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In Rome 1944, with the city still in the grip of German occupation and Fascist control, Giorgio Manfredi, a leader of the Resistance, is tracked down by the Nazis. He goes to his friend Francesco's, and asks Pina, Francesco's fiance, for help. Pina must warn a priest, Don Pietro Pellegrini, that Giorgio needs to leave the town as soon as possible.

Director: Roberto Rosselini
Screenplay: Sergio Amidei and Federico Fellini
Produced by Rosselini, Feruccio de Martino, Giuseppe Amato, Rod E. Geiger
Cinematography: Uberto Arata
Edited by Eraldo da Roma
Music: Renzo Rosselini
Release date: 27 September 1945
Running time: 1h 45m

HOW THIS WORKS
To find out where to rent or stream Rome, Open City online, visit TV.Movie. (It may be available free of charge on YouTube – look for the subtitles.) Watch it on your own during the week and then join us for our Zoom conversation Saturday, May 3. A Zoom link will appear on the right of your screen once you RSVP. (NOTE: If you can’t get that link to work, copy and paste it into the search bar of your browser.) First-timers must sign up no later than Friday 5/2 in order to ensure being admitted.

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Things are there. Why manipulate them? – Roberto Rosselini
In the world of cinema, all roads lead to Rome, Open City. – Jean-Luc Godard

Rome, Open City was the first of three films comprising Rosselini's War Trilogy, preceding Paisan and Germany Year Zero. Italian audiences were hungering for stories reflecting the horrors and glories of their resistance to fascism, and Rosselini responded. He came out in full force against the decadence of Fascist-era cinema, asserting the primacy of life as it stands as the best substance for movies. Rossellini thus can claim the mantle as the elder statesman of nascent Italian Neo-realism. Critic Irene Bignardi described Rome, Open City as "possibly ... one of the most influential and symbolic films of its age, a movie about 'reality' that has left a trace on every film movement since."

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TRAILER, RATING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1P1JRSJT6Q
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% of 47 reviews

REVIEWS
Rossel­lini’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

Rome, Open City stunned audiences the world over who saw in it an unmediated authenticity more evocative of the documentary quality of wartime newsreels than of the artificiality of earlier, more conventional WWII dramas. ∞ Steven D. Greydanus, Decent Films

Open City lacks the depth of characterization, thought, and feeling which might have made it a definitively great film. From there on out I have nothing but admiration for it. Even these failures in depth and complexity are sacrifices to virtues just as great: you seldom see as pure freshness and vitality in a film, or as little unreality and affectation among the players; one feels that everything was done too fast and with too fierce a sincerity to run the risk of bogging down in mere artistry or meditativeness ... The film's finest over-all quality, which could rarely be matched so spectacularly, is this immediacy. ∞ James Agee, The Nation

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