Battling History (Deborah Amberson)

Battling History: Narrative Wars in Roberto Rossellini's Paisà
Author(s): Deborah Amberson

Source: Italica, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Autumn, 2009), pp. 392-407
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40505896
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Battling History: Narrative Wars
in Roberto Rossellini's Paisà
Tust over 60 years after its original release and over 100 years since its
I director's birth, Roberto Rossellini's Paisà remains a film that elicits a
conflicting range of interpretations. Those who see the episodic film as
an affirmation of Italy's struggle to rebuild the nation in the wake of
the Allied liberation of the Nazi-occupied peninsula emphasize the un-
derlying unity that emerges through the shared suffering and point to
the recurrent voiceover that indicates the gradual removal of the Nazi
presence. Others, however, highlight the episodic or fragmented na-
ture of the film's structure and point to the futility and anonymity of
the sacrifice of those who die and/or suffer through that same process
of liberation conceived accordingly as a senseless enterprise that fails
to bring unity to a regionally fragmented and occupied nation.1 In this
article I will consider the film as a definitive criticism of all attempts to
create a lucid narrative of war and liberation that might make sense of
the suffering endured. I will argue for a structural and thematic corre-
spondence between the six episodes, a correspondence that becomes
the narratological motor underlying a film that, in its repetition of
meaningless suffering and anonymous sacrifice, simply folds in on
itself in order to deny the very possibility of a linear narrative of his-
torical progress. Moreover, this article will consider Rossellini's perfor-
mative narratology in the light of Gilles Deleuze's identification of
Neorealism as the point of emergence of a modernist cinematic narra-
tive and consider his hypothesis of a rupture of narrative causality as
the fulcrum of Rossellini's condemnation of the coherence of historical
discourse and his filmic attempt to bear impossible witness to the
anonymity of sacrifice and death.
A product of the immediate post World War II period, Roberto
Rossellini's Paisà (1946) stands out within the Neorealist cinematic
canon as perhaps the most formally intriguing film produced during
the years of Neorealist cultural dominance. Highlighting the film's
episodic structure, André Bazin recognizes Paisà as one of the most
aesthetically significant representatives of Italian Neorealism claiming,
in 1948, that the Italian films of the post-war period could be arranged
"in concentric circles of decreasing interest around Paisà, since it is this
film of Rossellini's that yields the most aesthetic secrets" (Bazin, 30).
Paisà is, in fact, composed of six episodes that chronicle the advance of
the Allied forces northwards through the Italian peninsula, beginning
with the American landing in Sicily and ending with the struggles of
Italica Volume 86 Number 3 (2009)
Narrative Wars in Roberto Rossellini's Paisà 393
the Italian partisans in the northern Po valley just before the conclusio
of the war.
The first episode takes place in Sicily and portrays the initial land-
ing of the American soldiers. This episode revolves around the linguis-
tically problematic encounter between a young Sicilian woman,
Carmela, and GI Joe from Jersey. Their clumsy attempts to communi
cate end in tragedy when Joe is shot dead by a brigade of Germa
soldiers and Carmela subsequently dies as a result of her attempt to
avenge his death, a gesture that is never recognized by the American
soldiers who believe that girl murdered their comrade in arms. The
second episode treats of the relationship between, Pasquale, a less than
law-abiding Neapolitan orphan, and an African- American militar
policeman who the boy befriends and then robs. On subsequently rec-
ognizing Pasquale, the MP attempts to retrieve his belongings and
on journeying to Pasquale's home, he discovers that the child lives in
a cave with a multitude of other dispossessed Neapolitans and, horri-
fied, he walks away speechless. Episode three relates the relationship
between Francesca, a Roman prostitute and Fred, an American soldier.
