text: It's really a shame there was so much controversy surrounding this picture (in other words, the infamous affair between Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini), as this drew a lot of attention to a very forgettable film. The story is incredibly slow, cheap looking and uninteresting. And, to top this off, the film is stuffed to the brim with amateurish actors who can barely speak any English. I really would have preferred subtitles--it would have made the experience less exhausting. Back to the rotten acting. The Neo-realist movement was big in Italy at the time this film was made. Many of these films are absolute masterpieces (such as De Sica's Umberto D., The Children Are Watching Us and Miracle in Milan) because they got so much out of the non-professional actors. They behaved like normal people, but in Stromboli they act like normal people TRYING to be actors and come off very badly--like kids in a school play. <br /><br />By the way,...if you are hoping the movie has a good ending (thereby making your time commitment to the film worth while), DON'T bother. The plot was just totally uninvolving and silly--so much so, that I really found that I could have cared less about the characters. Like the island they all inhabit, the film is desolate and without color or life.