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There are moments in time in which great artists unite creatively and present the world with a unique gift through their creative riches combined. The collaborations contained within this rewarding collection are fascinating reminders of this aspect of the film medium.

Two icons of cinema had one of the finest of artistic collaborations: acclaimed Italian neo-realism director Roberto Rossellini and one of Hollywood's most cherished actors, Ingrid Bergman; a creatively dynamic duo and a terrific team in making movies of merit.

Together, Bergman and Rossellini crafted some of their finest motion-pictures, but these works of art were often overlooked by audiences. The works contained within this Criterion Collection release represent some of these efforts between acclaimed director Roberto Rossellini and actor Ingrid Bergman. The three films presented are Stromboli, Europe '51, and Journey to Italy. Each film represents something uniquely individualistic and is only a portion of their collaborations together during their artistically unified and most successful years throughout the 1950's.

Stromboli (1950)

The first collaboration between Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman is a devastating portrait of a woman’s existential crisis, set against the beautiful and forbidding backdrop of a volcanic island. After World War II, a Lithuanian refugee (Bergman) marries a simple Italian fisherman (Mario Vitale) she meets in a prisoner of war camp and accompanies him back to his isolated village on an island off the coast of Sicily.
Life on the island is harsh and unforgiving, as are the inhabitants. The community is grim and strict, shunning any signs of impropriety. Karin quickly offends them with her more open and emotionally expressive northern temperament; although she does make attempts to adapt, she finds life on the island unbearable and begins looking for a way out. She even makes a half-hearted attempt to seduce the local priest who’s sympathetic to her unhappiness.

English-language version: 106 minutes
Italian-language version: 100 minutes

Europa '51 / Europe '51 (1952)

Irene (Bergman) and George (Alexander Knox) are a bourgeois couple living in Rome with their sensitive 12-year-old son Michel (Sandro Franchina). Between business concerns and a busy social life, they are barely aware of the boy’s obvious loneliness and despair. During a dinner party one evening, the boy falls to his death in the stairwell outside their apartment and there are suggestions that he actually committed suicide. Irene’s shock and grief cause a rupture in their comfortable life.
As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity...

English-language version: 114 minutes
Italian-language version: 116 minutes

Journey to Italy / Voyage in Italy / Viaggio in Italia (1954)

Katherine (Bergman) and Alex (George Sanders) are a middle class English couple who drive to Naples to settle the estate of a recently deceased uncle. Stresses are immediately apparent even before they arrive in the city; Alex is a driven businessman who feels anxious and uncomfortable away from work, while Katherine had hoped the holiday might allow them some time to reinvigorate their marriage. But it quickly becomes clear that there is little to revive; their union is a matter of convenience, a business arrangement in which there is little emotional heat, with her role limited to being his social secretary. Once installed in the uncle’s villa, waiting for an offer to come in from a potential buyer, the friction sends them off in different directions.
The crisis in the couple’s marriage comes to a climax during a visit to Pompeii where archeologists are uncovering signs of the people who died during the volcano’s eruption in 79AD. The sight of two bodies, a man and a woman, frozen forever in an embrace at the moment of death, causes Katherine to break down emotionally.

85 minutes

Extras:
• New digital restorations of the English- and Italian-language versions of Stromboli and Europe ’51 and of Journey to Italy
• Introductions to all three films by director Roberto Rossellini
• Rossellini Under the Volcano, a 1998 documentary that returns to Stromboli fifty years after the making of the film
• New interview with film historian Elena Dagrada on the different versions of Europe ’51
• Audio commentary on Journey to Italy by film scholar Laura Mulvey
• Short film featuring footage of the Rossellinis during the production of Journey to Italy
• New interviews with film critic Adriano Apra about all three films
• Surprised by Death, a new visual essay by film critic James Quandt on the historical and artistic themes of the trilogy
• Living and Departed, a new visual essay by Rossellini scholar Tag Gallagher on the evolution of the director’s style in the trilogy
• New interview with filmmaker Martin Scorsese
• New interview with Rossellini and actress Ingrid Bergman’s daughters, Ingrid Rossellini and Isabella Rossellini
• Rossellini Through His Own Eyes, a 1992 documentary on the director’s approach to cinema
• New interview with G. Fiorella Mariani, Rossellini’s niece, featuring Bergman’s home movies
• Ingrid Bergman Remembered, a 1995 documentary on the actress’s life, narrated by her daughter Pia Lindstrom
• My Dad Is 100 Years Old, a 2005 short film directed by Guy Maddin and starring Isabella Rossellini
• The Chicken, a 1952 short film directed by Rossellini and starring Bergman
• New English subtitle translations

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