Khalid Mohamed unspools the shocking adulterous affair in the extra-conservative era of post-independence India, and Europe, between the legendary filmmaker Roberto Rossellini and Sonali Dasgupta.  

The scandalous love affair between Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini and Indian screenwriter Sonali Dasgupta remains one of the most talked-about episodes in cinema and cultural history. From post-independence India, Jawaharlal Nehru’s patronage of world cinema, and the controversial making of India: Matru Bhumi, to the international uproar over Rossellini’s marriage to Ingrid Bergman and his clandestine elopement with Sonali, this saga reveals the clash of tradition, modernity, love and betrayal. It also highlights how women like Sonali, despite being caught in the storm of scandal, found ways to assert dignity, survival, and legacy in foreign lands.

Be it on the prestigious mumbai.heritage Instagram account or www.past-India.com, excerpts from the documentary India: Matru Bhumi by the iconic Italian film auteur Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977), have been hauling us back to images of India in the post-Independence era of the 1950s.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a connoisseur of world cinema and the arts, had commissioned the documentary, circa 1957. Pandit Nehru had been impressed by the director’s humanitarian, neo-realistic films Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1948). 

While extolling India’s incipient efforts towards urban development, the 90-minuter India: Matru Bhumi (1959) had used documentary and fictional re-theatrically staged elements. Inevitably, it was panned by most international critics as “far too exotic, westernized and rose-tinted.” It was also lambasted for the exclusion of the conditions of India’s Muslim community, and its complexities. Pandit Nehru was far from satisfied with the outcome.  

However, it didn’t become as controversial as the New Wave French director Louis Malle’s 360-minute seven-part documentary Phantom India (1969) backed by BBC and shot mostly in Kolkata, which was felt to be excessively one-sided — highlighting the squalor — and was instantaneously banned by the Indian Film Censor Board (some of its clips were dropped on YouTube in the new millennium).

A Scandal that Rocked the World

Back to Roberto Rossellini, as much if not more than for India: Matru Bhumi, to this day, he’s remembered as the archetypal Italian Casanova. A flaming scandal had erupted when his affair with the 27-year-old Sonali Dasgupta (1928-2014), screenwriter and wife of Indian filmmaker Harisadhan Dasgupta hit the newspaper headlines the world over.

Incidentally, Sonali Dasgupta was related to the master filmmaker Bimal Roy. Her aunt, the pioneer photographer Manobina Roy, was Bimal Roy's wife. This made Sonali Dasgupta the niece of Bimal Roy, whose restored print of the widely-lauded Do Bigha Zameen (1953) was screened at the Venice International Film Festival on 5 September this year.

At the time of the scandal, the Italian auteur was 52, and married to the magnificent Ingrid Bergman from Sweden, who had featured in her career-best roles of the classic love story Casablanca (1942) and as a woman trying to escape from her abusive husband in his Stromboli (1950).

Not only in India but in his hometown, Rome, Rossellini’s adulterous affair was unacceptable to the conservative public and the scoop-hungry tabloids, exacerbated by the news that Sonali was pregnant.

When I was interviewing the master artist M.F. Husain for his authorised biography (left incomplete), he had narrated that he had struck a rapport with Rossellini ever since the artist had gifted him a painting Cinq Sens (The Five Senses), which was ultimately sold by his family for Rs 3.6 crore at a Sotheby’s auction in 2010.

Willy-nilly, Husain had to help Rossellini to elope with Sonali Dasgupta (wearing a burqa to pass off as Mrs Husain) with her younger son, Arjun aka Gil, from India. Her elder son, Raja, was left with her husband.

Rossellini, Sonali and Gil were whisked away in a coupe of a late-night train from Bombay to Delhi, chased by the irrepressible R.K. Karanjia, editor of Blitz. Husain stated that the newshound was somehow fobbed off for the time being; Prime Minister Nehru eventually had to intervene and ensure the runaway couple’s flight to Paris.

Love, Betrayal and Legacy

According to a report in a 2020 edition of Kolkata’s daily newspaper The Telegraph, Rossellini in his conversations would brag about his ‘conquests’ like the one with the sensuous German actor Marlene Dietrich, and had once boasted that Ingrid Bergman would fall insanely in love with him within a fortnight. She was already married with children, and was pregnant with Rossellini’s child. That incident had diminished her acting career.

