Martin Scorsese on Roberto Rossellini

By the time Roberto Rossellini joined forces with the international superstar Ingrid Bergman in the late 1940s, he had already left an indelible mark on the history of film with his groundbreaking works of neorealism, including Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero. With these films, “he changed what the world thinks of cinema,” according to director and world cinema expert Martin Scorsese in the following excerpt from a new interview on Criterion’s release 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman. What he did next, in the emotionally intimate Stromboli, Europe ’51, and Journey to Italy, all starring Bergman, was completely unexpected, pushing the form’s boundaries in ways that many did not understand at the time. Watch the clip to hear Scorsese explain what Rossellini was up to with these special, spiritual films, which in many ways moved against the tide of neorealism that the director had himself set in motion.