Famed Neo-realist Roberto Rossolini cast an unlikely Ingrid Bergman as the lead in his 1950 film Stromboli. She plays Karin Bjornsen, a displaced and now stateless Lithuanian at the conclusion of World War 2, left unmoored and interred at a displaced persons camp in Italy. With no options remaining, she marries Antonio (played by Mario Vitale), a besmitten soldier who takes her home to his native island, and the tiny village of his birth. Left to make house while her husband works for a meager living on a tuna boat, she grows increasingly dissatisfied with her situation: driven nearly mad by judgemental locals, stark living conditions, and the nearly apocalyptic volcano blasted landscape of her new home. Trapped by circumstance, she seeks to escape but finds her prison to be both the unforgiving island, and the equally jagged and torn confines of her own selfish mind.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961).