Isabella Rossellini describes a career started late, in Locarno

Isabella Rossellini met the Locarno Film Festival audience at Forum @ Spazio Cinema. The conversation was moderated by Olivier Père, a former artistic director of the festival, the day after the Excellence Award was presented in Piazza Grande.

The actress, director and model is 74 and the daughter of the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Her account, however, began elsewhere. «La mia prima passione sono sempre stati gli animali, e rimangono gli animali» ("My first passion has always been animals, and they remain so"), she said.

At 55 she took a degree in ethology, and she now runs an eleven-hectare farm at Brookhaven in New York State. She showed the audience her white blazer with wool panels: «Queste sono le mie pecore, ho decorato i miei vestiti con la loro lana» ("These are my sheep, I decorated my clothes with their wool").

That passion produced the short film series "Green Porno", about animal behaviour, told through costume and narration. There are now fifty of them. The project was financed by Robert Redford's Sundance Channel, when video distribution on iPhones was just beginning. «Devo molto a Robert Redford, è lui che mi ha offerto la possibilità di diventare regista» ("I owe a lot to Robert Redford, he is the one who gave me the chance to become a director"), she recalled.

She was direct about her technical limits, and explained that she took her cue from the silent cinema of Méliès. She is currently producing "The Survival of the Friendliest", a new series of thirty-minute animal films. Asked what makes her write, she answered: «Lo stupore mi porta a scrivere» ("Amazement makes me write"), citing her discovery that worms are hermaphrodites.

A path begun late

«Credo di aver fatto tutto in ritardo, mi sarebbe piaciuto fare tutto prima. Sono diventata modella a 27 anni, attrice a 32 e ho fatto un Master a 55 anni» ("I think I did everything late; I would have liked to do it all earlier. I became a model at 27, an actress at 32, and I did a master's at 55"), she said.

At 42 Lancôme ended her contract on the grounds that she was too old. The same company took her back at 63. In the meantime she had returned to university and resumed working in film.

Her entry into cinema was gradual. She started as a costumier alongside Marcella De Marchis, her father's first wife. During a shoot in Rome she took a small part in Vincente Minnelli's "A Matter of Time", released in 1976, in which her mother also appeared. After the criticism she received for the Taviani brothers' "The Meadow" in 1979, she gave up acting for five years. What persuaded her back was a remark by the photographer Richard Avedon: «Guarda che le modelle sono un po' come le attrici mute» ("Models are a bit like silent film actresses").

«Nel mio lavoro scelgo soprattutto il regista» ("In my work I choose the director above all"), she explained. Of her best-known role, Dorothy Vallens in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", she recalled being «pettinata come una bambola per mostrare che tutto andava bene» ("styled like a doll to show that everything was fine"). On the song in the film she noted: «sono io che ho cantato ma abbiamo fatto un sacco di editing» ("I did the singing, but we did a great deal of editing").

Among her favourites she named John Schlesinger, with an amused memory: «Qualche anno fa ho sognato che mio padre e John si erano fidanzati in Paradiso» ("A few years ago I dreamt that my father and John had got engaged in Heaven").

Speaking about Alice Rohrwacher, with whom she made "La Chimera" in 2023 and recently a film in Umbria, she said: «Alice è magica, anche sua sorella Alba» ("Alice is magical, and so is her sister Alba"). The two sisters are the daughters of a German beekeeper, and Rossellini also keeps bees and produces honey. «Io vedo nel suo cinema sia mio padre, che Fellini» ("In her cinema I see both my father and Fellini"), she added, describing a kind of magical neorealism in the younger generation.

On neorealism she recalled the movement's practical origin: «Il neorealismo è nato come esigenza per fare un nuovo cinema dopo la guerra» ("Neorealism was born out of the need to make a new cinema after the war"). Asked about her favourite films, she replied: «Un film che guardo ogni anno è 'Il circo' di Charlie Chaplin» ("One film I watch every year is Charlie Chaplin's 'The Circus'").