Six months after the liberation of Rome, Fred, in a drunken state, re
calls the liberation of the city and the wholesome young Roma
women who greeted the arrival of the American liberators. Fred, it is
revealed through flashback, met and fell in love with a young woman
whom he fails to recognize in Francesca, transformed and forced into
prostitution as a direct result of the hardship that followed the tri-
umphant liberation of the city. The fourth episode is set in Florence and
tells of Harriet, an American nurse looking for her Italian lover, and,
her friend, Massimo, who is trying to locate his family. Convinced tha
their loved ones can be found within occupied Florence, Massimo and
Harriet attempt to cross from the liberated southern side of the Arn
into the city's historic center where Harriet learns that her lover, once a
painter and now a partisan leader, has died. The fifth episode concern
the arrival of three American army chaplains (a Catholic, a Protestant
and a Jew) at a remote monastery in the region of Emilia Romagna. O
arriving the chaplains are welcomed with open arms, but when the
monks learn, to their horror, that two of the chaplains are not of th
Catholic faith, they embark on a fast to ensure the men's conversion
and spiritual salvation. The final episode is set in the Po valley an
details the activities of the northern partisans working together with
group of American soldiers. On being captured by the Nazis, Dale, an
American soldier, gives up the protection afforded him by interna-
tional treaties on the treatment of prisoners of war and dies with the
partisans.
Framing the individual episodes is the historical narrative of the
liberation of Nazi-occupied Italy signified within Rossellini's film by
means of an authoritative voiceover that narrates the northerly
394 Deborah Amberson
progress of the allied forces.2 The disparity between the tem

the self-possessed voiceover and what Roy Armes refer
"kaleidoscope of incident" (Armes, 81) provided by the
episodes, lies at the core of Rossellini's narratological perfo
Millicent Marcus underscores this contrast between a macro
and a microhistory as she measures the exultant tone of the
announcing the "first great Allied landing" against the epis
"a narrative present that cannot benefit from the confidence bo
umphant historical retrospection" (Marcus, 18). While Marc
her observations to bear on the problematic question of Itali
identity, addressing the difficulties inherent in the construction
hesive sense of nationhood out of the ruins of a country lo
terized by a marked tendency toward regional rather than
identification on the part of its inhabitants, the points she r
the heart of Rossellini's structural and narrative innovation.
Opening with documentary footage of the Allied landings in Sicily
and the aforementioned voiceover, Paisà quickly establishes Ros-
sellini's "hybrid technique" (Bondanella, 66) of documentary newsreel
and fictionalized account. However, the director does not seek to es-
tablish a straightforward and enlightening contrast, but immediately
launches a bitter conflict between the lucidity of historical discourse
and the distressing presentness of suffering. Thus, the narrative tem-
porality of the voiceover that announces the momentous events of July
1943 is immediately undercut by the confusion of the Sicilian episode
that follows and the sense of a sweeping movement northwards is
frozen by the chaos of this far more "real" fiction.3 In short, the histor-
ical narrative based on the security of temporal and emotional distance
is destabilized and ridiculed by the intrusion of the fictional rendition
of "how things really were." Having negotiated their way up the cliffs
in scenes barely visible to the viewer as a result of minimal lighting,
the soldiers' liberation descends into a chaos of fear, suspicion and lin-
guistic misunderstanding. Faced with a group of locals who initially
mistake them for Germans. The American GIs remain suspicious of
those they refer to as "eye-ties." Mutually incomprehensible dialogue
continues in an almost comic vein until a Sicilian- American is intro-
duced as the interpreter, a role he must play under constant pressure
from his fellow GIs who, as a result of their rather functional linguistic
philosophy, are anxious that he obtain immediate information. Having
explained that one simply does not speak Italian in a hurry, he is al-
lowed to continue speaking to the locals. Their military progress north
takes another detour of sorts when, on arriving at the foot of the tower
in which Joe ultimately meets his death, they describe it in terms of
Frankenstein's castle as the film seems to tilt slightly toward terms
more customary in gothic horror.4 In no uncertain terms, Rossellini
repeatedly derails the thrust of the military narrative as he inserts ele-
ments and references that seek only to render linearity impossible.

However, while the unconventional twists and turns of the Sicilian
episode implicitly point to the sustained critique of the coherence of
the totalizing historical narrative, this program is explicitly thematized
in the second, third and fourth episodes of the film where the director
takes direct issue with the narrativizing perspective of the liberators,
whether they be lovelorn American soldiers or aesthetically driven
British majors, and sets out to dismantle the supposed truths of their
meaningful discourse of liberation.
