.::DICEMBRE 2007::.

The fatal triangle began innocently perhaps. It started with a provocative letter sent by the Academy-Award-winning actress Ingrid Bergman to the Italian director Roberto Rossellini. “Dear Mr Rossellini,” it began: I saw your films "Open City" and "Paisan" – – and I and enjoyed them very much. If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, and who is very understandable in French, and who, in Italian knows only “ti amo”, I am ready to come and work with you. – – Best regards, Ingrid Bergman The letter triggered an ego explosion inside the filmmaker. Rossellini bet a friend he could have the world's most famous (and highly bankable) actress "in bed within two weeks" after he met her. He flew to the United States, where he met the acclaimed Oscar winner along with the Hollywood mogul David O. Selznick, and within months plans were laid for the film that became "Stromboli" (1950). This project was to be shot in Italy as an independent production but with serious financial backing from RKO Pictures. Not only did Roberto Rossellini sign Ingrid Bergman for his movie, he would soon fall in love with her. Back in Rome, the filmmaker's mistress Anna Magnani was becoming suspicious. Not that the love affair and professional partnership between Rossellini and the hot-tempered heroine of his film "L'Amore" (1948) had ever run smoothly. Philanderer Roberto Rossellini [1906 – 1977] was married to Marcella de Marchis, with whom he had children, when he was romancing Anna Magnani [1908 – 1973]. At the time of their dalliance, she was married to the movie director Goffredo Alessandrini [1904 – 1978], and she had an invalid child in need of extra care. But rumors and her own intuition gave her no peace, so she questioned him. Was there something Roberto wanted to tell her? But an unfaithful spouse is a serial denier. After Rossellini refused to be honest, Anna Magnani threw a plate of steaming pasta on his head. Thus their relationship had a red-faced ending. Soon Magnani was replaced by the younger and more classically beautiful Ingrid Bergman [1915 – 1982]. Initially, Anna Magnani was going to star in Rossellini's original version of "Stromboli." With a 40-year-old Italian actress playing the heroine and an all-Italian cast, the screenplay situated on a volatile, remote Aeolian island would have made a completely different picture. By switching the female lead to a 33-year-old Swedish blonde, and pairing her with an Italian fisherman, the cinematic conflict became one of North and South, between the Nordic and Latin regional types and their respective ways of being in the world. An unhappy marriage is at the heart of the movie, in which Bergman plays a Lithuanian refugee who weds an Italian in order to escape from a displaced persons camp. He takes his bride to his native island [Stromboli], where she is miserable and tries to escape across the barren slopes of the volcano. According to the Motion Picture Production Code in effect during the 1950s, a wife leaving her husband without either repenting or being punished for her action was a sinful subject. Moreover, for the heroine to be portrayed by adulteress Ingrid Bergman at the behest of a married director who was her lover was an intolerable scandal. To save appearances, RKO re-edited the film, cut about 25 minutes, and changed the ending to make it look as if the heroine has had second thoughts about ending her marriage.

Once she was voted off the island, Anna Magnani set about making her own volcano movie with another director. She was already famous for her volcanic disposition, according to film historians. Critics who knew her said that certain show business people [such as Burt Lancaster and Anthony Quinn, her former co-stars] were afraid of La Magnani. The force that made her not just a great actress, but a sacred monster – – her impulsive extremism – – was also a cause of upheaval. To hire Magnani, to be in league with her in any enterprise, meant being on the receiving end of her temper eventually. And what a mood she must have been in knowing that Roberto Rossellini, by jettisoning her from his film, was now in a better position to attract investors and a large American audience. "Vulcano" (1950) was made at the same time (and in the same location – – on an adjacent Aeolian island) that Rossellini was making his own eruption-centric drama "Stromboli." Her biographers believe it is likely that Anna Magnani made "Vulcano" as an act of revenge against her former long-term lover. Working with director William Dieterle, she played the role of Maddalena Natoli, a prostitute. The story follows her character as she gets banished from Naples and returns to her home, a volcanic island in Sicily. On Vulcano, Maddalena is accepted only by Maria (played by Geraldine Brooks) her younger sister and her younger brother, and takes whatever job she can to get by. Donato (played by Rossano Brazzi), a diver by trade but a procurer for a prostitution ring – – the white slave trade in those days – – pursues Maddalena's more beautiful sister, who has fallen in love with him. In the movie, Anna Magnani sleeps with Brazzi to convince her sister he is bad news, though the sister is still smitten. Later, on Brazzi's boat, Anna is pumping air to him while he is on an underwater dive and she resorts to the only course she has left to save her sister. She stops pumping. Feeling guilt and remorse, she then climbs the island volcano as it begins erupting. Released in Italy in 1950, "Vulcano" did not receive widespread American distribution until it was picked up by United Artists in 1953. Moreover, on February 2nd, 1950, Ingrid Bergman gave birth to Rossellini's son, Robertino.This scandalous news certainly upstaged publicity for the Rome premiere of "Vulcano" on February 25, 1950. Onscreen, however, Anna Magnani exacted true poetic justice. Her character stage-managed a dramatic situation so that an unfaithful male, who was attracted to a prettier woman, is now dependent on her for his oxygen supply – – and she ends his life. La Magnani must have played that scene for all it was worth.

IDEA DICEMBRE 2007