When Isabella Rossellini was married to Martin Scorsese it took her a while to reconcile the fact that she was married to "an incredibly immoral filmmaker." And it was all because of the way Scorsese moved his camera.
"The first time I visited Marty on a set he had this big mechanical arm that swept him up and down to do his close-ups. The cameras were moving all around in this incredible choreography. But this was not what my father ever believed in," says Rossellini, who was married to Scorsese from 1979 to 1982.
"My father kept the camera very still, so that the image felt very true and did not lead the audience in any way," Rossellini told CTV.ca
"That's why I often joked to Marty, ‘How can I be married to a filmmaker like you?'" she says, with a laugh.
That distinctive filmmaking style of Roberto Rossellini, Italy's Neorealist master, was the subject of a special tribute last night at Toronto's new Bell Lightbox.
Rossellini was on hand to introduce the 1953 classic, "Voyage in Italy," a film Francois Truffaut once dubbed "cinema's first truly modern film."
At first glance "Voyage in Italy" seems like just another couple's movie. It follows a bickering British couple, played by Ingrid Bergman (Rossellini's mother) and George Sanders as they make a tour of Naples.
But unlike earlier, more idealized tales about marital love, director Rossellini made disconnection, uncommunicativeness and deep, despairing loneliness in a marriage the real stars of this movie.
"This story isn't romantic at all," says Rossellini.
"Here, my father talks about the impossibility of couples really talking to one another. There is love. There is hate. There is no prince charming and love is not forever. In that sense, this film was very modern and very inspirational to the Nouvelle Vague," she says.
La Nouvelle Vague, of course, was a term used to describe the New Wave of French filmmakers that emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s, all of whom were profoundly influenced by Italian Neorealism.
After seeing ‘Voyage in Italy' a new generation of filmmakers went out and changed the face of "romantic" story telling in countless ways says Rossellini.
"Suddenly these filmmakers had a vision – one that freed them to talk about the realities of modern love without all those old, romantic tones," says Rossellini. "In that sense, my father's film was very important."
