Roberto Rossellini directs Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders and Maria Mauban in this Italian drama where a married couple visit a villa in Naples they have inherited.

Culture clash, languid loneliness, the end of a marriage. A fish-out-of-water couple separate over their holiday. They bicker, they tour, he tries to cheat, she feels the overbearing crush of history on her soul. They watch a man be rebuilt from a hole in a volcano. Then a miracle…Journey To Italy was a failure on release. Butchered and stitched back together in various forms by various distributors to try and turn a profit from its bankable stars. Saunders is his trademark attractive brute, Bergman vulnerable yet misanthropic. I like the cynical poetry of this, it feels game changing even now.

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Perfect Double Bill: Stromboli (1950)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/