Rossellini purportedly denied responsibility for the film, claiming the American version was cut by RKO beyond recognition. Cut or not cut, the film reflects no credit on him. Given elementary-school dialog to recite and impossible scenes to act, Ingrid Bergman's never able to make the lines real nor the emotion sufficiently motivated to seem more than an exercise ... The only visible touch of the famed Italian director is in the hard photography, which adds to the realistic, documentary effect of life on the rocky, lava-blanketed island. Rossellini's penchant for realism, however, does not extend to Bergman. She's always fresh, clean and well-groomed." Harrison's Reports wrote: "As entertainment, it does have a few moments of distinction, but on the whole it is a dull slow-paced piece, badly edited and mediocre in writing, direction and acting." John McCarten of The New Yorker found that there was "nothing whatsoever in the footage that rises above the humdrum", and felt that Bergman "doesn't really seem to have her heart in any of the scenes." Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post lamented, "It's a pity that many people who never go to foreign-made pictures will be drawn into this by the Rossellini-Bergman names and will think that this flat, drab, inept picture is what they've been missing." In Britain, The Monthly Film Bulletin was also negative, writing that Rossellini's "extempore method is sadly out of place in a film dealing with personal relationships and, although there are indications that Karin is intended to be a complex and interesting character, these are never developed, and her motives and actions remain unpredictable. Other characters have no real identity, and hardly begin to come alive ... Ingrid Bergman makes a gallant effort with a part ill-conceived and scripted, and calling for a personality and quality which she cannot command." Recent assessments have been more positive. Reviewing the film in 2013 in conjunction with its DVD release as part of The Criterion Collection, Dave Kehr called the film "one of the pioneering works of modern European filmmaking." In an expansive analysis of the film, critic Fred Camper wrote of the drama, "Like many of cinema's masterpieces, Stromboli is fully explained only in a final scene that brings into harmony the protagonist's state of mind and the imagery. This structure...suggests a belief in the transformative power of revelation. Forced to drop her suitcase (itself far more modest than