The Theme of Resurrection in Rossellini’s Stromboli

04. March 2026 · 4 comments · Categories: Critique, Film & TV Reviews · Tags: Doug Kraft, Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, Ingrid Bergman, resurrection myth, Roberto Rossellini

Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Starring Ingrid Bergman
Released in 1950
You can stream Stromboli on the Criterion Channel
A film critique by Alice Gebura

Identity and Narrative

Identity is the essence of who we are. The process of revealing that essence is often the work of an individual lifetime. On a political level, identity is the compilation of beliefs and values established by a group and projected through its structure and history. Who we are or might be is of perennial interest because identity often drives what we do and why.

Numerous scholars have emphasized the connection between narrative and the formation of identity:

“Narratives have always been central to how humans make sense of themselves and the world around them. It is a key mechanism through which identity is shaped, negotiated, and performed across personal, social, and digital contexts.”1

I look at Stromboli, a film written and directed by Roberto Rossellini. Stromboli is the story of Karin, a lost soul who has profoundly endured the violence of WWII. Existing within a world of violence, she is a woman whose survival tactics during the brutality of war have created her spiritual poverty at the opening of the film. She must somehow find peace and a better way to cope in this world. Stromboli exploits the concept of narrative on two levels. First, it depicts the collapse of a woman’s internal narrative, or constructed identity. Second, it uses the traditional resurrection narrative from mythology as the process through which Karin’s identity is recalibrated.

The Resurrection Story

In his essay “Breaking Open” Buddhist teacher and Unitarian minister Doug Kraft writes:

“Transformation is a popular word these days used to refer to spiritual growth. It implies that we change radically as we grow, like lead turning to gold. I don’t like the word because it is misleading. From the perspective of the ego, growth seems to involve changing from one thing into something very different. But from a deeper perspective, we do not really change. That which is deep within us emerges in our awareness.”2

He goes on to describe external factors such as social attitudes and conditioning that influence, perhaps even prevent, our ability to know our core essence. Kraft posits that until we can differentiate between identity states and who we truly are, we live in an induced trance that is emotionally crippling. At some point the pain of a particular identity state overrides whatever comfort or security has been gained by it. When the old self is abandoned, the next iteration emerges. Paradoxically the next iteration is not something “new” but something elemental. Something essential and true is found or recovered.

This cyclical process, similar to the story of the rebirth of the Phoenix, is reflected in the resurrection story, one of the oldest stories in history. The first known resurrection story, “Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld,” is part of the first extant written library, the 7^th century BC Library of Ashurbanipal. There are many subsequent resurrection stories throughout history such as the Greek myth of Persephone, the Christian Easter story, and the Norse myth of Odin’s sacrifice – to name a few.

The story of Inanna on cuneiform tablet (Brittish Museum).

In one interpretation, the life-death-rebirth cycle is an allegory for the seasons. In another interpretation it represents psychological and spiritual transformation. The trajectory of the resurrection story is basically as follows:

There is an initiation event that launches a journey or an ordeal.
The journey is typically a descent, literal or metaphorical, into “hell.” It is characterized by darkness and suffering.
Some kind of breakage – of the ego, for example – occurs as a result.
The reassembly of the breakage is the resurrection.

A brief summary of the story of “Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld” begins with the goddess Inanna’s wish to travel to the realm of the dead that is ruled by her sister, Ereshkigal. Her supposed reason is to attend the funeral of her brother-in-law, but Ereshkigal suspects Inanna wants to take over. To travel to the underworld Inanna must pass through seven gates on the way. At each gate, in a ritual of humiliation, she loses a piece of her regal clothing, i.e. some of her power. By the time she reaches the underworld she is naked and powerless. The suspicious Ereshkigal turns her into a corpse and hangs her on a hook to rot. Inanna is rescued when a friend sends two spirits to offer empathy to the suffering Ereshkigal. In gratitude, Ereshkigal releases Inanna’s corpse. The two spirits revive Inanna and she returns from her journey as cosmically complete. It goes on and on, but that’s the gist of it.

