The 8th Wonderful Ingrid Bergman Blogathon: Journey to Italy (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1954)

NOTE: This post spoils the whole movie. If you have not seen this film and plan to, don’t read this until you do. The collaboration between Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini is one of the most intriguing in cinema history: one of Hollywood’s most famous stars working with the most famous name of the neorealist movement. After their scandalous affair and marriage, the couple made five films together, most of them exploring the spiritual malaise and anxieties of the postwar world. Journey to Italy is often considered the high point of this artistic union, though on release in 1954, it was a critical and commercial disaster. Its reputation would be resurrected by New Wave filmmakers in the 1960s, who saw the film as the genesis of modern cinema with its eschewing of conventional narrative in favor of a stronger exploration of two characters’ internal worlds. Though I’ve only seen Journey to Italy twice, I think it features Ingrid Bergman’s most intriguing performance. Those used to…