Motion Picture Director. He spent a comfortable childhood in the environment of the Roman upper middle class, his father, a building contractor, directed Roberto and his brother Renzo towards a humanistic education. The stability of the family falters when the mother leaves home with another man and moves to Varese with her fourth child, Micaela. The family unit dissolves with the premature death of his father in 1931 from bronchopneumonia. Roberto, who until then had tried to reconcile the work of builder with a passion for cinema with little success, decides to devote himself completely to the latter. He made some documentaries for the Istituto Luce, in those years he adhered to fascism to continue his work, but without sharing its ideology. In 1936 he married the costume designer Marcella De Marchis with whom he had a son, Romano who died prematurely. He shoots the so-called "trilogia fascista", "La nave bianca" (1941), "Un pilota ritorna" (1942) and "L'uomo dalla croce" (1943). The music of the trilogy is edited by his brother Renzo, as in other films, including "Roma città aperta" (1945) with Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi. The film, set during the Nazi occupation and shot with makeshift means, gets the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar nomination for screenplay. Still against the background of the war, the subsequent neorealist films "Paisà" (1946) and "Germania anno zero" (1947), then the meeting with Ingrid Bergman, which changes both her private life and her artistic choices. The two meet thanks to a letter addressed to him by Bergman as an admirer, they fall in love and get married in 1950. The actress will play for him in "Stromboli, Terra di Dio" (1949), "Europa '51" ( 1951), "Viaggio in Italia" (1953) and "Giovanna d'Arco al Rogo" (1954), in which the director emphasizes the psychology of the characters. The couple has three children, Roberto and the twins Isotta and Isabella, the latter became a model and popular actress. The couple divorced in 1957 when the director had an affair with an Indian screenwriter from which his daughter Raffaella was born. In 1959 he won the Golden Lion in Venice for "General Della Rovere". In the 1960s he returned to the documentary style with works such as "La presa del potere da parte di Luigi XIV" and "Socrate" (1970). In the last period of his career he devoted himself mainly to television productions, such as "Blaise Pascal" (1971). He died of a heart attack.