In episode two, while the inebriated African- American GI sits be-
side Pasquale on the rubble of war-torn Naples he begins to speak of
his impending return to the United States in a language that, of course,
remains impenetrable to Pasquale. As the GI proceeds in his narrative
of the imagined hero's welcome he will receive stateside, he slowly re-
alizes that, as a black man, his status as liberator of Europe will mean
nothing. His return to an America characterized by entrenched racial
inequality means a return to poverty and discrimination. His "old
shack with tin cans at the door" is a far cry from the heroic return im-
plied by the celebratory narrative of the voiceover. Thus, in revealing
the truth of contemporary America, Rossellini exposes, by extension,
the absurdity of the narrative of liberation itself dependent, as it is, on
the concealment of a very real injustice and inequality. The Roman
episode presents a similar critique of the simplistic intent of the narra-
tive of liberation when the drunken Fred reminisces about his en-
counter with the wholesome Francesca. In nostalgically desiring a re-
turn to the narrative clarity of the moment of the liberation, Fred fails
entirely to realize that the fresh-faced Francesca for whom he yearns is
in fact right beside him in the form of his paid companion. In essence,
his need for narrative transparency and coherence together with his
desire for the clear-cut moral categories of the glorious moment of the
liberation blinds him to the narrative disorder of reality and its unex-
pected transformations.
In episode four, Rossellini takes aim at the British and what
Millicent Marcus has aptly termed their "tourist gaze" (Marcus, 26).
Italy, long held by the British (among others) to be a crucial stop on the
grand European tour, serves as an object of aesthetic contemplation.
This is rendered marvelously by Rossellini as he depicts a pair of
stereotypically mustachioed British officers sitting on a hill in the
Boboli gardens at a safe remove from the conflict taking place within
the walls of the historic center. Moreover, these officers who observe
the centro storico through their binoculars are not engaged in an opera-
tion of military reconnaissance, but are instead contemplating the an-
cient towers of Florence and asking those around them (in this case
the protagonists of the Florentine episode, Harriet and Massimo) who
designed the particular tower they are observing. This is the tourist
gaze, "sedentary, distant and safe" (Marcus, 26), the gaze tha
contemplate the neatly historical and pre-packaged Florence
doing, entirely ignores the chaos that reigns in a city ravag
flict between the Nazis and the partisans. Rossellini explicit
this aesthetic contemplation when his camera rests momenta
tower of the Palazzo della Signoria and immediately pans do
to capture the German tanks and motorbikes in the courtya
most aesthetic of places, the Uffìzi gallery.5
However, Rossellini's attack on a totalizing historical narra
far deeper than a content-based critique of either the absurd
American dream or the British grand tour of Italy and acqu
far more potent than the already poignant contrast between
and a micro-history. At work in Rossellini's film is, in effect
ate attempt to paralyze historical discourse and propose, in
the advance of troops and story, the narrative collapse of an
traumatic present. Of significant relevance to the film's stru
cerns are the philosophically-informed narratological obser
Gilles Deleuze. Situating the dividing line between classical a
ernist cinema in the years immediately following Worl
Deleuze identifies in Neorealist cinema as a whole the col
action-based narrative causality. While the classical model of
montage relied on the protagonist's ability to respond prac
the "challenge" presented by his surroundings and ultimate
"a restored or modified situation" (Movement Image, 141
Neorealist directors proceeded to sunder the brotherhood o
and response in their presentation of a cinema in which actio
impossible or, at best, futile, as the movement-image gives
"cinema of the seer and no longer of the agent" (Time-Imag
traditional narrative model structured around cause and effect or stim-
ulus and response moves from perception to action by means of the
successful functioning of the sensory-motor schema. It is, in Deleuze's
terms, an "organic regime" in which a Bergsonian automatic or habit-
ual recognition allows for the conversion of image into "practical
deed" (Bergson, 44).6 In terms of the context of World War II, such flu-
ency of action can exist only for those who view the liberation of Italy
from without, either temporally or geographically. Having acquired
the necessary temporal and emotional distance, the voiceover can re-
count the always logical or, better still, teleological movement of the
Allied forces up the Italian peninsula. However, the core of the film's
narrative - the 6 brief and often chaotic episodes - presents a series of
characters either unable to act or doomed to make futile sacrifices in the
face of circumstances they can no longer interpret or even comprehend.