Stromboli, Terra di Dio

Karin’s psychological journey begins in a WWII refugee camp on mainland Italy where she is in a state of limbo. She is eager to move beyond the horrors of the war and her notorious past that includes being a Nazi collaborator. She is an operator jockeying for an opportunity to leave the camp by whatever means it takes. An opportunity presents itself in Antonio who is “crazy about her.” She hears his serenade and when we see them together they are separated by the camp’s barbed wire fence. They try to kiss but the fence is a barrier between them. This physical divide symbolizes the painful class and cultural divide that defines their relationship.

Antonio and Karin meet at the barbed wire fence that separates the camps.

When the tactics of lying and manipulation fail in the emigration office, Karin resorts to another tactic, seduction. Her unprincipled opportunism is partly understandable due to the circumstances of war, but things will not end well. The whole-tone scale motif played by harp and flute in the background bodes ill. This haunting motif is introduced as Karin and Antonio marry and set off for his hometown on the volcanic island of Stromboli.

From the wedding scene we cut to a ship sailing toward the horizon and then a close-up of Karin and Antonio on deck. The sailing sequence brings us further and further out to sea, eventually we see only the ship surrounded by sky and sea. I am reminded of the River Styx in the Persephone myth. While Karin thinks she’s headed for an island paradise, she is being ferried to the underworld. So begins Karin’s psychic “descent.”

Crossing the river Styx. Unknown artist.

The underworld analogy materializes as a landscape of black sand and rocks with the ominous volcano simmering in the background. There is little vegetation, mostly scrub and cacti. The severe geometries of the town’s eerie stone buildings are empty and silent. Throughout the arrival scene we see Karin become more and more perturbed as she realizes what she has gotten herself into. She demands to be taken away from this island. She is too good for this “uncivilized” place, she’s used to better things. She is angry, she cries. A baby wails in the background as if to equate Karin’s emotional age with tantrums. These scenes are progressively lit with more and more contrast. Deep shadows cast against the white walls, characteristic of the lighting in film noir. The robe she wears at night has wide stripes like a prison uniform. She wanders around the maze-like village crying “I want to get out.” Without the money to leave, she is literally a prisoner. Her differences with Antonio and the villagers increase her alienation. The local priest offers advice but no respite.

Welcome home! Stromboli is a volcanic island off the coast of Sicily. It belongs to the Aeolian Islands archipelago, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Karin is experiencing a ritual of humiliation similar to that in the myth of Inanna. As Inanna passed through the seven gates on the way to the underworld, she lost her clothing- symbolizing the loss of her power. Karin’s powers are depleted one by one as petulance, demands, anger, crying and seduction meet a dead end.

Karin, used to the spoiled life of cafe culture, despairs in the desolate landscape on Stromboli.

Karin exists in a world of violence. The violence of the world war has ended but again and again Karin is confronted with the violence of men and nature. Her husband beats her and tries to control her. She recoils at the sadistic scene between the ferret and the rabbit. The mattanza creates a savage death trap for the struggling tuna. The bloodied water splashes Karin in a violent nod to Christian baptism: “dying with Christ and being reborn.” Then the volcano explodes. Rocks reign from the sky, clouds of noxious gasses billow forth. Lava and steam engulf the landscape. Karin is at the end of her rope. Antonio locks her in the house when she tries to leave. Her ingenuity and seductive powers seem to get her out of a mess once again in her rendez-vous with the lighthouse keeper.

Rossellini captured the old world method of tuna fishing, the mattanza. It was brought to Sicily by the Arabs who occupied Sicily from 827 to 902.

Her intent to escape by trekking across the volcano is a confrontation with hell. Sulfurous gasses choke her, she slides and trips on the steep terrain. Rossellini executes his characteristic camera work to obliterate any anchor in space, any discernible compass in the landscape. She sheds her suitcase and money purse, even her shoes. In this wretched hellscape that defies human survival, Karin’s willfulness and scheming are useless against the violent power of nature. She is not a corpse on a hook like Inanna, but stripped down to her elemental core. She collapses in utter despair. The billowing gasses subside and she looks up to see the stars, begging God to grant her a little peace.

