Massacre in Rome

March 1944, Rome under German occupation. Partisans attack an SS unit in Via Rasella and thirty-three Germans are killed. The order for reprisal comes down: ten Italians will be killed for every German. SS Lieutenant Colonel Kappler draws up the list; people are gathered from prisons and off the street, with no regard for where anyone came from. More than three hundred are killed in the Ardeatine caves. George P. Cosmatos directed the film from Robert Katz's book. Richard Burton plays Kappler and Marcello Mastroianni a priest from the Vatican. The film opens up both the side that gave the order and the decision of the partisans who carried out the attack; in Italy the Via Rasella attack and what followed were argued over for years, and that argument continues today. The telling clears nobody.