In embracing this model, Paisà announces the primary poetics of
Neorealist cinema as a whole. Central to the narrative principles of
Neorealism is an explicit rupture with a classical cinematic language.
Cesare Zavattini, theorist of Neorealism and frequent collaborator of

Vittorio De Sica, unequivocally identifies the new aesthetic when, in
his 1953 article "Some Ideas on Cinema," he writes that Neorealism re-
jects a narrative causality in which one situation produced anothe
and so on and opts instead to remain within the immediacy of a single
moment (Curie and Snyder, 52). Zavattini points to a new cinematic
language that consciously shuns the "naturalizing" classical montage
identified by Bazin as deriving from D. W. Griffith's separation of "re
ality into successive shots which were just a series of either logical or
subjective points of view of an event" (Bazin, 28)7 Under this classica
regime, the camera guides the viewer by creating a hierarchy of object
within the frame, a process of abstraction that Bazin illustrates with the
example of a man awaiting execution (28). As he hears the approach of
his executioner, the man in anguished close-up turns his gaze to the
door of his cell and the camera cuts to a close-up of the handle as it turns.
A far cry from such coherence lies what Bazin identifies as Rossel-
lini's "image fact" (Bazin, 37), an aesthetic by means of which Rossellin
presents a cinema composed of multiple and unconnected fragments
of reality. The "image fact," reinforced by a style that employs techni
cal strategies such as extended deep focus, is characterized by an ex-
tensive and strategic use of ellipsis. No longer taken by the hand
through the abstracted chains of cause and effect, the viewer is called
upon to reconstruct the connection between one "fact" and the next
Comparing Rossellini's style with that of Hemingway, Bazin discusse
at length the sixth episode of Paisà in his illustration of the director's
reliance on ellipsis or "great holes" as he puts it (Bazin, 35).8 The fol-
lowing sequence from the sixth episode illustrates this technique. As
the partisans wait for air-drops from the British, we hear voices in th
dark and then proceed to cut from shots of a starry night sky to the
sound of distant gunfire which, one partisan suggests, is the sound
of German soldiers at Maddalena's house, the same house where
Dale and his partisan comrade, Cigolani, had eaten during the day.
Rossellini then shows a pair of silhouettes visible in the half-light and
immediately cuts to the sound of a child crying, a child which we then
see silhouetted against the sky. The Sicilian episode also presents
Rossellini's characteristic employment of ellipsis as, for example, when
Joe from Jersey is killed by Nazi gunfire. He attempts to explain to
Carmela that the woman in the photo is his sister and, finding no suc-
cess, he uses a lighter to allow her to see the family resemblance. We
then cut to a shot of Germans, one of whom claims to see a vague light
and fires his weapon. Returning to Joe, we see him fall to the ground,
presumably dead.
The ellipses do not deny the existence of causality for we know that
Joe has been shot as a result of his use of the lighter and we know
equally well that Maddalena's family has been killed for giving shelter
to partisans. However, the ellipses consistently transform th

a succession of fragmented shots, a succession whose logica
tion can only be reconstructed in the mind of the viewer. Ro
pecially in the opening and closing episodes, provides few sh
ing both cause and effect, stimulus and response, perceivin
and perceived object, German and American, but chooses in
supply the first term and then, disjointedly, the second. Ret
mentarily to Deleuze's discussion of the collapse of classical
causality, it is plain that Rossellini's ellipsis constitutes a cle
in the action. While Deleuze's theorization of the classical r
cinematic narrative posits the organic extension of percepti
tion, the modernist or crystalline regime is characterized by
ysis of that action in the face of circumstances that provok
the character. Rossellini's extensive use of ellipsis effects an
immobilization as it refuses to synthesize the transitions fro
ment of the action to the next, relying instead on a principl
tion and fragmentation that, in refusing transition, transf
"facts" into the senseless and disjointed ingredients of a su
ality far removed from the coherent temporality of historical d
This refusal to make totalizing sense transfers clear
Rossellini's directorial syntax to the level of the global struc
film and the aforementioned interrelation of the six distin
Some scholars have perceived a progression or pattern link
episodes, but none seems to have posited a series of paralle
the shared thematic of war and suffering, Peter Brunette i
geographical connection established by the insertion of the
American release of the film and also correctly underlines
provided by the decidedly unemotional mood and tone of t
episodes (Brunette, 66). Sitney, on the other hand, perceives
plicit pattern as he separates the first half of the film from th
