Revisiting: ‘Rome, Open City’, a Cornerstone of Italian Neorealist Cinema
Courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
If you have ever found yourself in a world cinema university course or a retrospective on Italian cinema, you have likely seen Rome, Open City (Città Aperta) - one of the most celebrated films of the Italian neorealism movement of the 1940s and early 1950s. Directed by Roberto Rossellini, Rome, Open City was filmed in 1945 and released the following year. The movie is well-known to be the first in Rossellini's War Trilogy, followed by Paisan and Germany, Year Zero. In the nearly eight decades since its release, Rome, Open City's legacy as a work with powerful intentions of depicting the harsh realities of life continues to impact audiences and influence filmmakers worldwide.
Filmed in early 1945 before World War II had officially ended, Rome, Open City's narrative is set in the last days of Nazi-occupied Rome before the Allied Powers liberated the city in June 1944. The movie uses a fictionalized story and characters based on an amalgamation of research from first-hand accounts and Rossellini's real-life experiences during the war. Rome, Open City features many characters from all walks of life orbiting Giorgio Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero, an Italian filmmaker who also served as a screenwriter on Paisan), a leader of the National Liberation Committee working against the collaboration of the Italian Fascists and the Nazi regime. Emphasizing the complex interconnectivity of such an array of authentic identities during a time of great tragedy and destruction in modern history, Rome, Open City balances real-world portrayals of the city while utilizing a melodramatic narrative that strikes the universality of human emotion.
As one of the earliest movies of Italian neorealism, Rome, Open City complies with the movement's ideologies through its visual and narrative language, transmitting it to audiences with influential methods that carried the movement to the forefront of world cinema. With filmmaking plainly deprived by the austerity and devastation of a country in wartimes, much of Rossellini's direction in Rome, Open City is informed by its limitations. Only a few studio sets are used throughout the film, with the director instead choosing to shoot on real locations to convey the fierce obliteration of Rome, which was heavily bombed by the Allies throughout 1943 and 1944. As a result, many of the film's scenes are set against the backdrop of the city's crumbling buildings and ruined infrastructure. This priority of on-location shooting would become an essential foundation of Italian neorealism. In addition, Rome, Open City was shot on 35mm film stock that was only available on the black market - resulting in a varied look and texture that mirrors the documentary footage and newsreels taken throughout the war. The documentary feel of Rome, Open City is reinforced through the reliance on natural lighting and, perhaps most notably, Rossellini's decision to cast non-actors in many of the film's roles. Other than Anna Magnani - one of Italy's most celebrated actors of her time - non-professional actors who lived in Rome were used to portray the hardships of living in occupied Italy with absolute first-hand truthfulness.
Courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
The moving incarnation of the disillusioned lives of Rome, Open City's characters intensely capture the suffering caused by World War II in Europe. Through Rossellini's emphasis on many characters, including resistance members, women, children, and priests, the film can capture critical perspectives from those who lived through the conflict. Rome, Open City's screenplay excavates emotions of guilt, trauma, and fury reflective of the Italian people and their attitudes toward a war they largely did not want to be involved in, which brought tremendous devastation to their country. The movie also confronts the conflicts of faith brought about by the war, particularly through the central character of the priest Don Pietro, who chooses to support the resistance movement and Manfredi, regardless of his atheistic Communist leanings, choosing to cast aside spiritual differences in order to fight the evils of the Nazi puppet regime. Arguably the most robust outlook explored in Rome, Open City is that of the children, forced to grow up during such times of uncertainty and despair without the possibility of seeing a future that will not be extremely shaped by the times of war.
While Rome, Open City leaves an unforgettable legacy as one of the seminal works of Italian neorealism, the film was also praised and celebrated at the time of its release. At the first official edition of the Cannes Film Festival in 1946, Rome, Open City tied for the Grand Prix, the Palme d'Or of the time, along with scoring a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 19th Academy Awards. In addition, one of the film's co-writers, a young Federico Fellini, received a significant career boost from his work on the movie before becoming one of Italian cinema's most iconic filmmakers. The endorsement of showing the authenticity of the real world during the Nazi occupation of Rome influenced not only the neorealist cinema's duration but also many other influential movements, including the French New Wave, Cinema Novo in Brazil, and Kitchen Sink realism in Great Britain. For years to come, Rossellini's Rome, Open City will continue to inspire cinema across the globe and serve as a foundational film of Italian neorealism.
Rome, Open City is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and Kanopy.
Courtesy of The Criterion Collection.