Remembering Roberto Rossellini

ByABC News
December 13, 2006, 9:42 AM

Dec. 13, 2006— -- Roberto Rossellini was a man misunderstood. Even today, nearly 30 years after his death, the life and work of the revered Italian film director continues to mystify and captivate his audience. A forward thinker, Rossellini was both criticized and venerated for his revolutionary spirit and relentless pursuit of the unfamiliar.

Isabella Rossellini, his daughter -- her mother was Hollywood icon Ingrid Bergman -- sat down recently with ABC's Joel Siegel to discuss her father's posthumous legacy.

"My father saw before others that film could be, could have the power of talking to a deeper part of our brains or of our hearts," she explains.

In November 2006, the Museum of Modern Art in New York unveiled two exhibits designed to give insight into Roberto Rossellini's world. The first, a film exhibition, showcases his work. The second, "Rossellini on Paper," also at MoMA, gives insight into his personal life through posters, family photographs and correspondence.

"The fact is that Rossellini was forever opening breaches," explains James Quandt, co-organizer of MoMA's film exhibition, "ruptures in conventional understanding of realism, melodrama, documentary, the nature of acting and performance, the grammar of the camera, especially the zoom, and the uses of artifice and pedagogy."

In the first half of the 20th century, movies, more often than not, took people out of the reality in which they lived. Films such as "Casablanca," "The Wizard of Oz" and "Fantasia" dominated the box office during the 1930s and 40s and allowed audiences to escape the turmoil and uncertainty of the world around them.

"Film was really strictly entertainment fantasy, bigger than life. You went there after a day's work to get distracted, to have a laugh or a romantic cry," explains Isabella Rosselini.

Then came Roberto Rossellini with his new way of thinking, seeing and experiencing films and the stories they tell.

"My father was the first one that saw that this film, this technology that was available, was something that could bring knowledge, awareness, consciousness," she says. "And his films, they shake you to the core, and today when you look at them, they still shake you to the core."