Rome, Open City

Rome, 1944, under German occupation. The resistance fighter Giorgio Manfredi is looking for somewhere to hide; the printer Francesco, his fiancée Pina and the priest Don Pietro help him. The Gestapo is behind them. Roberto Rossellini directed, with Federico Fellini among the writers. The conditions of the shoot matter as much as the film. Cinecittà was damaged and occupied by Allied forces, so Rossellini had to work on location. When the film stock ran out the production nearly stopped; Rod E. Geiger, a soldier in the US Army Signal Corps, supplied discarded or damaged rolls and it was finished. Most of the cast were not professional actors. Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani were the known names. Magnani as Pina, shot while running toward the camera, became the most cited moment in the film. It was an unprecedented international success for Italian cinema, taking 3 million dollars at the American box office. It won the Palme d'Or at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. It is counted among the most important and representative works of Italian neorealism, and it set the conventions the movement followed. Who it is for: anyone who wants film history and the war years from a primary source. Who it is not for: viewers expecting technical quality. The image and sound are rough because of the conditions, and that roughness became the signature of the movement.