Karin collapses while attempting to walk across the volcano.

Emerging

Jungian analyst Clarissa Pinkola Estes would call this the stage of the descent where love is found in the underworld. In Inanna’s story this is represented by the two spirits sent down to rescue her. Remember – they did so by empathizing with Ereshkigal who then released Inanna in gratitude. In other words it was kindness, not force of will or violence, that freed Inanna. According to Estes, “This loving presence waits and watches for the wandering seeker…It is called a little flicker or light or insight, a presentment, or a presence.”³ It can take many forms, here it is the light of the stars.

Karin submits to the cosmos and the old Karin “dies.” When she wakes up with the daylight she feels peaceful, saying, “No I can’t go back. I don’t want to. They’re horrible. It’s all horrible, but I’m even worse.”

“Dio! Mio Dio! Aiutami! Dammi la forza, la comprensione, e il coraggio!”

At last Karin confronts herself. She asks for spiritual help, strength and courage. She has emerged from her psychic descent, the breaking of her ego. As the broken pieces of Karin’s identity are reassembled and reshaped, she takes responsibility for herself with the knowledge of a transcendent presence. In writing the initial idea for Stromboli, Rossellini said:

“Suddenly the woman understands the value of the eternal truth which rules human lives; she understands the mighty power of her who possesses nothing, this extraordinary strength which procures complete freedom. In reality she becomes another St. Francis. An intense feeling of joy springs out from her heart, an immense joy of living.”4

In response to the critics’ and audiences’ complaint about the lack of a traditional resolution to the story, Rossellini wrote:

“I don’t know. That would be the beginning of another film. The only hope for Karin is to have a human attitude toward something, at least once…There’s a turning point in every human experience in life… My endings are turning points. Then it begins again. But as for what it is that begins, I don’t know.”5

This last quote reflects the cycle of birth-death-rebirth that structures the resurrection story. Stromboli is the story of a person whose spirit has been sullied by violence and war. At the end of the film Karin is again in a state of limbo ie not knowing where she is going. With this ambiguity Rossellini refrains from moralizing.6 But Karin and we the audience trust that now she will follow some path that is right for her and with a different perspective.

NOTES

Hnit, Hussein and Almanna, Ali. “Constructing identity through narratives: Personal, social, and digital dimensions.” Social Sciences & Humanities Open (Elsevier: 12, 2025).
I heard this essay for the first time as a sermon delivered by Doug Kraft at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church, Ashby, Massachusetts in 1994. I asked for a printed copy. Although Doug has published numerous books, I am not aware of an instance where this particular essay is published.
Estes, Clarissa Pinkola, Women Who Run with the Wolves (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992),
Brunette, Peter, Roberto Rossellini (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 110.
Brunette, Peter, Roberto Rossellini (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 126.
Because Rossellini had a contract with Hollywood, Hollywood controlled the American release of the film. They ruined it with their editing and they changed the ending. In the Hollywood version Karin goes back to her husband like a good little wife. This ending turns the film into a moral tale of marital fidelity and obedience ie it takes away Karin’s power.

Remix

07. October 2023 · Write a comment · Categories: Critique, Music & Video, Performance, Performing Arts · Tags: La La Human Steps, Louise Lecavalier, not ballet

Mash up sound score and parody by Alice Gebura

REMIX: La La Human Steps Human Sex 1985

You gotta love the inimitable Louise Lacavalier. Thankfully Rainald Di Cesare and Bernar Hébert got her on film. This is a clip from a film directed by Di Cesare and Hébert. La La Human Steps, a Canadian dance company (1980-2015), performs Human Sex 1985. Lead soloist Louise Lacavalier turns the tables on ballet and its traditional prima ballerina. With this clip I provide the lead in and fade out, otherwise the clip is exactly as Di Cesare and Hébert filmed it.