order to illustrate an increased sympathy on the part of the
toward the suffering of the Italians, a sympathy resulting f
proved ability to communicate with those they are liberatin
45). Yet, while these observations are undoubtedly well-fou
suggest a meaningful evolution, especially in the case of Si
minimizes the profound pessimism of a film that, in o
closing with a noble yet essentially futile and anonymous sa
nies the possibility of progress by staging a structural and
collapse in on itself. The six episodes of Paisà are carefully
and ordered in order to form a series of three perfect par
Sicilian episode is paralleled by the concluding episode in th
sentation of anonymous and futile sacrifice. The Neapolitan
mirrored by the Monastery episode supposedly penned b
Fellini. Arguably the most optimistic in the film, these episo
narratives of nation and institutionalized religion respectively narra-
tives that are undercut by a childlike and uncomplicated moment of

empathy. The Roman episode is reflected in the episode set in Florenc
as both revolve around the concept of a physical transformation and
resulting unrecognizability generated by suffering. Thus, we can ex-
pect no ethic of progress in a film that echoes and repeats the tragedie
and failures. I will explore these important parallels at some length in
the following paragraphs.
Beginning with the first grouping it is immediately obvious that
these episodes share the thematic of sacrifice, a sacrifice that is un-
doubtedly noble but that achieves nothing. Carmela's attempts t
avenge Joe from Jersey's death result in her random selection of one o
the Germans whom she shoots without ascertaining if this was in fact
the soldier who actually took Joe's life. Rossellini then proceeds t
deny her the heroic and tragic end befitting, one might assume, a right-
eous avenger when he refuses to represent the moment of her death
choosing, instead, to show her presumably dead body at the foot of th
cliffs. The Americans, on their return, fail to recognize her sacrifice,
and echo their initial judgment of the Italian people by dismissing her
as a "dirty eye-tie" and assuming that she has killed their companion
and returned to her home. Similarly, Dale's ineffective attempts to sav
his partisan comrades, outlaws beyond the protection of internation
treaties and accords, from their watery grave ends in his unnecessary
and anonymous death. Moreover, this sacrifice occurs just weeks be-
fore the final liberation of Italy, a fact immediately explained by the
voiceover as the film concludes. While Rossellini does actually repre-
sent Dale's death on screen, he does so with such understatement
and speed that the viewer, used, perhaps, to a more aggrandizing cin-
ematic narrative of war, might be forgiven for missing it entirely or
failing to understand that the man who sprinted forward to prevent
the Germans from shoving the still living and bound partisans into the
river to drown was, in fact, the American soldier who has played a
leading role in the episode.
Stylistically Rossellini underlines the correspondence between the
episodes as these are the most marked by ellipsis as discussed above.
Moreover, both episodes present considerable difficulties of recogni-
tion for the viewer as the pivotal action takes place after dark in a ru-
ral landscape and is often rendered with exclusive reliance on voice.
Faces, it should be added, are never easily distinguishable as Rossellini
repeatedly employs, with the notable exception of Carmela's close-up
as she briefly contemplates her act of vengeance to come, very wide
shots and extreme wide shots that take in both the landscape and its
inhabitants. In short, what is consistently and obviously underlined in
these episodes is the chaotic and senseless reality of warfare. Military
advances are replaced with a circular and protracted movement as, in
the case of the Sicilian episode, when the soldiers negotiate their way
up the cliffs only to find themselves surrounded by distres

prehensive locals who subsequently impede their movem
church's interior. Movement is then restricted to the mine-free lava
canal through which Carmela guides them only to stop once again in
the tower where the battalion leaves the ill-fated Joe and Carmela un-
til, that is, they return shortly afterwards on hearing gunfire having
made little or no physical progress. The final episode presents analogous
impediments to the fighters' momentum as they move slowly through
the marshes of the Po valley in small canoe-like vessels. Rossellini
seems to drive this point home when, having retrieved the body of a
drowned partisan, one fighter returns to shore only to lift physically,
with the assistance of another, his vessel over a narrow and short sand
bank before rowing off again. Moreover, an inordinate amount of time
is spent tracking these men as they move slowly along the river and
through the reeds close to the bank, a fact that results in many haunt-
ing and almost immobile shots of the men and their boats. Thus, mili-
tary reality as constructed by Rossellini constitutes a state of confusion,
at worst incoherent and disjointed, at best circular and futile.
