Roberto Rossellini's Rome is dazed, disoriented and at the mercy of Nazis in this classic of neorealism
The Rome of Rossellini's film (now on rerelease) has a dazed, disoriented, stateless look – like the Vienna of Carol Reed's The Third Man or the studio-created Casablanca in Michael Curtiz's movie. The action is set over the winter of 1943-44: it is an "open" city because this was the wartime status conferred on it: in return for a cessation of bombing, the authorities would abandon its military defence. This was a concession to the Allies: but Rossellini's irony is that Rome is "open" to Italy's occupier, Germany, as the capital of northern Italy's new Nazi puppet-state, the so-called Salò Republic (which inspired Pier Pasolini's film Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom).
The former stronghold of empire is unprotected, open to the forces of history – and to a new kind of film-maker.
The Rome of Rossellini's film (now on rerelease) has a dazed, disoriented, stateless look – like the Vienna of Carol Reed's The Third Man or the studio-created Casablanca in Michael Curtiz's movie. The action is set over the winter of 1943-44: it is an "open" city because this was the wartime status conferred on it: in return for a cessation of bombing, the authorities would abandon its military defence. This was a concession to the Allies: but Rossellini's irony is that Rome is "open" to Italy's occupier, Germany, as the capital of northern Italy's new Nazi puppet-state, the so-called Salò Republic (which inspired Pier Pasolini's film Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom).
The former stronghold of empire is unprotected, open to the forces of history – and to a new kind of film-maker.
- 3/7/2014
- The Guardian - Film News
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