Life in a Sausage Factory

Italy's swarthy, balding Director Roberto Rossellini (Open City, Paisan), on his first visit to the U.S., was taking the fast pace of Hollywood in stride last week. The telephone in his double suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel was kept ringing by cinema celebrities eager to entertain him. The evening he arrived, he dined with Ingrid Bergman (he expects to sign her up for his next picture). The next night there was a small, stylish dinner given by Writer-Director Billy Wilder. One morning David O. Selznick called.

The movie which Rossellini plans to make with Bergman is to be filmed in Italy and will not be the sort of thing that Hollywood would do with a major star. She will be the only professional in the company. ("I don't need stars," says Rossellini, "but I have nothing against Miss Bergman because she is a star.") The rest of the cast will be picked up on location. As usual, Rossellini will work without a script; except for a 22-page synopsis, the story's details are all in his head.

Bergman will play the unglamorous part of a Nordic woman trapped in an Italian D.P. camp. The only way she can escape is by marrying a Sicilian fisherman. At his island home she finds the people strange and hostile, the fisherman's life lard and grubby. She tries unsuccessfully to escape, becomes pregnant, attempts suicide.

Actress Bergman is all for Rossellini's non-Hollywood method. If she can begin he picture in April, it will probably be released next fall. Meanwhile, Rossellini is quietly turning down all Hollywood offers. Says he: "I am not one who says Hollywood is terrible . . . Hollywood is a great place. It is like a sausage factory that turns out fine sausages. I go back to Italy where I have freedom."

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