Fortuitously, in the latter days of her life, she featured in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata (1978), re-establishing her artistry as an actor to be cherished forever.

The report in The Telegraph on Rossellini’s incorrigible ways, also informs that Rossellini was determined to get Sonali Dasgupta to Europe but she had procrastinated about leaving India. She had studied abroad after her degree in Santiniketan.

When there was no option but to quit her homestead, Sonali approached Pandit Nehru who had known her since her days in Santiniketan. He had joked that it would be easier to gift her a box of chocolates than a passport. Subsequently, he organised the passport, advising her to stay in touch but to never contact any Indian embassy once she was abroad. Rossellini pulled strings to get her son Gil to Paris.

Despite Sonali’s assertions that she had a steady, secure life with Rossellini, rumours of a rift began to surface circa 1962. Gossip mongers in the corridors of Cinecitta studio noted that Rossellini’s Indian companion hadn’t been spotted anywhere for a month except for one afternoon when she told his assistant, “It is terrible to feel lonely in a world that one is no longer able to understand.”

A sympathetic article in La Settimana magazine spoke about her multiple activities to partially fill up the void she felt around her. Her boutique of Indian handicrafts and textiles in Rome’s fashionable Via Della Vite street had instantly attracted a large clientele of socialites and celebrities. Once she had shown up in the boutique with bruises on her face. To those who tried to commiserate, she explained that she’d had a fall and that she would take care in future to mind her step.

The celebrated journalist, the late Dileep Padgaonkar, had written a book Under Her Spell: Roberto Rossellini in India, published in 2008, disclosing that the Italian auteur and Sonali, whom he married covertly, had sought refuge in the studio of his friend photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, before shifting to Italy. At the studio, they had slept on piled-up telephone directories.
In addition, the book reveals that when Rossellini had phoned Ingrid Bergman from India, at the Raphael Hotel in Paris, to swear that the “rumours” of his affair with Sonali were unfounded, she knew that he was lying. Quote unquote, “As I sat on the bed, I could feel the smile spreading right around up to my ears. I was so pleased. For him. And for me.”

Moreover, Anna Magnani— a formidable actor and ex-mistress of Rossellini— had warned Sonali, “Watch out! He’s a big, ignoble slut, an incredible son of a bitch. Kick him in the ass now and then.”

For 17 years Sonali lived under the shadow of her illustrious but rakish husband. They had a child together, Rafaella Paula. Sonali took care of not only her own children, but also the ones from Rossellini’s previous marriage to Ingrid Bergman, including Isabella Rossellini, who later became an uber famous actress in her own right.

Sonali’s relationship with her elder son Raja Dasgupta was not a close one. A noted documentary filmmaker based in Kolkata wrote in an interview after her death that Raja had said, “I felt no great affection or rancour against her. She did not miss me and I did not miss her.”

Apparently, he remained in touch with Rafaella and the other children of the Rossellini family. His younger brother, Gil, became a filmmaker and producer, who passed away in 2008 after a prolonged illness. On his visits to India, he would often be seen at dinners at the home of filmmaker Mani Kaul.

Sonali’s boutique in Rome had thrived in the 1960s. However, her marriage to Rossellini ended in 1973. Though she spent the rest of her life in anonymity, she never disappeared from public memory. Of all the affairs and four marriages of Rossellini, it was his relationship with Sonali that lasted the longest. “He was the storm and she was the eye of it,” Padgaonkar surmised.

Rinki Bhattacharya, daughter of Bimal Roy, has written, “...not once did she complain, nor show displeasure. And though abroad, she took care of her elder parents. Sonali conducted her affairs, her life with exemplary dignity. She deserves to be celebrated. (This is…My humble tribute to a woman who found her pied-à-terre in an alien land.”

I can only end this extra-bitter and mildly-sweet story by concluding that the scandal that rocked the world shows up the toxicity of men – however celebrated they may be — has been timeless. So has the strength of women who dare to follow their hearts without fearing the unjust consequences which could follow. Because they are aware that they can survive against all odds.