Vulcano has been seen by some as a vehicle of revenge by Anna Magnani against her estranged lover at the time, Italian film directorRoberto Rossellini, who had chosen Ingrid Bergman to star in his film series about marriage, instead of her. Rossellini made his film Stromboli
on the nearby volcanic island of Stromboli at the same time as Volcano was being made on Salina.
Both films were shot simultaneously in similar locales in the Aeolian Islands, only 40 km apart; both actresses played independent-minded roles in a neorealist fashion. Life magazine wrote, "... in an atmosphere crackling with rivalry... Reporters were accredited, like war correspondents, to one or the other of the embattled camps.... Partisanship infected the Via Veneto (boulevard in Rome), where Magnaniacs and Bergmaniacs clashed frequently." However, Magnani still considered Rossellini the "greatest director she ever acted for".[1][2]
Plot
The film plot involves a former prostitute, Maddalena Natoli (played by Magnani), who was exiled to the island of her birth by the police. There, she suffers ostracism by the islanders, and she tries to defend the virtue of her younger sister from the advances of a deep-sea diver. Vulcano runs for about 106 minutes. [3]