The Neapolitan and monastery episodes present a similar set of cor-
respondences and parallels, stemming principally from the childlike
mentality characteristic of the characters portrayed therein and the re-
sulting reflection on judgment. From the point of view of the narrative
structure, as in the case of the first grouping, these episodes present
distinct similarities. In the Neapolitan episode we perceive a narrative
structure that moves from an initial friendship built on Joe's narration,
incomprehensible to Pasquale, of his life as a black man in a United
States characterized by a legally endorsed segregation of the races, to-
wards a moment of antagonism prompted by Pasquale's theft of the
sleeping GFs boots and, finally, ends with a silent and impotent empa-
thy when Joe visits the orphan's cave-like home shared with the many
other homeless Neapolitans. The notoriously ambiguous fifth episode
set in the monastery may be unlocked through comparison with its
partner episode set in Naples.9 From the point of view of narrative
development, the episode perfectly matches the story of Joe and
Pasquale. Beginning with a friendship between the monks and the
American army chaplains, we move through a moment of antagonism
as the Catholic chaplain justifies his failure to convert his comrades to
the true faith, and, finally, we end on a note of understanding as the
Catholic chaplain thanks the monks for their lesson in humility and
pure faith.
Though the tranquility of the monastery could not contrast more
with the densely populated streets of Naples, the monks, like Pasquale
whom we meet as he tries to earn a few hundred lire by standing as
lookout for another boy, are introduced in a state of material need.
Their poultry is reclaimed by the locals who had sheltered the birds in
the monastery out of fear of theft on the part of the Germans, and the
meager evening meal in the monastery will consist of broccoli and
the few remaining potatoes. Moreover, a traditional form of narrative
is invoked in both episodes. Just as Joe and Pasquale go to the puppet
theater to see the re-enactment of the crusades against the "black
Saracen," a narrative characterized, as Marcus observes, by the "Mani-
chaean opposition between the forces of light and darkness" (22), the
monks regale the chaplains with tales of an equally categorical nature,
namely, the miracle tale, embodied in this case by the inexplicable res-
urrection of the infertile garden at the hands of one of the monks. What
is more, it must be noted that these categorical tales are presented
without parodie intent as they are, in many senses, authenticated by
the events of the episodes. Joe is an African- American GI who has ex-
perienced a similar discriminatory persecution in the United States, a
fact he acknowledges by means of his reluctance to return, knowing,
as he does, that the glorious victory parades will provide no space for
him. The differences between the Saracen whom he tries to protect in
his drunken state and his own social status are slight indeed.
Returning to the monks we discover that their belief in miracles is
well-founded. Not only did the garden bear fruit, but, in their time of
nutritional need, they simply state that Divine Providence will provide
what is necessary, a fact confirmed by the arrival of three locals with
some food offerings for the monastery and reinforced by the contribu-
tions of army supplies on the part of the chaplains.
Associating the Neapolitan episode with the Italian tradition of
commedia dell'arte, Millicent Marcus highlights the carnivalesque
qualities of the story (22). Indeed, Pasquale' s antics and the absurdity
of the partnership between the hefty GI and the tiny but precocious
Neapolitan orphan together with the theatrical qualities of Joe's narra-
tion of the victory parades and his drunken rendition of "Nobody
Knows the Trouble I've Seen," provide some much needed comic re-
lief. Similarly, the monastery episode presents an analogous and
equally comic incongruity. On entry into the monastery, the chaplains
marvel at the fact that it has stood as is for over five hundred years,
imagining the similarity of action between those monks that once in-
habited the building and walked its halls and those who do so at the
close of World War II. Nothing has changed would seem to be the
point. Thus, when we see the aging monks who people the episode
blessing the chaplains for their gracious gift of Hershey chocolate bars
and grappling both mentally and physically with the modern marvel
of eggs and milk in cans, we are most certainly amused.
