Plot
Roberto Rossellini's Roma, Città Aperta (known in English as Open City) was one of the landmark films of the 1940s on several levels. Aesthetically, it was one of the first major works of Italian neorealist filmmaking and perhaps the single most influential example of the style. Historically, it was among the first postwar European films to gain a significant audience in the United States, opening the door for a greater appreciation of international filmmaking in America. And politically, it was a work of tremendous bravery. The screenplay was written by Roberto Rossellini in association with Federico Fellini and Sergio Amidei while Rome was still occupied by German forces in 1943-44. Rossellini began filming in secret, using scavenged film stock without sound equipment, shortly before the city was liberated in June of 1944. Several key members of his creative team had been active in the Italian resistance movement. With its rough, documentary-style look, multi-layered narrative, and a cast that mixed amateurs with actors who didn't look like film stars, Roma, Città Aperta captured the harsh and unforgiving textures of real life as few movies of its time had dared. It set the pace for Italian Neorealism as an influential postwar film style that combined outdoor light and location shooting with non-actors, a focus on simple stories of everyday life, and a concern for the poor and for social problems. Roma, Città Aperta shows the lives of a group of people living in Rome during the Nazi occupation, after the Germans had declared it an "open city." Anna Magnani plays a woman in love with a member of a resistance group; in helping him, she risks not only her own life, but also that of her unborn child. Aldo Fabrizi plays a priest who aids the anti-Nazi cause and pays dearly for his activism. Marcello Pagliero is an outspoken communist who runs afoul of the Nazis. And Harry Feist plays a German officer who has taken an Italian lover, but whose affection for Romans does not run especially deep. While Roma, Città Aperta shows flashes of the melodramatic sentimentality that would mark much of Rossellini's later work, it still rings true as a chronicle of a city under siege and as the genesis of a powerful new film style whose influences include such later filmmakers, among many others, as John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Spike Lee. ~ Mark Deming, RoviReview
The first masterpiece of the post-war era, Roma, citta aperta is a cinematic landmark that heralded the rise of Italian Neorealism and influenced much of cinematic history to come, from the French New Wave to cinéma vérité and Direct Cinema to Third Cinema. Like The Cabinet of Caligari (1919), Open City is a masterwork born out of deprivation. The Nazis had vacated the city a mere two months before director Roberto Rossellini commenced shooting; only grainy low-grade stock was available; and most of Rome's studios were bombed out from the war. In most cases, any of these factors would have doomed the production, yet Rosselini brilliantly managed to take seeming liabilities and adapt them into a gritty re-definition of cinematic realism. He took the film out into the street and cast non-actors in central roles, giving the film immediacy and authenticity. In a tactic that would later be a model for much of Italian cinema, he shot Open City without sound, allowing his camera crews greater mobility. Moreover, he infused the film with a humanism that would be a signature of Rosselini's career and would mark much of immediate post-war film, from Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette to Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru. Roma, citta aperta is a harrowing, emotionally powerful film that changed the face of cinema. ~ Jonathan Crow, RoviCast
- Vito Annicchiarico - Marcello
- Nando Bruno - Agostino
- Aldo Fabrizi - Don Pietro Pellegrini
- Harry Feist - Capt. Bergmann
- Anna Magnani - Pina
Credit
Roberto Rossellini - Director, Eraldo Da Roma - Editor, Herman Weinberg - Editor, Pietro DiDonato - Editor, Renzo Rossellini - Composer (Music Score), Ubaldo Arata - Cinematographer, Roberto Rossellini - Producer, Federico Fellini - Screenwriter, Roberto Rossellini - Screenwriter, Sergio Amidei - Screenwriter, Alberto Consiglio - Short Story Author| Open All Night (1934 Film), Open All Night (1924 Film) | |
| Open Graves (2009 Film), Open House (1986 Film) |
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