being honest.. This month, we're taking a trip to a part of Italy not often romanticized, with a story about post-wedding blues set against the stony hills of a volcanic island. Romantic! Join us as we discuss Roberto Rossellini's melodramatic tale of a marriage literally on the rocks...
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STROMBOLI ("Stromboli: Terra di Dio", 1950)
Dir. by Roberto Rosselini
Available to watch on archive.org here. Also streaming with a subscription to the Criterion Channel or HBO Max.

Married life ain't all it's cracked up to be. Or at least that's the case for Karin, a Lithuanian woman displaced by the geopolitical shakeup of World War II, who finds an escape route from her women's internment camp in getting hitched to Antonio, her Italian beau whose language she can barely understand. Full of idealistic notions of what her new life in Italy will be like, Karin is more than a little disappointed when she arrives at her hubby's home island of Stromboli to find it a desolate collection of rocky shores and squat dwellings. As if that weren't enough of a bummer, the locals aren't exactly smitten with the newcomer, this woman who seems unable or unwilling to abide by their traditional way of life. Is this an opportunity for cultural exchange? Or just an extended experiment in misery?

An entertaining, occasionally ridiculous blend of hollywood melodrama and po-faced Italian neorealism, Rosselini's film combines the theatricality of an over-the-top Ingrid Bergman performance with the stark vistas, rustic customs, and real faces of the island that gives the film its name. The result is a movie that is both tragic and silly, a bleakly gorgeous tableau of the "humble life". Let's talk about it!

*As always, this is a movie discussion group—we invite you to watch the film on your own ahead of time, and come ready to discuss.*