One of the founding fathers
of the Italian Neorealist movement, son of Angiolo Guiseppe Rossellini who
built the very first movie theater in Rome, and father of actress Isabella
Rossellini, writer-director Roberto Rossellini remains at the forefront of
Italian cinema yet only now are his works resurfacing and garnering the
attention they deserved. With companies
like The Criterion Collection bearing the torch as the front runner on
releasing Rossellini’s work stateside, Arrow Video has given the beloved film
preservation company a run for their money with the release of one of
Rossellini’s personal favorite and least seen films in his illustrious career:
the Neorealist docu-drama Viva L’Italia.
Retitled Garibaldi in some territories,
Rossellini was commissioned by the Italian government to direct a biopic of
General Guisseppe Garibaldi (Renzo Ricci) whose military campaign, Expedition of the Thousand in 1860, led
to the conquering of Sicily and Naples before the country’s unification under
the aegis the House of Savoy. The resulting film is the Italian neorealist
equivalent of a sweeping David Lean epic ala Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor
Zhivago, where spectacle, grandiosity and scale stretches as far as the
camera can see. Though only composed in
1.66:1 widescreen, there’s a sense of vastness to Viva L’Italia as a piece of purely visual filmmaking not previously
seen in Italian cinema or, for that matter, Rossellini’s own oeuvre.
Regarded by Rossellini as
his personal favorite film with the most meticulous attention to detail with
intensive historical research and aided by a central performance by aged
veteran Renzo Ricci (Anna’s father in Antonioni’s classic L’Avventura) as the stoic and steadfast Garibaldi, Viva L’Italia plays less like a standard
historical narrative than a documentary captured in the heat of the
moment. With a sweeping, often patriotic
score by Renzo Rossellini and lush, precise cinematography by Luciano Trasatti
as well as early assistant directorial work by then protégé Ruggero Deodato
(director of Cannibal Holocaust), Viva L’Italia is among the grandest of
Italian historical epics that tragically remained largely unavailable to
international filmgoers for decades.
Thanks to the studious efforts
of Arrow Video, Rossellini’s favorite film and testament to probably the most
influential figure in Italian history, Rossellini’s enormous, earthly
battlefield can now be seen for the enduring labor of love which coined the
fusion between professional narrative storytelling and documentary style
Neorealist Italian cinema. Recently
actress and daughter Isabella Rossellini lamented the fact that many of her
father’s films remain largely unseen by world cinephiles. With her father’s most personal film to date finally
making it’s long awaited home video debut, it is safe to say that period of
filmgoers being in the dark about one of Italy’s greatest auteurs finally seems
to be changing for the better.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki