Volcano (1950)

Volcano (Italian title Vulcano) is a 1950 Italian drama film by the director William Dieterle and starring Anna Magnani. It was filmed on location on Salina Island, in the Aeolian Islands, and in Messina, Sicily, Italy.

The film is seen by some as a vehicle of revenge by Magnani against her estranged lover, the director Roberto Rossellini who had chosen Ingrid Bergman to star in his film series about marriage over her. Rossellini filmed his film Stromboli
on the nearby volcanic island of Stromboli at the same time as Volcano was being made on Salina.

Both films were shot in similar locales in the Aeolian Islands only 12 miles apart; both actresses played independent-minded roles in a neorealist fashion; and both films were shot simultaneously. Life magazine wrote, "... in an atmosphere crackling with rivalry... Reporters were accredited, like war correspondents, to one or the other of the embattled camps.... Partisanship infected the Via Veneto (boulevard in Rome), where Magnaniacs and Bergmaniacs clashed frequently." However, Magnani still considered Rossellini the "greatest director she ever acted for".

Synopsis

The film plot involves a former prostitute (Magnani) who is exiled to the island of her birth by the police . There she suffers ostracism by the islanders and tries to defend the virtue of her younger sister from the advances of a deep-sea diver . It runs for 106 minutes.

Actors