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DVD Open City
The Allies had barely driven the Nazis out of Rome when Roberto Rosselini went to work on Open City, considered by most to be his greatest work. Shot on bits and short ends of scavenged film, this film helped define Italian neorealism. Audiences were convinced that the actors were all amateurs (they weren't) and the whole film was improvised (it wasn't; the three screenwriters included Federico Fellini). With its semidocumentary camera style and use of actual locations, the film does feel very real. Of course, so does the opening half-hour of Saving Private Ryan, and like that film Open City is at its heart a classic war yarn any Hollywood studio would feel at home with. The story involves members of the Italian underground trying to smuggle badly needed cash out of Nazi-occupied Rome to partisan fighters in the mountains, while the Nazis are hunting down one of the underground, a notorious freedom fighter and seditionist. Anna Magnani (an actor well established in her own country who became an international star with this film) is often singled out for her portrayal as the pregnant, unwed woman who gets caught up in the action on her wedding day, but the entire cast is topnotch. The sparse subtitles are both a blessing and a curse--there is less to read, which allows the viewer to concentrate on the visuals, but there are times when non-Italian-speakers will feel like they're missing out on some juicy dialogue. --Geof Miller
This is simply a milestone film. A picture that broke the walls, specially in those hard times when the shadows of a recent War waggled over the world, in pain, sorrow, revenge, repentant, deception, sad memories and renovated hopes in search of a better world. Rossellini made his masterpiece based on a fiction story according his introductory words but so vivid and so credible that it makes us hard to think about the whole veracity of the previous statement.
The particular seal of the genius is making us to get inside a play with such invisible force that you do not even realize when or where you were engaged to live shoulder to shoulder the lives, times and disgraces of a group of people joined by the cruel fatalism of the omnipresent and repressive Nazis. A mature woman -my always beloved actress Anna Magnani (one of the ten best actress ever born in any age) waits for her bliss, her fiancée Francesco will marry her the next day. But in her neighborhood, we have living her sister who works in a nocturne club with the girlfriend of an important resistance member, a immature woman, who has struck by the life, she has walked too many miles, in search of best positions and living selfishly; a bold priest who will work out as fundamental bound.
What you will see all along this movie is the reality shocking your soul and spirit. This script is so sublime that we forget they are acting, but living the struggling environment and trying to make the best they can according their possibilities.
The misery, greed, double moral, SS nastiness, the bold resistance and the supreme of surviving makes of this film a diamantine and majuscule artistic achievement. We should wait eleven years to presence another invaluable gem in this sense: Wajda `s Kanal.
Obviously you should not do without of Paisa and Germania Anno Zero of this superb filmmaker and a true universal patrimony: Roberto Rossellini
Open City
Director Rossellini shot this neo-realist masterpiece on the broken streets of Rome during the first days of the Allied liberation, mainly using non-actors due to limited funding. This only adds to the film's authenticity, as it pays tribute to the brave partisans who fought fascism to the end. Unforgettable filmmaking, at its purest and most powerful.
Caution - genius at work
Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977) entered the world of cinema by making propaganda films for Mussolini, an apprenticeship which would shape his perception of cinematography as an art form which must endeavour to cast off the hydra of State control and political manipulation.
"Roma, citta aperta" is seen as the birth of neorealist cinema - a form characterised by its humanism and attempt to deliver social reality, using authentic locations, handheld cameras, available light, and 'natural' performances from a largely amateur cast. It was the first in Rosselini's trilogy ("Rome, Open City", "Paisàn", and "Germany, Year Zero") exploring the effects of war, and is widely regarded both as his masterpiece and as a pillar of post-War European cinema.
Conceived and begun during the German occupation, while Rossellini was himself in hiding, "Rome, Open City" is set in Nazi-ruled Italy. It takes the camera out of the studio and onto the streets, capturing graphic, near documentary images and transporting the viewer into a world which is apparently real. There is none of Hollywood's glitz and glamour, here, but raw life and bitter social commentary.
German soldiers search for a resistance leader who had fought the Fascists in Spain and who has gone on to organise the underground in Italy. Lest we see this as a tale of good versus evil, Rossellini presents a naturalistic world of Rome, rife with black marketeers, food shortages, exploitation and manipulation, collaboration, and a priest who is evidently not enamoured of the Fascists and who is prepared to work with the communist resistance to defeat what he perceives as the greater evil.
