"All roads lead to Rome Open City,” Jean-Luc Godard once said, playing on the old Italian proverb—and meaning, we can assume, that when thinking about modern cinema, one always has to come to terms with Roberto Rossellini’s seminal film. Indeed, Rome Open City is not just a milestone in the history of Italian cinema but possibly, with De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, 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. It is also the story of a fascinating and atypical adventure in filmmaking, a masterpiece malgré soi, a unique piece of cinema that was the result, in a way, of serendipity.
It all happened in Rome, soon after the liberation of the city by the Americans in 1944, and following the gentle decree by Admiral Ellery W. Stone, heading a commission created to decide the future of the Italian film industry, that since “the so-called Italian cinema was invented by the fascists,” it had to be suppressed. Full stop. Cinecittà, the seat of the best Italian production before the war, was turned into a centro di sfollamento, a homeless camp. The Italian cinema became a desert. It had to begin anew somewhere else. And it did.
Numerous stories about the genesis of Rome Open City have circulated over the years. The screenwriter Ugo Pirro even wrote a novel about the film’s creation. And several documentaries—including one by another master of Italian cinema, Carlo Lizzani—have been made on the subject. In each, the story is different. So let’s try to stick to the few things we know for sure. There is a remarkable director, Roberto Rossellini, who had been making movies for years under the fascist regime but who nevertheless, because of his talent and his attitude, embodied the spirit of the intelligentsia of liberated Italy. There are his friends, the screenwriter Sergio Amidei (“It’s a film we made all together, like when you cook easily,” Amidei said about Rome Open City) and a young, ambitious artist and screenwriter, Federico Fellini, who both took part in the script. There is the real story of Teresa Gullace, a woman killed by the Germans in front of the barracks on viale Giulio Cesare, who inspired the famous scene of the death of Pina, shot down while running after the truck that is abducting her fiancé. There is, in the beginning, the idea of making a documentary on Don Morosini, a priest who was a hero of the resistance. There is a provisional title, Città aperta . . . and no money. Above all, there is a woman, an actress, Anna Magnani—a queen of the cabaret, a star onstage, not a traditional beauty but whose face has an electrifying intensity, and who would become a screen legend, in films all built around her charisma and vernacular charm.
The preparation and development of the project took all summer and autumn of 1944. But according to Amidei, the original script was written in a week in Fellini’s kitchen. Once again, there are different stories. Pirro argued that when Fellini became involved in the writing, the major part of the work had already been done by Amidei, and Fellini provided only dialogue and some gags for Aldo Fabrizi. Rossellini, at one point, even said that he had written the script “with some friends during the German occupation.” In the beginning, the film was to be simply a documentary on Don Morosini. Then, discussion after discussion, new elements were added, like the story of Gullace. But when? There is no written script left, only personal memories. We have to rely on the final movie.
Shooting started on January 18, 1945. The war in the rest of Italy was still on. There was no film stock, and so Rossellini and his team had to use abandoned scraps found here and there. It wasn’t possible to check the rushes. Rossellini, little by little, sold all he owned so that the film could go on. In Italian, as in English, there is the expression “to make a virtue of necessity,” and that’s what Rossellini did here. The result was a new kind of movie, never before seen. Does that explain the whistles—which in Italy express disapproval—on the opening night of September 24, 1945, in front of a group of “friends” and critics? Audiences over the next weeks, however, reacted with enthusiasm, and the movie, which in the meantime was given its final title, became the first hit of the year. If some in the establishment were very severe in their criticism—finding a lack of unity between the first and second halves, for instance—others, including Alberto Moravia, Carlo Lizzani, and Umberto Barbaro, found value in a film born in the spirit of the resistance and from its many voices.
