Movies - Rome, open city

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	Movies - Rome, open city

Rome, open city (Roma, città aperta) is a 1945 Italian film, directed by Roberto Rossellini and starring Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani. The film is set in Rome during the Nazi occupation in the 1944.

This film has not been rated by the MPAA. As it has violence but no graphic sex, it has been rated K-16 in Finland, and acceptable for 15-year-olds and older in England and Sweden.

Plot summary

As Nazi soldiers march around town, Giorgio Manfredi eludes them by jumping around roofs.

A priest, Don Pietro Pellegrini, helps the resistance transmit messages and money. Don Pietro is scheduled to officiate Pina's wedding. Pina is not very religious, but would rather be married by a nationalist priest. Her son, Marcello, and his friends have a role in the resistance. Pina's sister befriends Marina, who betrays the resistance in exchange for drugs, fur coats and other creature comforts. The Gestapo commander in the city, with the help of the Italian police commissioner, captures Giorgio and the priest, and interrogates both violently. Don Pietro is executed.

Production

Partly out of necessity, and partly because of the neorealist aesthetic, the film uses a cast composed almost entirely of non-professional actors. Aside from Marina's bedroom, no sets were built, actual locations in Rome were used. The actual film stock was put together out of disparate bits (and it shows in some scenes when the brightness of the image changes inexplicably).

Exhibition history

The film opened in Italy in 1945 and in the United States on February 1946. The American release was censored, resulting in a duration reduced by about a quarter hour. In Argentina, the movie was inexplicably withdrawn in 1947 following an anonymous government order.

Awards

Palma d'Oro al Festival di Cannes 1946 (ex-aequo con altri sei film)
Nastro d'Argento 1946: "Best Director" (ex-aequo con Alessandro Blasetti
e Vittorio De Sica
), "Best Scenery", "Best Actress" (ad Anna Magnani
)
New York Film Critics 1946: "Best Foreign Film"
National Board of Review 1946: "Best Actress" (a Anna Magnani
)

Criticism

Since early on, this film has been considered a quintessential example of neorealism in film, so much so that together with Paisà and Germania anno zero it is called Rossellini's "Neorealist Trilogy." Robert Burgoyne called it "the perfect exemplar of this mode of cinematic creation whose established critical definition was given by André Bazin."

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