#497: ROSSELLINI, Roberto: Rome Open City (1945)
ROBERTO ROSSELLINI'S WAR TRILOGY {Spine #500} OOP
ROSSELLINI, Roberto (Italy)
Rome Open City [1945]
Spine #497
DVD
DVD
This was Roberto Rossellini's revelation, a harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it. Though told with more melodramatic flair than the other films that would form this trilogy and starring some well-known actors — Aldo Fabrizi as a priest helping the partisan cause and Anna Magnani in her breakthrough role as the fiancée of a resistance member — Rome Open City is a shockingly authentic experience, conceived and directed amid the ruin of World War II, with immediacy in every frame. Marking a watershed moment in Italian cinema, this galvanic work garnered awards around the globe and left the beginnings of a new film movement in its wake.
103 minutes
Black & White
Black & White
Monaural
in Italian and German
1:33:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2009
Director/Writers
Script by Sergio Amidei (with the collaboration of Federico Fellini, Rod Geiger, Alfred Hayes, Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, and Roberto Rossellini).
Rossellini was 39 when he directed Rome Open City.
Other Rossellini films in the Collection:
#498: Paisan (1946)
#499: Germany Year Zero (1948)
#675: Journey To Italy (1954)
#463: Il Generale Della Rovere (1959)
#456: The Taking Of Power By Louis XIV (1966)
Eclipse Series 14: Blaise Pascal (1972)
#463: Il Generale Della Rovere (1959)
#456: The Taking Of Power By Louis XIV (1966)
Eclipse Series 14: Blaise Pascal (1972)
What is neorealism, and is this film its pregenitor?
- Location shooting and refusal of the studio;
- The use, when possible, of available or natural light (rather than Hollywood’s three-point lighting);
- Nonprofessional actors representing ordinary, often lower-class characters like themselves;
- Unobtrusive camera work and editing; and a rejection of traditional narrative in favor of a documentary-like recording of preexisting reality, captured whole (i.e., long takes preferred over montage) … [James Quandt, see The War Trilogy (Spine #500)]
How do these four declarations apply to Open City?
- Of course. Even if Rossellini had wanted to shoot in the studios of Cinecittà, he could not have done so — it was repurposed as a displaced persons’ camp during this period.
- Of course. But Rossellini didn’t have much of a choice. He was using film stock from every possible source, and often didn’t have the ability or the time to make thoughtful choices about lighting.
- Not really. Anna Magnani (Pina) and Aldo Fabrizi (Don Pietro) — who carry much of the film — were professionals.
- Mixed. The film contains many wipes — perhaps the most obvious filmic punctuation from Hollywood since the 30s — and Renzo Rossellini’s (the director’s brother) score soars over all the melodramatic moments … surely not “unobtrusive.”
But this just goes to show that labels are useless. It is neorealist if the important critics say it is …
The point is that this is an absolutely fantastic feat of filmmaking — especially if one takes into consideration the time period in which it was made, and the complete lack of normal tools which are taken for granted in most cinematic productions.
Rossellini even had to “steal” electricity from the American G.I. dance hall!
**
BTW, my favorite wipe occurs when Don Pietro is crossing a busy street; a streetcar goes by and a nearly invisible wipe takes us to the next cut.
Certainly, Kurosawa must have seen this, as he uses a virtually identical wipe with a streetcar in both Scandal (1950) [Eclipse Series #7] and The Idiot (1951) [Eclipse Series #7] …
**
Rossellini adds a scene which strikes at the very heart of the Italian paradox: the long decades of fascist rule when a majority of Italians just sat back and enjoyed the rallies and new buildings:
Pina (Magnani) is unburdening herself to her priest, Don Pietro (Fabrizi), wondering aloud how God could have allowed the past 20 years to happen to her and her fellow countrymen:
Pina
“Doesn’t Christ see us?
Don Pietro
“So many people ask me that: ‘Doesn’t Christ see us?’ But are we sure we haven’t deserved this scourge? Are we sure we’ve always lived according to the Lord’s laws? People never think of changing their ways, but when the piper must be paid, they despair and ask, ‘Doesn’t the Lord see us? Doesn’t he take pity on us?’ Yes, he does, but we have so much to be forgiven for, and for that we must pray and forgive many things …”
Pina’s death is truly iconographic — Don Pietro holds her limp body … Compare
with
Film Rating (0-60):
56
The ExtrasThe Booklet
#500: Forty-four page booklet featuring essays by Quandt (on the trilogy), Irene Bignardi (Rome Open City: A Star is Born), Colin MacCabe (Paisan: More Real Than Real), and Jonathan Rosenbaum (Germany Year Zero: The Humanity of the Defeated).
**
Picture yourself as an average Italian “survivor” in 1945. Perhaps you fought with the resistance; perhaps you got by on your wits and strategic luck (you were there for the bakery “holiday”); perhaps you were even a collaborator of sorts …
After all, Rossellini himself made prewar films under the auspices of Mussolini’s son, Vittorio for years, probably compromising himself over and over again.
Bignardi:
“The people of Italy were won over, finding in the film the flavor of truth. In Rome Open City, which spoke of men and women in difficult times, tormented, injured, scorned, humiliated, they recognized their own experiences during the years of a tragic, suicidal war. In Magnani, with her feverish face of a woman of the people, with her rough voice, with her natural behavior so far from the phony sophistication of the divas of fascist cinema, with her passion, they found the truth of an Italy too often forgotten. In the actors taken from the street who surrounded her — not Fabrizi, a famous comic performer turned here into a tragic figure, or the professional Maria Michi, a woman very near the resistance and the Communist Party, but in the real, tormented faces of many of the others — they saw themselves.”
Featuring film scholar Peter Bondanella.
Really excellent. Bondanella sweeps along with the film, pointing out details and overarching meanings — nonstop.
Video introduction
Video introduction
By Rossellini from 1963.
Once Upon a Time … “Rome Open City”
Once Upon a Time … “Rome Open City”
A 2006 documentary on the making of this historic film, featuring rare archival material and footage of Magnani, Fellini, Ingrid Bergman, and many others.
Excellent doc.
Video interview 1
Video interview 1
With Rossellini scholar Adriano Aprà.
Excellent interview; informative.
Rossellini and the City
Rossellini and the City
Visual essay by film scholar Mark Shiel (Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City) on Rossellini’s use of the urban landscape in the War Trilogy.
Shiel drones on, but makes some important points; for example, the way the film completes a circle with first and last shots of the dome of St. Peter’s.
Video interview 2
Video interview 2
With film critic and Rossellini friend Father Virgilio Fantuzzi, who discusses the filmmaker and the role of religion in Rome Open City.
Priest’s point of view; someone who knew Rossellini well …
Extras Rating (0-40):
Extras Rating (0-40):
Comments
Post a Comment