Randall Kay and Louis Seize wrote (and perform on stage) the punk score that’s perfect for this choreography. But watching the film I had deja vu all over again. My mash-up sound track turns the tables a bit as well.

https://vimeo.com/872026678

For more of the incredible Louise Lacavalier, see her web site.

Body Archive – Butoh and Shared Somatic Experience

08. February 2023 · 1 comment · Categories: Critique, Performing Arts · Tags: Anpo protests, body archive, butoh, gender in dance, gender politics, Hiroshima atom bomb, Kasuo Ohno, somatic dance, Tatsumi Hijikata, ue o muite, war

Essay by Alice Gebura

Contemporary Dance for Japan

Butoh began in the 1950s as a reaction to traditional Japanese theater and western culture as it was being imposed on Japan during the post-war occupation. The founders, Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata, wanted a contemporary art form that was distinctly Japanese. The following performance is by Kazuo Ohno.

On the river bank we see struggle and frustration as Ohno pushes against and tries to climb an impenetrable wall. Is the wall a metaphor for power structures? social structures? The flower and ribbon band in his hair are the ornaments of a little girl. Indeed he expresses a child’s wonderment at times as well as spatial disorientation. The movement though is frail and jerky, not youthful, also not stereotypically feminine—the many contradictions within the frame resist categorization. The bent and hesitant movements become markers of psychic condition, not of a particular story or person. The ruffles tied on the back of the shirt are feminine, yet also suggest a strait jacket. While the white face and body paint are characteristic of Kabuki theater, butoh reassess its meaning in its allusion to beings covered in nuclear ash. Trauma is visibly evident and on a par with gender in this mining of the archive within the body. The movements invoke emotions that surely all have experienced across any gender, social class, or culture.

This is from the 1980 Experimental Theater Festival in Nancy, France. The music is “O mio babbino caro” from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, sung by Maria Callas. Ohno said that Callas and Puccini were “close to the Japanese.” Ohno used music and images to trigger his improvisatory movement. He said of his somatic performances that he found within himself both a little girl and a dying woman, often his mother.

“A Corpse Standing in Desperation”

Butoh emerged at the intersections of collective trauma, expressionist dance performance and East/West identity conflicts within 20^th century Japan. In butoh’s somatic performances, whether intended or not, political statements emerge as personal and collective sufferings archived within the body are revealed.

Ohno says:

“Alive, in each and every one of us, are countless individuals whose lifetime experiences, joys, sorrows, angers, doubts, and so forth have been successively passed down from one generation to the next. The physical form I assume now is but the fruit of what I’ve inherited from those who have existed before me. What, you might ask, has become of our ancestors’ ideas and emotions? Where do you suppose our creativity springs from? There’s no way that it springs forth from our finite and limited knowledge of life.”

Butoh, War, and Gender

Turn of the century Japan (Meiji restoration) was an imperialist, colonizing power, invading and occupying Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, and northern China by the 1930s. Such militarism exacted draconian and gendered expectations of its citizens. All males were conscripted into military service. Although not punished, those who were unable to pass the physical requirements were often socially ostracized. The female role was clear: marry and produce more soldiers. Poor females were sold to brothels where they were sex workers (Karayuki-san) at military outposts. “The young women were told that their bodies belonged to the state and that they constituted a form of female army.”¹ This structuring of gender according to the needs of a nation is not unusual in human history. In Japan, however, loyalty and sacrifice for the state were particularly significant. Although individual rights were under discussion at the time, these were clearly subordinate to the goals of the patriarchal and warring state. While collective trauma due to war is not unique to Japan, it was experienced there most profoundly when atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima instantly killed 80,000 people. Another 80,000 died later from radiation injuries. The intensity burned shadows of objects and people into the cityscape, the Hiroshima shadows. Photo: Public Domain

Male homosexuality had “a socially and culturally distinctive form well before the modern period.”²Gendered, state-prescribed roles changed after World War II. The new constitution written during the occupation, heavily influenced by the American occupiers, “defined marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.”³ In post-war Japan the Japanese male was now an Americanized heterosexual. For example, a man was not eligible for promotion at work until he was married and had children. The female was now a consumer yet still relegated to marriage and family. Political trauma continued with the ANPO treaty between Japan and the United States with its militaristic right-wing dictates and the establishment of US military bases in Japan.

