Rome, Open City by Roberto Rossellini 1945 (Italy) 1h 45

Handheld cameras tremble with the urgency of open wounds and violent emotion in Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 drama of the Italian resistance to the capital’s occupation by Nazi Germany. It’s a tale of two women: Pina (Anna Magnani), a widowed mother who is pregnant with the child of a resistance fighter whom she is about to marry, and Marina (Maria Michi), a night-club performer in love with another leading resister and longtime anti-Fascist. Yielding to spur-of-the-moment impulses, one sacrifices for the resistance, the other sacrifices the resistance. Magnani’s—and Pina’s—natural and earthy theatricality conveys an art of living, which is also the stuff of Rossellini’s art.

Pina’s young son and a patriotic priest are involved in the tense, meticulous plotting of clande¬s¬tine warfare, which unfolds against unstinting depictions of the German occupiers’ cruel psychological games and depraved physical exactions. Rossel¬lini’s tense, bloody, death-haunted film conjures an authenticity that’s based less on its quasi-documentary style than on a vision that brings ideas to life. The drama reveals a deep grid of underlying connections: the unity of Communists and nationalists against the German occupation and their Italian Fascist allies, and the popular legitimacy of the resistance. It offers a template for a postwar renewal of Italy, as well as of Italian cinema.

— Richard Brody, The New Yorker


Try and make it to the MLC Librairie Café for 6.45 to get a drink and have a chat, then we'll have a brief introduction to the director and film, and start the film promptly shortly after 7.00, with time afterwards to discuss. Please do try to be on time out of respect for others watching the film.

As usual, the film will be shown in the original version (Italian), with English subtitles. Although there is no cost to this screening, I will ask you to buy a 1 Franc raffle ticket in order to have the chance of taking the DVD home with you. It is also helpful to Francis, whose premises we are using, if you buy a drink.