VERO BEACH — Major films by one of the most important families in international film will be featured in the upcoming film studies course at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. The course titled The Great Rossellinis: Roberto, Ingrid, and Isabella, will be held on five consecutive Tuesdays beginning February 16, and continue through March 16, 2010. Students may sign-up for either the afternoon session at 1:30 pm or the evening session at 7 pm as part of this film studies offering. Films included in this course will be shown in their original languages with English subtitles.
At the head of the family was Roberto Rossellini, who was one of the founders of Italian Neo-realism. While German forces still fought against the Allied invasion in Italy in 1945, Rossellini made a landmark film (“Rome, Open City”) on the streets of Rome that described the impact of the war on average people. It won the Grand Prize at Cannes, and will open the Museum course.
Ingrid Bergman was at the height of her Hollywood career when she met and fell in love with Rossellini. She had just finished co-starring with Cary Grant in one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most enduring films, “Notorious,” also to be shown in the course. Bergman followed Rossellini to Italy, where they married and made a series of films together. One of the best was “Stromboli,” which featured Bergman as the foreign bride of a fisherman on a remote Italian island.
Roberto and Ingrid had three children, including their daughter, Isabella. The exotically beautiful Isabella married American film director Martin Scorsese, became a supermodel appearing on 12 Vogue covers, and eventually began to make films. The course will include two, one a rare Italian picture called “The Sky is Falling,” the other her latest film called “Two Lovers.”
The Film Studies program at the Vero Beach Museum of Art is among the most popular educational offerings at the institution. It provides participants a chance to view and discuss outstanding motion pictures that otherwise are seldom shown on the Treasure Coast.
Tuition for the five-week course is $55 ($45 for Museum members). Students may register in-person at the Museum, by phone, or on-line at www.verobeachmuseum.org.
Information: Call Education Assistant Angela Fallon at (772) 231-0707 ext. 136.