In part, the realism of the film reflects Rossellini's desperate struggle to obtain enough film, cash, and materiel to complete the production - themes which are explored in the DVD's extras. This is filmmaking under considerable constraints, and no less impressive because of it (though the visual quality of the reproduction is poor in places, and the sound crackles, reflecting the variable film quality with which Rossellini was shooting).
Aldo Fabrizi is magnificent as the priest, a practical man, a man with deep-seated values and morals (perhaps ironically), and a character capable of great humour. Rossellini tinges the drama and tension with moments of light relief.
Anna Magnagni plays a lone parent whose fiancé is pursued by the Germans, a woman capable of fierce passion and forthright authority. She stands in sharp contrast to other female characters who have enjoyed the company of Germans and have collaborated during the occupation. The women occupy a symbolic role, and the film makes use of subtle symbolism in its critique of the Church's appeasement of the Fascists.
As a piece of drama, "Rome, Open City" is a gripping tale which has stood the test of time. It retains its sense of reality, of being Rome in 1944, but the story has timeless qualities made emphatic by the striking visual images which characterise the production.
A classic, an absolute classic of world cinema, enormously influential, and a very rewarding and enjoyable film.
Vittorio De Sica's remarkable 1947 drama of desperation and survival in Italy's devastating post-war depression earned a special Oscar for its affecting power. Shot in the streets and alleys of Rome, De Sica uses the real-life environment of contemporary life to frame his moving drama of a desperate father whose new job delivering cinema posters is threatened when a street thief steals his bicycle. Too poor to buy another, he and his son take to the streets in an impossible search for his bike. Cast with nonactors and filled with the real street life of Rome, this landmark film helped define the Italian neorealist approach with its mix of real life details, poetic imagery, and warm sentimentality. De Sica uses the wandering pair to witness the lives of everyday folks, but ultimately he... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lamberto Maggiorani - Enzo Staiola Director(s): Vittorio De Sica DVD Release Date: Released the 24 November 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Too bad has to be in Italian rather than the original German. Scenes of devastated Berlin are limited. European depiction of life at its basest, a decimated civilization trying to rebuild itself as the elements responsible for its downfall dominate. Not as harsh as might be expected. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Roberto Rossellini DVD Release Date: Released the 08 October 2002 Usually ships within 24 hours
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At three brief hours, La Dolce Vita, a piece of cynical, engrossing social commentary, stands as Federico Fellini's timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini (extraordinarily played by Marcello Mastroianni) is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence. A man of paradoxical emotional juxtapositions (cool but tortured, sexy but impotent), he dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position. He romanticizes finding true love but acts unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Marcello Mastroianni - Anita Ekberg Director(s): Federico Fellini DVD Release Date: Released the 21 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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I had read about this movie because it comes up on an occassional "All Time Greatest Movie" lists. As such, I was aware of the fact that the movie was made with a complete cast of amateurs taken from a Sicilian fishing village which was also the location of the movie. The opening credits substantiate that by not naming the actors but, rather, citing them as the people of the village. They do a very good, sometimes excellent, job. There might not be an Academy Award-level preformance in the bunch but they out-shine the cast of most "B" movies I've seen. In fact, only the person who plays Mara's boy friend, the mason, give anything like a one-dimensional preformance and it is mostly noticeable by how it stands apart from the others.
Ossessione isn't just the finest film version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain's classic tale of murder, betrayal, and erotic obsession; it's also the first masterpiece of Italian neorealism and a key historical precursor of film noir. A handsome drifter (Massimo Girotti) fetches up at an isolated roadhouse, gets mutually besotted with the proprietor's sultry wife (Clara Calamai), and has soon carried out a plot to murder the older man in an apparent off-road accident. That's only the beginning, of course. In his directorial debut, Luchino Visconti weaves a sensuous, tragic spell, born equally of the stark, sun-struck settings--especially those utterly realistic yet somehow otherworldly highways, elevated above the surrounding marshland--and a dynamic... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Clara Calamai - Massimo Girotti Director(s): Luchino Visconti DVD Release Date: Released the 16 July 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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