The Anpo protests, the largest in Japanese history (including a brutal police response), occurred when the US-Japan security treaty was being renewed, 1959-1960. The song by Kyu Sakamoto is about the loss he felt after the protests failed. It was an international hit, selling millions of records.

Mining the Body Archive

Butoh emerged in mid-century Japan as a somatic practice. The underlying mechanism in butoh is to unearth the self. “Movements are discovered rather than imposed.”⁴ One result of butoh as a self-revelatory practice is that gender is fluid and destabilized. “The concepts of otherness and ambiguity, particularly with respect to gender identity and sexuality, permeate its narratives. Drag, androgyny and fluidity are staple elements.”⁵ Yet in viewing early butoh performers, gender can only be fully grasped by understanding the body as an archive of collective traumas: the traumas of “national body,” nuclear war, and political struggles.

Tatsumi Hijikata Photo: Public Domain

A male presenting as female challenges gendered roles as experienced during Japan’s Meiji restoration and post-war society. Ohno lived through both. His embodied femaleness is not a mature woman, not a mother, neither wise nor particularly functional, and not sexual—resisting the female roles of mother/sex-worker/functioning consumer. The deformed hand gestures, death-mask face, and tremulous shaking also reveal the trauma of wars and nuclear disaster, exposing psychic damage and “dark truths behind the Japanese social mask.”⁶Ohno’s performance in the video from Nancy, France is a complex response to the warring state and social mores regarding gendered roles.

Since its early practice butoh has spread globally and been adapted in numerous ways. Decades later what holds true throughout all of its different forms are:

The rejection of technique and the concept of a style or school
Movement is somatic. “Ohno believed that movement that was too big or too fast endangered his ideal of body-soul-unity, which requires that movements be directed by the soul.”⁷
Primal exploration of the dark side of the human experience
“Its hunched crawls, seizure-like convulsions, and silent screams aim to uncover ugly or uncomfortable truths.”⁸

More Performances

“Words do their job in most circumstances, but movement can probably say a lot more.” – Kazuo Ohno

Notes

Warren, James F. “Review: Sandakan Brothel No. 8: An Episode in the History of Lower-Class Japanese Women”. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context. Issue 4, September 2000.
Tamagawa, Masami. “Same-Sex Marriage in Japan”. Journal of GLBT Family Studies. 12 (2): 160-187.
Makoto, Furukawa, and Angus Lockyer. “The Changing Nature of Sexuality: The Three Codes Framing Homosexuality in Modern Japan.” S.-Japan Women’s Journal. English Supplement, no. 7, 1994, pp. 98–127.
George, Cassidy. “Queer Butoh: Finding Belonging in the Dance of Darkness”. The New York Times. June 21, 2020.
Ibid.
Masakatsu, Gunji. “Butoh and Taboo”. The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (1st ed.). Routledge (2018).
Schwellinger, Lucia. “Ohno Kazuo, Biography and methods of movement creation”. The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (1st ed.). Routledge (2018).
George, Cassidy. “Queer Butoh: Finding Belonging in the Dance of Darkness”. The New York Times. June 21, 2020.

Bibliography

Hiroshima Mon Amour. Screenplay by Margueritte Duras. Dir. Alain Resnais. Prod. Anatole Dauman. Perf. Emanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada. Argos Films, 1959. Film.

Gadu. https://doushinbutoh.com/about

George, Cassidy. “Queer Butoh: Finding Belonging in the Dance of Darkness”. The New York Times. June 21, 2020.

Jones, Colin. “After the Uprising, The Anpo treaty protests and the unmaking of Japan’s postwar left.” The Nation. March 3, 2020.

Kazuko, Kuniyoshi. “On the Eve of the Birth of Ankoku Butoh, Postwar Japanese modern dance and Ohno Kazuo”. The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (1st ed.). Routledge (2018).