Most of all, it was the people of Italy who were won over, finding in the film the flavor of truth. In Rome Open City, which spoke of men and women in difficult times, tormented, injured, scorned, humiliated, they recognized their own experiences during the years of a tragic, suicidal war. In Magnani, with her feverish face of a woman of the people, with her rough voice, with her natural behavior so far from the phony sophistication of the divas of the fascist cinema, with her passion, they found the truth of an Italy too often forgotten. In the actors taken from the street who surrounded her—not Fabrizi, a famous comic performer turned here into a tragic figure, or the professional Maria Michi, a woman very near the resistance and the Communist Party, but in the real, tormented faces of many of the others—they saw themselves.
It was the beginning of “neorealism”—an opening onto reality, onto the human predicament, which Rossellini would continue with Paisan and Germany Year Zero. And it was the beginning of a new career for Magnani, promoted with this film to the status of icon in the new Italy: a real face, a real woman, a new kind of actress, who would go on to work with Visconti, Renoir, Cukor, Monicelli, Lumet, Pasolini, Fellini. Always in the name of reality. Always with a passion for the truth.
Irene Bignardi was the film critic for the Italian daily La repubblica for fifteen years and later the director of the Locarno Film Festival. She is now critic at large for La repubblica and the author of Memorie estorte a uno smemorato: Vita di Gillo Pontecorvo, Le piccole utopie, and Americani.
1945
100 min
Black and White
1.37:1
Categories: Film Essays
3 Comments
Tue 26 Jan at 05:47 PM
MB
I just want to mention that I found a not-fantastic version of Rome Open City at the Free Library of Philadelphia in April 2009 and watched it, coincidentally, over the same weekend as the release of the “torture memos” from the American war on terror. It was startling to watch the misuse of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in this movie and recognize them in American foreign policy (I watched the movie first, then heard about the memos).
In a disturbing way it illuminated another troubling aspect of the Bush administration’s use of torture which was to carefully emphasize a limited, narrow (tortured) definition of physical harm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bybee_Memo). The movie depicts grossly physical methods such as burning by open flame and removing finger nails. So in comparison, American water boarding might appear slightly justifiable as a less gruesome, cleaner method that leaves no physical marks. It occurred to me while watching the movie that Bush officials may have been thinking of those methods in their attempt to explain away their own use of harsh techniques.
I’m glad to hear Criterion has created a new DVD which makes the old new again. This movie, along with Battle of Algiers, is an important document of history for Americans to consider during these very difficult times while our nation seems condemned to repeat the past it does not remember.
[After having said all that, I feel I should mention it’s actually the least depressing of the Italian Neorealism films. I almost didn’t watch it out of expectation for another dark look at Italy, which it is, but it’s hopeful in an odd, inspiring way.]
Wed 27 Jan at 12:16 PM
Reno
I really love your work Criterion but really? … the first diegetic dialogue in the film, “Gesù”, is translated as ‘oh God’? I know it’s little but so, so transparent and unnecessary!
How many more translation ‘liberties’ based on PC consideration will i find in the film …
sincerely,
someone who loves your work so much and hates to see you cheapen yourselves for ‘PC’ considerations.
Fri 29 Jan at 02:46 PM
Peter Becker / Criterion
Thanks for your comment, Reno. Translation is a very subjective process, as you are clearly keenly aware, and we appreciate your concern. The challenge we face is not simply to translate each word literally, but to render, as best as possible, the meaning of the language as it was used in the specific cultural context. We asked our subtitle translator, John Gudelj, why he chose “Dear God” over the literal “Jesus,” and here’s what he had to say:
“The word ‘Jesus!’ by itself can frequently have other connotations besides ’fervent supplication’ that could be confusing, like anger, annoyance, cursing, surprise, etc. – nuances that are clear in audio but not necessarily in the written word. We could have used something like ‘Dear Jesus!’ I suppose for the same effect.”
Instead, John chose the more natural-sounding “Dear God!” For what it’s worth, far from being a revisionist decision based on “PC considerations,” the choice hews to tradition. The line has previously appeared as “Oh, God!” in English, dating back at least to the published screenplays from 1973, probably for the very reasons John describes above.
I hope this addresses your concern, whether you agree with our decision or not. We certainly gave it some thought. Thanks, as ever, for your support and for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.
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