Often identified with the constrictive "neorealist" label, Roberto Rossellini stands as one of the greatest directors in the history of Italian film: the man responsible for the postwar rebirth of Italian cinema and one of the few truly great humanists (along with Jean Renoir) to work in the medium.Born into a bourgeois Roman family, Rossellini spent his formative years under Mussolini's fascist fist and, by his early 30s, had drifted into filmmaking--a common pattern amongst the idle Italian rich. He worked with his friend, producer Vittorio Mussolini, the son of "Il Duce", on the script for
