The war between humans and nature is endless, with the victory of one implying the defeat of both. This rather frightening truth cannot be more understated, especially in light of today’s global environmental crisis, which seems all but irreversible. The prospect of restoring the supposed equilibrium we have with the natural world has at the most an equivocal basis: has humanity ever conformed to any state of existence other than itself? In Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli (1950), the first of the Bergman-Rossellini collaboration, the contrast is made starkly clear: the outsized ego of mankind versus the impregnable, and impenetrable, all-powerfulness of Mother Nature. Bergman played Karin, a Lithuanian exile dreaming of a better life but marrying an ex-POW fisherman out of desperate need to be released from the refugee camp. Her husband takes her back to his home, the volcanic island Stromboli, where a bemused Karin is greeted by its dour-faced people - mostly elders with a smatte