Makoto, Furukawa, and Angus Lockyer. “The Changing Nature of Sexuality: The Three Codes Framing Homosexuality in Modern Japan.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. English Supplement, no. 7, 1994, pp. 98–127.

Masakatsu, Gunji. “Butoh and Taboo”. The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (1st ed.). Routledge (2018).

Mezur, Katherine. “Butoh’s Genders, Men in dresses and girl-like women”. The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (1st ed.). Routledge (2018).

Michio, Armitsu. “From Vodou to Butoh, Hijikarta Tatsumi, Katherine Dunham, and the trans-Pacific remaking of blackness”. The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (1st ed.). Routledge (2018).

Ohno, Kazuo and Ohno, Yoshito. Kazuo Ohno’s World, from without & within. Weslyan University Press (2004).

Schwellinger, Lucia. “Ohno Kazuo, Biography and methods of movement creation”. The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (1st ed.). Routledge (2018).

Stein, Bonnie Sue. “Butoh: ‘Twenty Years Ago We Were Crazy, Dirty, and Mad.’” The Drama Review: TDR, vol. 30, no. 2, 1986, pp. 107–126.

Tamagawa, Masami. “Same-Sex Marriage in Japan”. Journal of GLBT Family Studies. 12 (2): 160-187.

Warren, James F. “Review: Sandakan Brothel No. 8: An Episode in the History of Lower-Class Japanese Women”. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context. Issue 4, September 2000.

Molony, Barbara. “Women’s Rights, Feminism, and Suffragism in Japan, 1870-1925. Pacific Historical Review, vol. 69, no. 4, 2000, pp. 639–661.

The Brits

06. February 2013 · 1 comment · Categories: Critique · Tags: Bronte sisters, child labor, Downton Abbey

I’ve been curious to know what all the fuss over Downton Abbey is about so last night I watched the first season on DVD. I was sorely disappointed when the rat poison didn’t make it to the dining room table in the first episode. They missed a great opportunity there. I’m also sorry to say I find the characters too well starched. And, I don’t buy the benevolent, all-wise Earl of Grantham bit – history shows the lord is more lech than liege.

As the story minces along we see the earl put wrongs to rights, the menials learning from his example. Spare me. If the conceit were indeed true, the house staff would be a crew of entitled loafers by season’s end. Downton Abbey perpetuates the myth that the wealthy deserve their pedestal of superiority and the rest of us who benefit from their philosophical wisdom, moral leadership, and puny wages dispensed from on high are meant to accept the status quo. There’s a scene in which Grantham tells Cawley that letting the help wait on him is actually a kindness to them (“everyone has a role to play”), a self-serving sentiment, if ever there was one. We all know the reality: the 1% are more debauched and fraudulent than exemplary, and trickle down of anything is unlikely, except for syphilis perhaps.

The Help at Curraghmore House, 1905, National Library of Ireland

A more interesting set of characters than the Edwardian paper dolls at Downton Abbey are the flesh and blood Brontes of Haworth. I recently read Juliet Barker’s meticulous biography of the famous authors and their father. In addition to writing a compelling, multi-dimensional narrative and character study of creative genius, Ms. Barker provides social and political insight into the first half of 19^th century England. We learn, for example, that in the 1830s the Haworth mill owners were in a twist when new laws were passed to prevent 6-year-old children working more than 48 hours per week, and 12-year-old children working more than 60 hours per week. (Now we know how the Granthams made their money.)

Oyster shuckers, Port Royal, South Carolina, or as the oligarchs would say “the good old days.” Photo by Lewis Hines

Having already read Emily and Charlotte’s wonderful books, I was inspired to pick up Anne Bronte’s novel “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.” In contrast to Emily’s deep soul haunting and Charlotte’s feminist angst, Anne’s prose is charmingly domestic with delightful phrases such as “in correction for his impudence, [he] received a resounding whack over the sconce.”

So next Sunday will find me reading Bronte in my chair in front of the woodstove, instead of watching Downton Abbey.

The Bronte Sisters as painted by their brother, Branwell

Photography & Other Stuff