Continually enmeshed in controversy, perhaps no other figure in the history of world cinema has been so reviled - and so revered.

A close analysis of the seven films that mark important turning points in Rossellini's evolution: The Man with a Cross (1943), Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), The Machine to Kill Bad People (1948-52), Voyage in Italy (1953), to General della Rovere(1959), and The Rise to Power of Louis XIV (1966).

He Had Come To See A World At The End Of One Period Of History And At The Beginning Of Another More Dramatic One. When He Came To India In December 1956 Roberto Rossellini Was An Internationally Renowned Figure. Highly Acclaimed As A Director Of Italian Neo-Realist Films And Married To Hollywood Legend Ingrid Bergman, His Was An Ebullient Yet Intense Personality That Combined A Fondness For Flashy Cars And Lovely Women With A Passionately Serious Commitment To Exploring The Human Condition And Portraying It With Unflinching And Unvarnished Honesty. Rossellini Had Come To India At The Invitation Of The Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. His Aim Was To Make A Series Of Films Which Would Capture The Newly Independent Country As It Came To Grips With Progress And Development After Centuries Of Colonialism. He Deliberately Eschewed The Exotica Which Had Beguiled All Too Many Western Travellers. He Refused To Be Distracted By The Monuments, The Spirituality And Cultural Bric-A-Brac, Preferring Instead To Fix His Gaze On The Actual Moment, On The Grand Endeavours Of Industrialization, Land Reform And The Then Still Fledging Democratic Spirit-- The India Of Nehru S Vision. India Changed Rossellini Irrevocably. It Was Here That He Encountered The Dusky, Doe-Eyed Sonali Dasgupta, Then 27 Years-Old, The Wife Of A Documentary Film-Maker And The Mother Of Two Small Children. Their Connection Scandalized Indian Society And Became The Object Of A Sustained Campaign By Elements In The Indian Press, Instigated By The Bombay Film Industry Which Resented Nehru S Patronage Of A Foreign Film-Maker And Rossellini S Unconcealed Contempt For Their Overblown, Fantastical Extravaganzas. Eminent Journalist Dileep Padgaonkar Enters The World Of India In The 1950S--The Great Political Expectations, The Curious, Interconnected Lives Of The Bombay Elite, The Still Isolated Universe Of Indian Villages--And Traces Rossellini S Passage Through All Of Them. Using Contemporary Reports, Interviews And The Published And Unpublished Reminiscences Of Those Involved In The Drama, He Looks At The Films That Rossellini Made And At Events As They Unfolded To Create A Portrait Of A Remarkable Man Who Fell Under The Spell Of A Woman, A Country And Its People. Under Her Spell Is Spell-Binding...The Personality (Of Rossellini) That Emerges From Dileep Padgaonkar'S Painstakingly Researched Work&Is That Of A Complex, Creatively Restless, Controversial And Often Contradictory Human Being, Who Also Happened To Be A Classic Alpha Male. -Shyam Benegal, Film Director Rossellini Transgressed Every Conceivable Boundary He Was Confronted With - Personal Or Professional. Some Of The Transgressions Were Path-Breaking In His Life And In His Work. Some Others Brought On Meaningless Misery And Disappointment. He Remained A Teacher In Failures, Even. Under Her Spell Is An Engrossing Account Of Magnificent Compulsions. -Mani Kaul, Film Director A Well-Researched And Original Inquiry Into A Key Period Of Rossellini S Evolution Towards A New Kind Of Cinema. Dileep Padgaonkar S Account Of His Passage To India Reads Like A Passionate Novel. -Adriano Aprà, Italian Film Historian The Joy Of Discovery In Rossellini S (Film), India, Is Echoed In This Magnificent Chronicle Of The Italian Director S Incredible Adventures& Dileep Padgaonkar Has Found A Wealth Of New Sources For This Amazing Story. -Tag Gallagher, Author Of The Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini)

Roberto Rossellini's Rome Open City instantly, markedly, and permanently changed the landscape of film history. Made at the end of World War II, it has been credited with initiating a revolution in and reinvention of modern cinema, bold claims that are substantiated when its impact on how films are conceptualized, made, structured, theorized, circulated, and viewed is examined. This volume offers a fresh look at the production history of Rome Open City; some of its key images, and particularly its representation of the city and various types of women; its cinematic influences and affinities; the complexity of its political dimensions, including the film's vision of political struggle and the political uses to which the film was put; and the legacy of the film in public consciousness. It serves as a well illustrated, up to date, and accessible introduction to one of the major achievements of filmmaking.

This radical re-reading of Ford's work studies his films in the context of his complex character, demonstrating their immense intelligence and their profound critique of our culture.

This volume offers a new and expanded history of the documentary form across a range of times and contexts, featuring original essays by leading historians in the field In a contemporary media culture suffused with competing truth claims, documentary media have become one of the most significant means through which we think in depth about the past. The most rigorous collection of essays on nonfiction film and media history and historiography currently available, A Companion to Documentary Film History offers an in-depth, global examination of central historical issues and approaches in documentary, and of documentary's engagement with historical and contemporary topics, debates, and themes. The Companion's twenty original essays by prominent nonfiction film and media historians challenge prevalent conceptions of what documentary is and was, and explore its growth, development, and function over time. The authors provide fresh insights on the mode's reception, geographies, authorship, multimedia contexts, and movements, and address documentary's many aesthetic, industrial, historiographical, and social dimensions. This authoritative volume: Offers both historical specificity and conceptual flexibility in approaching nonfiction and documentary media Explores documentary's multiple, complex geographic and geopolitical frameworks Covers a diversity of national and historical contexts, including Revolution-era Soviet Union, post-World War Two Canada and Europe, and contemporary China Establishes new connections and interpretive contexts for key individual films and film movements, using new primary sources Interrogates established assumptions about documentary authorship, audiences, and documentary's historical connection to other media practices. A Companion to Documentary Film History is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses covering documentary or nonfiction film and media, an excellent supplement for courses on national or regional media histories, and an important new resource for all film and media studies scholars, particularly those in nonfiction media.