DEEP DIVE: Italian Neorealism: Part 1
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This is a watch at home, discuss in person event — Part I of a two-part Deep Dive into Italian Neorealism.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Italian filmmakers left the studio and turned their cameras toward the streets. With cities in ruins and institutions shaken, cinema shifted its focus to ordinary people navigating survival, compromise, and loss, grounding itself in rubble rather than spectacle. This first chapter centers on Roberto Rossellini’s war films: Rome, Open City, Paisan, and Germany, Year Zero. Together, they move from resistance to aftermath, tracing not victory but damage, moral, social, and personal.
We will meet to discuss our thoughts on Tuesday, March 24, at Schoolyard Beer Garden. Watch the comments for our exact location. Please try to watch all three before attending.
Here is the list of films with instructions on how to find them.
ROME, OPEN CITY (1945, Roberto Rossellini, Italy)
Rome, Open City unfolds in Nazi-occupied Rome, where resistance work and daily life blur into one continuous act of risk. Rossellini follows priests, partisans, and ordinary citizens not as symbols, but as people improvising under pressure. The film moves with urgency but refuses triumph. Acts of courage are real, but so are betrayal, fear, and brutality. Victory is not the point. Survival is.
- Watch on Criterion Channel
- Watch on HBO Max
- Rent from YouTube
- Rent from Prime VIdeo
PAISAN (1946, Roberto Rossellini, Italy)
Paisan moves across Italy in six episodes, tracing encounters between civilians and Allied soldiers as the country shifts from occupation to uneasy liberation. Each chapter resets the terms: new faces, new misunderstandings, new moral tests. Communication falters. Good intentions misfire. Moments of connection surface, then dissolve. The war may be ending, but clarity never arrives.
- Watch on Criterion Channel
- Watch on HBO Max
- Watch for free with ads on YouTube
GERMANY, YEAR ZERO (1948, Roberto Rossellini, Italy)
Germany, Year Zero narrows its focus to a ruined Berlin and a single boy moving through it. The adults around him are compromised, defeated, or simply trying to survive. He listens to what they say, watches what they do, and tries to make sense of both in a city where guidance is thin and consequences are not. The war is over. The damage is not.
- Watch on Criterion Channel
- Watch on HBO Max
- Watch for free with ads on YouTube