Rome, Open City

Regarded as the starting point for Italian neo-realism, the film set the penniless conditions in which it was made soon after World War II, to its own advantage. Filmed in the bombed out streets of Rome, the film tells a story based, strictly, on real life with amateur actors, in a natural and semidocumental style that was to be imitated the world over. The film shows the action of the Italian Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Rome at the end of World War II. One of the militants, Giorgio, is being investigated by a German official. Giorgio seeks the help of his friend Francesco, to transfer money to other rebels. In place of Francesco, Giorgio encounters his fiancée, Pina, a widow, who tells her son to fetch a priest, a sympathizer of the group, to act as intermediary. On the day set for the wedding between Pina and Francesco, the Germans decide to inspect all of the apartments in their building, thus unleashing tragedy.

Rome, Open City won the Grand Prize from the Jury at the Cannes Festival, in 1946, for the best foreign film from the National Board of Review and the New York Circle of Critics, and was further nominated for an Oscar for the script.

In anticipation to the commemorations for the centenary of his birth - in 2006 - Mostra is paying tribute to the great Italian director by showing a short film, My Dad is 100 Years Old, with a plot by his daughter, Isabella Rossellini (She designed the poster for the 29th Mostra). The film, directed by Guy Maddin, focuses on a magic journey through time in which Isabella reminisces over her father and discusses his ideas on cinema with producer David Selznick, and directors Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, and Charles Chaplin, with all the interviews done by herself. The 29th Mostra programming also includes the film considered the starting point for neo-realism: Roma, Open City (1945). The father of Italian neo-realism, a movement that flourished subsequent to the Second World War and that influenced film making worldwide, was born in Rome, Italy, on May 8, 1906. The son of a wealthy architect and sculptor, Rossellini became interested in cinema through the influence of his grandfather who, at the time, owned a movie theater. When his father`s fortune was confiscated by the fascist regime in 1931, he began, three years later, to make films in earnest with themes characterized by humanistic poetry and a great deal of interest in historical issues. Rossellini`s first feature, The White Ship (1941) was made to order by the Navy. During the war, he made other films for official propaganda, all the while, in secret, recording all of the activities of the Resistance. He made use of this material in the film Roma - Open City, a realistic portrait of the German occupation. The precarious conditions in which he filmed, the poor quality of the negatives utilized, second-rate laboratory services, and obsolete editing equipment lent a raw touch to this feature, stripped of formality, of great critical depth, that eventually became an artistic landmark. The film laid the bases for neo-realism with amateur actors in the cast and scenes shot on real location all of which enhances the documental nature of the narrative. Neo-realism came forth from the rubble of World War II. The movement lent voice and image to the Italian people, at that time, having to cope with the devastating effects of fascism. In a dry, cutting tone, Rossellini shows a populace led to the limits of its needs at the time of the German occupation in a film that is also a tribute to those who endeavored to undermine the Nazi forces. The next year, he filmed Paisá (1946), with a script by Federico Fellini, in which he directed non-professional actors. In the shape of news reports, the feature shows life in Italy, immediately after the country was liberated, with a query into the significance of war to the Italians. Both Roma, Open City and Paisà went beyond the Italian context, and decisively influenced all of international cinema post-war. Rossellini lent continuity to reconstituting life in films on subjects such as religion and the feeling of liberty, such as Germany - Year Zero (1947). On a totally non-conventional theme, the film tells the story of a boy, Edmund Koeler, in Berlin, destroyed as it was in 1945. Edmund kills his father and then commits suicide. The boy is about 13 years old and is driven to parricide by a sentence uttered by a teacher in a Nazi school - "The weak must give up their place so the strong may live". Next came Stromboli (1949) - Rossellini`s first partnership with Ingrid Bergman who was later to become his wife, Francis, God’s Jester (1950), No Greater Love (1952), Voyage to Italy (1953), and India (1958). Rossellini came to Brazil in the fifties with intent to adapt Josué de Castro`s book "Geografia da fome", to cinema. The reasons that prevented him from making the film remain controversial, but it is common knowledge that there was a great deal of pressure against his making the film by those who thought it was not in good taste to show poverty in Brazil abroad. Rossellini once again took up his patriotic themes in films such as General della Rovere (1959), Viva l`Italia (1961), and Vanina Vanini (1961). He was part of a montage of theater plays and, as from 1964, devoted himself to directing and producing for TV. He died in Rome, on June 3, 1977.

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA