Director, he was born on May 8 th 1906 in Rome. Interrupted the studies after the high school license, he was devoted to different activities, before entering in the cinema world as art-director and editor, and subsequently as scriptwriter and director of documentaries. From 1936 to 1940 he directed some of them on account of the Istituto nazionale Luce; in 1938 he collaborated to the screen-play of Luciano Serra, pilota (G. Alessandrini) and in 1941, in collaboration with the commander Francesco De Robertis, he directed his first feature film, La nave bianca, played by non professional actors. After a pair of films of scarce success - Un pilota ritorna (1942) on Vittorio Mussolini’s subject and The man with the cross (1943) and the supervision of a film of Nino Giannini, L’invasore, he realizes in 1944-45, while Italy is still divided by the front that advances toward north, Open City, that marks the beginning of Neoralism. The film, welcomed rather coldly by the public and by big part of the critique, meant well soon, for the new generation of the Italian cinema and for the international public, a new way of cinema art, either for the human deep content of the treated theme, and above all for the "new Rossellini style " , that succeeded in transforming the bare images of a taken by surprise reality in elements of tragedy. On this road he continues with Paisan (1947), on the tortured Italy’s conditions by the advance of the war - that is his masterpiece - and with Germany, year zero (1948), on the crisis of the human values in Germany of the postwar period. But, changing the human and social reality of Italy that starts toward the complete reconstruction, the themes of the Rossellini’s poetic changes too, between contradictions and yeldings, and it seems that the director has some difficulties to find a new way. From the experiment of Ways of love (1948), a film in two episodes played by Anna Magnani, to the failure of The machine that kills bad people (1952), initiated in 1948; from Flowers on St. Francis (1950) to Stromboli (1951), both centered, even if in different sense, on the problem of the divine grace; from The greatest love(1952), twisted portrait of a woman in the crisis of a society, Dov'è la libertà? (1954), grotesque pampklet played by Totò, is a whole creative activity tended to the most different speheres, always supported by a sincere, but often messy and superficial, passion for cinema, from the conflicting results and at times disappointing. With The Strangers (1954) and with Fear (1954), it seems that his fancy finds the correct lilts of the mature work, problems open to the suggestions of the most modern dramaturgy. To the first film more than a few directors of the last generation will refer, particularly French. But it is a few more than a parenthesis. A long trip to India in 1957, from which he will return with a lot of documentary material and an Indian wife, Sonali Das Gupta, certainly doesn't contribute to the clarification of the varied problems that seem shaking the moral and spiritual world of the director. The Indian experience gives origin to a strange film, half documentary and half dramatic, India (1960), and to a series of tv programs. In 1959 Il general dell Rovere comes out, winning at the Mostra di Venezia, that refers to the themes of the Resistance of the first Rossellini, and he seems wanting to begin a new phase of his artistic career; but instead it marks his definitive insertion in the commercial production, even if checked by a sure work and by a creative fancy. 1960 is the year of Era notte a Roma, always on Resistance’s themes, which is followed by Garibaldi (1961) on the Garibaldian exploit, The betrayer (1961) from Stendhal, Anima nera (1962) from Giuseppe Patroni-Griffì and some short films and supervisions. Subsequently he has been actively interested in the technical and artistic problems of the television, realizing an interesting Storia del ferro (1965) too, a film of amazing modernity and checked taste, The rise of Louis XIV (1967), and the interesting and often genial Atti degli Apostoli (1969). Complex and at times contradictory director, author of some of the most important films of the contemporary cinema, teacher recognized by most of the young directors of the Sixties, Rossellini is certainly the greatest figure in the postwar Italian cinema, above all for the lesson of style that he has imparted to generations of directors.

From the Chronicle to the History
We are at the end of the fifties; a moment, for Rossellini, of search not only on the cinema’s nature but on his same, to move inside the cinema structures. The revolution of Open city had made it , for his himself confession, breaking "the industrial structures of the cinema of that years", conquering " the liberty to express without conditionings", and from here the new had been born. The new television revolution, after returns not always convinced to the Resistance (Il generale della Rovere, 1959; Era notte a Roma, 1960), Rossellini makes it suggest him- these are his words - "from the necessity to extend the course of the information" that first he gave with cinema. He kept to the chronicle before, now he passes to the history. " The chronicle’s data - he explains - are too contingent to furnish us an information that allows us to analyze ourselves, helping us to avoid certain errors later. In the moment in which we try to identify us in the contingent, we are too involved in our ' passions' (humors, that is to say, fears, antipathies, likings) to do it with the objective separation that will allow us to localize ourself. The history, instead, is there, shiny, distant; it gives all the examples you need, but it is difficult that you’ll be involved, so, through it , you arrive’ll to the knowledge without risks of confusions". The history, his knowledge, the information. From here the ' television U-turn' of Rossellini "to dilate with the history - as he declare- information that first I gave with cinema, making a real primer of the knowledges that we men have acquired, starting from the a, b, c, and then putting everything in order, a thing behind the other one, from the age of the iron up to Pascal, to Cartesio. Once more ' showing' and not showing, to explore and, above all, to let explore. Because, as Comenio said, teaching has to serve men as the maps to the navigators". Teaching, didactic, they go under these figures, all work of television destination like L’età del ferro (1964), La lotta dell’uomo per la sua sopravvivenza (1967), Gli atti degli Apostoli (1968), Socrate (1970), Pascal (1971), Augustine of Hippo (1972), L’età di Cosimo (1973), Cartesius (1974), but it shines - almost at the opening of the series - that The rise of Louis XIV (La prise du pouvoir par Louis XIV, 1966), that, as Open city in its time, marks a date in the television dramaturgy, the simple informative canons which its author proclaimed he wants to follow going well further. (From Il cinema la grande storia illustrata third volume De Agostini 1981)

