Submitted by: Sarika Jhunjhunwala

Roll No.: PGPMM/10/010

REFLECTION OF SOCIETY IN CINEMA- CASE STUDY, ROME OPEN CITY BY

ROBERTO ROSSELLINI
“Great  films  will  be  made  when  we  become  a  great  audience,” said French
author, Andre  Malraux. Indian filmmakers are often panned for making unreal cinema.  But
with  audience  enlightening  up  and  graduating  to  outside  cinema,  cinema-makers 
have  tough  job  in  their  hands to  keep  audience  glued  to  their  celluloid  products.
Cinema  industry  is  realizing  that  they  need  to  be  experimental  and  open  up  to  new 
set  of  ideas  and  shed  their  old  reservations  about  audiences. Schlock cinema, with  lot
of  plot-holes  and  half-baked  stories,  are  becoming  things  of  yore. Simple  relatable
stories  about  unassuming  characters  from  non–metro  and  moffusils  towns  and
villages  are flavor  of  filmmakers. Indian  cinema,  if   it  continues  to  strike  a  chord  with 
ever-increasing  audiences  and  serve  healthy  and  wholesome  cinema  in  its  platter, is 
surely  headed  for  a  bright  path.

Western  society,  where  morality  is  increasingly  being  blurred  and  aesthetic  values
are  on the wane,  has  a  cinema which  satiates  its  delights  and  other  needs. But  one
often  wonders  why  Hollywood, which  has  eaten  up  lot  of  indigenous  film  industries
across  the  world,  fails  to  make  an  impression  in  India  barring  few  films  like  Titanic 
and  Superman. Cultural  differences  make  it  difficult  to  side-step  Indian  films  despite
Hollywood  having  commanding  edge  over  technicalities,  jaw-dropping  special  effects 
and  exquisite  attention  to  the  detail   during  film-making. Though  current  Indian
filmmakers  are toying  with  morally  ambiguous subjects also,  to  give  us  raunchy
comedies  with  salty  dialogues,  darks  plots  with  loads  of  sex - its  too  brief  and  very
difficult  to  predict  as to whether  this  genre  will  sustain  its  mass-appeal  in  a 
traditional  Indian  society.
 
Rome, Open City (Italian: Roma, città aperta) is a 1945 Italian war drama film, directed by
Roberto Rossellini. The picture features Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani and Marcello Pagliero,
and is set in Rome during the Nazi occupation in 1944. The film won several awards at
various film festivals and was also nominated for an Academy Award.

As German soldiers march through town, Giorgio Manfredi eludes them by jumping across
the rooftops. A priest, Don Pietro Pellegrini, helps the resistance by transmitting messages
and money. Don Pietro is scheduled to officiate Pina's wedding. Francesco, her betrothed, is
not very religious, but would rather be married by a patriot priest than a fascist official. Her
son, Marcello, and his friends have a small role in the resistance. Pina's sister befriends
Marina, Giorgio's former girlfriend, who betrays the resistance in exchange for drugs, fur
coats, and other creature comforts.

The Gestapo commander in the city, with the help of the Italian police commissioner,
captures Giorgio and the priest, and interrogates Giorgio violently. They attempt to use
Pietro's religious beliefs to convince him to betray his cause, citing that he allies himself
with atheists. Pietro responds that anyone who strives to help others is on that path of God
whether they believe in him or not. They then force Pietro to watch as Giorgio is tortured to
death. When Don Pietro still refuses to crack, he is executed.

Since early on, this film has been considered a quintessential example of neorealist in film,
so much so that together with Paisà and Germania anno zero it is called Rossellini's
"Neorealist Trilogy." Robert Burgoyne called it "the perfect exemplar of this mode of
cinematic creation [neorealist] whose established critical definition was given by André
Bazin." More recent scholarship points out that this film is actually less neo-realist and
rather melodramatic. Critics debate whether the pending marriage of the Catholic Pina and
the communist Francesco really "acknowledges the working partnership of communists
and Catholics in the actual historical resistance."

Bossley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, gave the film a positive review, and
wrote, "Yet the total effect of the picture is a sense of real experience, achieved as much by
the performance as by the writing and direction. The outstanding performance is that of
Aldo Fabrizi as the priest, who embraces with dignity and humanity a most demanding
part. Marcello Pagliero is excellent too, as the resistance leader, and Anna Magnani brings
humility and sincerity to the role of the woman who is killed. The remaining cast is
unqualifiedly fine, with the exception of Harry Feist in the role of the German commander.
His elegant arrogance is a bit too vicious—but that may be easily understood."

In August 1944, just two months after the Allies had forced the Germans to evacuate Rome,
Rossellini, Federico Fellini, and Sergio Amidei began working on the script for the film. The
devastation that was the result of the war surrounded them as they wrote the script.
Shooting for the film began in January 1945. Rossellini relied on traditional devices of
melodrama, such as identification of the film's central characters and a clear distinction
between good and evil characters. Four interior sets were constructed for the most
important locations of the film.

It is believed that the actual film stock was put together out of many different disparate
bits, giving the film its iconic documentary or newsreel style. But, when the Cineteca
Nazionale restored the print in 1995, "the original negative consisted of just three different
types of film: Ferrania C6 for all the outdoor scenes and the more sensitive Agfa Super Pan
and Agfa Ultra Rapid for the interiors." The previously unexplained changes in image
brightness and consistency are now blamed on "poor processing (variable development
times, insufficient agitation in the developing bath and insufficient fixing).