Quick takes on 6 Rossellini films

I usually do 5 films in a set, but this time it will be 6, just because I have 2 sets of 3 films joined together by common threads, all directed by the great Italian director Roberto Rossellini. First up is a trio of films taking place during World War II. The first is Rome, Open City (Italian: Roma città aperta), which came out in 1945 and takes place in Rome during Nazi occupation in 1944. It follows the underground resistance movement, and does an amazing job of portraying the group of men and their wives and children as all walk the precipice of a knife’s edge, in constant danger of being found and incarcerated. The leaders of the movement are constantly changing their names, getting new forged papers, and moving from house to house to stay one step ahead of the gestapo. When one leader is finally found, due to a spurned girlfriend giving him up to the Germans, he is tortured violently, but refuses to give information. A tremendously tense and realistic film, from a director known for the realism in his films.

Rossellini followed with Paisan (Italian: Paisà) in 1946, which took a neorealistic “behind the curtain” view of relations between American soldiers and Italian countryman at the end of the war. It is made up of 6 small vignettes, each written by a different writer (including famous names such as Pagliero and Fellini), with many of the actors being non-professionals, as was Rossellini’s style. The episodes include an army troop liberating a village right behind the retreating Germans; a black soldier discovering how poor the young, homeless Italians are living; a drunken soldier returning to Rome to hunt a girl he met previously but not recognizing who she’s become in his absence; a girl sneaking in to occupied Florence to find a lost love, but finding he’d been killed earlier in the day; three American chaplains finding peace in an Italian monastery; and a small American group working with Italian freedom fighters against the larger German force. The first few stories were better than the latter ones, but overall still a tremendous film that I really liked. We know Italy was on Germany’s side, but the film shows that many Italians were not in same mind with their leaders, and they often had a love/hate relationship with their American “saviors.” The film feels very real and doesn’t take sides; at various times, both Americans and Italians are painted as heroes and villains.

The weakest of the three was the last, Germany, Year Zero (Italian: Germania anno zero). It follows a German family living under the rules and rations of the allied occupation just after the war, in bombed out Berlin. Just 13 years old, Edmund is the man of the house. His father is sick and unable to work, and his older brother has refused to register for rations or work, because he is afraid of prosecution by the Americans since he fought for Germany right up to the end of the war. Edmund goes out every day to lie and cheat to scrape together money for food and necessities. Along the way he bumps up against prostitutes not much older than himself, hoodlums and ne’er-do-wells, and pedophiles, but despite everything he tries, nothing helps his family’s situation. This film is a whole lot of nothing. I think I get what Rossellini was trying to say, but it’s just not very good. Way too melodramatic for a neorealist director.

The next trio of films star acclaimed actress Ingrid Bergman. After being moved by some of Rossellini’s pictures, she wrote him a letter asking to be in his films, and so started a relationship that was a huge scandal in the USA (she gave birth to Rossellini’s son before divorcing her previous husband in 1950). (*Quick note: I watched the English language versions of these films. Stromboli and Europe ’51 were released in both English and Italian. Stromboli in particular was shot completely front to back twice, so that producer Howard Hughes could own a negative for release in the USA, and Rossellini could own a negative for release in Italy.) The first film is Stromboli, which came out in 1950. It is about a Lithuanian refugee stuck in an internment camp after the war, and her only way out is to marry an Italian and go with him to his home on the small volcanic island of Stromboli. She finds the island harsh and its inhabitants harsher. She doesn’t know the language and knows less about their customs and beliefs, and she seems unable or unwilling to acclimate. I never found attachment to Bergman’s character. As an actress, she seems out-of-sorts in this kind of film. Coming from a traditional Hollywood background where directors tell her where to stand and how to deliver lines, the neorealist Rossellini would use his scripts as only a guide, allowing his (often) non-professional actors to improvise and go-with-the-flow. You can tell by watching, this is not Bergman’s forte. Still, the camera loves her, as it always did. A fairly average film for my tastes.

Europe ’51 is much more of a traditional film than Stromboli, and it makes for a better experience. Irene Gerard is a wealthy, bourgeois American living in Rome. Though they have every physical need met, her son seems depressed and eventually kills himself. Seeking answers to what would lead him to this, Irene is influenced by her communist friend Andrea to start volunteering to help poor families in the area. This leads to Irene working, to the consternation of her husband and wealthy friends. Full of lines like, “I’m only happy when I’m working to support my fellow man” and “It’s not fair that I have everything I could need and people out there have nothing” and “We must free the exploited worker and bring an awakening,” it starts to feel like pure propaganda. However, Irene, who has all ready rebuffed her capitalist friends, rejects communism now too, and only finds personal joy in helping people for its sake alone, in an almost religious manner (the final scene in fact casts her as a saint). A good film, even if at times I felt I was watching Rossellini’s pompous ideas being spoonfed to me.

In Journey to Italy, Alex and his wife Katherine travel to Naples to sell a villa they’ve inherited from Katherine’s recently dead uncle Homer. Realizing early in the film that they no longer love each other but have stayed together all these years for convenience, they grow increasingly more spiteful to each other as the film progresses. Katherine is strong and independent, preferring to go by herself to see museums and the countryside. Alex seems to like to have someone depend on him, and begins an affair with a young woman who walks with a cane. As the film goes along though, the estranged couple start to miss each other, but whether their marriage can be saved is left up to the big reveal in the end. A very enjoyable film, and well acted by Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders in the leads.