The Spiritual Will
That soft telling , after all, that entrusting to the plain sequence the task to accumulate for the spectator all the data he could need to know - and to know through an image that Rossellini, wanted absolutely by now, ' innocent', primitive, as seen with the eye of the first man - they were been already realized in the last films preceding the Rossellini’s television period, Garibaldi (1960) and the discussed but to revalue The betrayer (1961); and they are found again, with absolute maturation, although not admitted by anyone, in the last work for the cinema, that The Messiah (1975) that, arriving 30 years after Paisà, closes, and not only for the death of its author, arrived on June 3 rd 1977, a rigorously consequent and harmonic cycle as a few others in the cinema history. The Messiah, last work and ' summa' of a whole career. The Gospel of the Word, the Gospel without miracles, the Gospel of life of every day in Palestine. With some ways, a language, some accents that propose with absolute fidelity the most intense moments of the big Neoralism cinema of Rossellini. Questioned on the subject, he himself admitted it because, he said, "the ingredients are always those: the world and the men. And the need to build the world, with its historical, social, environment coordinates, in a contextual way to the men that participate, that are present. I know -he specified - the world and the men are there in the fables, in the inventions, but there is a world that belongs to the imagination, just that of the films of imagination, and there is a world that belongs to the reality, that of the document, of the Neoralism; and I refer in this case just to the flattest, more dusty, more humble reality; above all more humble. Because the reseach of humility is the most important thing for me; especially if we want to give us an ethics, if we want to reach a certain ethics. I won't treat the imagination anymore. Not because I despise it, but because I believe that today the only engagement that is important to devote to is the documentation of the reality. And this for the same principle, because we are dreadfully ignorant people and because, if indeed we want really live as men, we have to try to demolish this ignorance every day more and more; with everything we do". Words message, words will. Rossellini still had the opportunity to apply the following year, not with a film (a Carlo Marx prepared remained to the state of project), but with the maximum prize of the Festival of Cannes that he succeded, only for his authority, to let attribute to Padre padrone (1977) of the brothers Taviani: a document and a poetry film, privileged against the commercialized and industrialist cinema. (From the cinema great history Illustrated Volume Third De Agostini 1981)

FILMOGRAPHY

1936 - Prélude à l'après midi d'un faune
1936 - Daphné
1939 - La vispa Teresa
1939 - Il tacchino prepotente
1939 - Fantasia sottomarina
1941 - Il ruscello di Ripasottile
1941 - La nave bianca
1942 - Un pilota ritorna
1943 - Woman
1943 - The Man with the Cross
1945 - Open City
1947 - Paisan
1948 - Ways of Love
1948 - Germany, Year Zero
1950 - The Flowers of St.Francis
1951 - Stromboli, terra di dio
1952 - The Seven Deadly Sins (Segment "L'invidia")
1952 - The Greatest Love
1952 - The Machine that Kills Bad People
1953 - We, the Women (a segment)
1954 - Dov'è la libertà?
1954 - The Strangers
1954 - Amori di mezzo secolo (a segment)
1954 - Joan of Arc at the Stake
1954 - Angst ("Non credo piú all'amore")
1959 - General Della Rovere
1960 - India (produced in 1957)
1960 - Era notte a Roma
1961 - Viva l'Italia
1961 - The Betrayer
1962 - Anima nera
1963 - Rogopag (Let's Have a Brainwash) (segment Illibatezza)
1967 - The Rise of Louis XIV
1967 - Idea di un'isola. Sicilia
1968 - Atti degli apostoli
1970 - Socrate
1971 - La forza e la ragione: intervista con Salvador Allende
1971 - Rice University
1971 - Blaise Pascal
1972 - Augustine of Hippo
1973 - Cartesius
1973 - The Age of the Medici
1974 - Concerto per Michelangelo
1974 - The World Population
1974 - Year One
1976 - The Messiah
1977 - Beaburg

PRIZES

1946 - Festival of Cannes: Big prize ex aequo (Open City)
1946 - Silver ribbon for the best direction (Paisan)
1952 - Mostra of Venezia: 2° international prize ex aequo (The Greatest Love)
1959 - Mostra of Venezia: Gold Lion ex acquo (General Della Rovere)
1960 - Silver ribbon for the best direction (General Della Rovere), Festival of Karlovy Vary: special prize of the jury (Era notte a Roma)