This is such an important work even the Vatican now includes it in its list of great films (no doubt for the self-sacrificing priest). It features in sundry other lists, an obligatory stop it would seem for anyone wanting to sample the works that defined film.
By now you know it as a classic that heralded a whole new mode of filmmaking in Italy and abroad, more 'real' and immediate than the studio artifice of before, taking place in open streets, using non-actors, relying more on improvisation than script. Sitting down to watch this now however, you'll be confronted with something quite melodramatic, scripted and acted in the usual way. An early scene for example where people ransack a baker's shop for food you'll be able to tell as the scripted dramatization of food shortages rather than something that can steal into you as visceral and improvised. By this I mean the whole stagecraft is obvious and doesn't feel all that different from a studio movie.
In spite of some of Rossellini's efforts, our distance from these Rome streets where real people were suffering only months before through events much like we see in the film is simply not as close as you would perhaps expect.
In part that's because our own viewing has shifted since. WWII movies are now common film lore. This was the first of its kind, if we exclude documentaries during the war or jingoist propaganda. Work began only months after actual Nazis had been evacuated from these same streets. War was still booming elsewhere in Europe.
But even more important for me, I don't think Rossellini was setting out to revolutionize. Realism in this case meant chronicling very close to real events rather than a radically 'real' light in which to do so. The urgency of the effort would have been enough to deal with I'm sure.
It's this urgency to stage events so close in time that inadvertently becomes mirrored in the film itself. This, rather than a story of defiance against Nazil evil, now seeming ordinary and usual because of how familiar, is what I find the most vital thing here.
The film is about rival groups trying to stage events and assert control over them around the city. Members of the resistance sneak from house to house trying to evade capture. Meanwhile the Gestapo is scouring the city for them.
The first have to spontaneously improvise on the spot, make narrow escapes, act roles and create fiction around the authorities. The Germans are rigidly controlled by a Nazi director who never leaves his office. It takes a spurned lover, judging her for how she lives, to give them away.
There are of course scenes that still affect. The one that begins with Nazis rounding up of tenants from a tenement and ends with Anna Magnani chasing after a truck would be my favorite here. The ending with a prisoner being tortured to confess must have been a powerful depiction at the time, but it's also part of a melodramatic climax.
By now you know it as a classic that heralded a whole new mode of filmmaking in Italy and abroad, more 'real' and immediate than the studio artifice of before, taking place in open streets, using non-actors, relying more on improvisation than script. Sitting down to watch this now however, you'll be confronted with something quite melodramatic, scripted and acted in the usual way. An early scene for example where people ransack a baker's shop for food you'll be able to tell as the scripted dramatization of food shortages rather than something that can steal into you as visceral and improvised. By this I mean the whole stagecraft is obvious and doesn't feel all that different from a studio movie.
In spite of some of Rossellini's efforts, our distance from these Rome streets where real people were suffering only months before through events much like we see in the film is simply not as close as you would perhaps expect.
In part that's because our own viewing has shifted since. WWII movies are now common film lore. This was the first of its kind, if we exclude documentaries during the war or jingoist propaganda. Work began only months after actual Nazis had been evacuated from these same streets. War was still booming elsewhere in Europe.
But even more important for me, I don't think Rossellini was setting out to revolutionize. Realism in this case meant chronicling very close to real events rather than a radically 'real' light in which to do so. The urgency of the effort would have been enough to deal with I'm sure.
It's this urgency to stage events so close in time that inadvertently becomes mirrored in the film itself. This, rather than a story of defiance against Nazil evil, now seeming ordinary and usual because of how familiar, is what I find the most vital thing here.
The film is about rival groups trying to stage events and assert control over them around the city. Members of the resistance sneak from house to house trying to evade capture. Meanwhile the Gestapo is scouring the city for them.
The first have to spontaneously improvise on the spot, make narrow escapes, act roles and create fiction around the authorities. The Germans are rigidly controlled by a Nazi director who never leaves his office. It takes a spurned lover, judging her for how she lives, to give them away.
There are of course scenes that still affect. The one that begins with Nazis rounding up of tenants from a tenement and ends with Anna Magnani chasing after a truck would be my favorite here. The ending with a prisoner being tortured to confess must have been a powerful depiction at the time, but it's also part of a melodramatic climax.