Europa 51

Screening on Film

Directed by Roberto Rossellini.
With Ingrid Bergman, Alexander Knox.
Italy, 1952, 35mm, black & white, 110 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

Europa 51 is the second in a trilogy of post-neorealist films that Rossellini made in the early 1950s with Ingrid Bergman, in which he cast the celebrated actress in roles that gave him a new perspective through which to capture aspects of Italian society. Here, Bergman plays a wealthy American living in Rome whose life is shattered by the suicide death of the beloved young son whom she has ignored. Taking the advice of a politically engaged friend, she turns to families in real need and finds solace in selfless acts of giving. The world from which she came, however, interprets such “communistic” activities as a sign of madness.