This comic content is matched with a visual insistence on physical
oppositions. The Neapolitan episode reinforces the physical contrast
between Joe and Pasquale by means of repeated focus on dispropor-
tion. On entry into the puppet theatre, Joe remains standing and blocks
the view of those behind him. In this scene he is pres

Rossellini with a diagonal shot from behind and towers abo
who are seated in a manner that focuses not just on his
equally on his bulk and solidity.10 This disparity is reinforc
takes to the tiny stage in order to defend the miniscule Sara
Turning to Pasquale we discover that his lack of height is
not only as he trots along the heavily populated streets of
side his giant companion, but also by means of his oversize
When apprehended by Joe, subsequent to the theft of
Rossellini makes a point of having the GI remove Pasquale'
layers of jacket and sweater to reveal the tiny body beneath
attempts to escape the clutches of the soldier and runs a sh
from the jeep only to turn around and reveal the frailty of his
fore returning to put on his oversized jacket once again. The
episode reveals a similar focus on disproportion. The monk
dominantly elderly and contrast visibly with the height and
Catholic chaplain. Standing beside him and thanking him f
of American chocolate, their heavy and shapeless habits pr
tinct contrast with the tightly fitted military shirt and tro
slightly plump chaplain. Moreover, the monks are frequen
sented kneeling in prayer on the large and open space of t
or hurrying childishly up and down the stairs in order to
word that there is a Jew in their midst, pausing at times t
and speak to their superior who stands significantly on a hi
Having drawn out these parallels, it is reasonable to sugg
we believe Joe's empathy to be sincere, then, we must also
ously the stance of the monks. What matters is not their
grasp the reality of a multicultural America, but the fact th
willing to fast, to deprive themselves of the great feast pr
Divine Providence in order to ensure the salvation of the two lost souls
in their midst. Their sacrifice is certainly minimal when compared with
that made by both Carmela or Dale, but it is nonetheless a sacrifice, as
sincere and futile as those that open and close the film. The monks'
determination to suffer physically for the spiritual well-being of peo-
ple who are both strange and strangers to them corresponds in sincer-
ity, humility and, unfortunately, futility, with the wordless and horri-
fied empathy manifested by Joe on his entry into Pasquale's cave-like
shelter. Thus, when the Catholic chaplain acknowledges the lesson
learned at the monastery, the moral of the story is revealed to be an en-
tirely earnest and solemn recognition of human empathy, no matter
how bigoted it might seem to our modern sensibilities.
The final grouping is that of the Roman and Florentine episodes
both revolving around the question of transformation and resulting
misrecognition. Beginning in the chaos of an illegal drinking club, the
Roman episode moves rapidly outside to figure Francesca's hurried se-
auction of Fred whom she brings back to an apartment, presumably to

have sex for money. Fred is drunk and begins to reminisce about the
liberation, a factor that triggers the insertion of a flashback that em-
bodies the absurdity of the narrative of liberation in its representation
of a decidedly premature and romanticized euphoria. Fred fails to rec-
ognize in the prostitute who now lies beside him the woman he met
and admired on his initial arrival in Rome and ultimately does not go
to the address left to him and where Francesca waits, but crumbles the
piece of paper in his hand and leaves. The Florentine episode opens to
a similar chaos, but this time the setting is a hospital filled with injured
fighters who are tended to by Harriet. The story moves us rapidly out-
side to follow Harriet's search for her former lover, Guido who, like
Francesca and unbeknownst to Harriet, has been forced to abandon his
former identity as a result of the war and now, instead of painting,
leads a band of partisans. Harriet too has been transformed by the war
and we can only assume that her previous stay in Florence did not in-
volve tending to the war wounded. Together with her friend Massimo,
Harriet seeks a means of entry into the city and while the flashback of
the liberation interrupted the narrative flow of the Roman episode, the
Florentine episode parallels this interruption with the insertion of
the equally absurd and aestheticizing narrative of the British "Grand
Tour" discussed above. Both episodes conclude with the total impos-
sibility of reconciliation for, while Fred has left Rome, Guido, now
"Lupo," has died.
While the problems of recognition and the impossibility of reconcil-
iation dominate these episodes in equal measure, I would also like to
point to their shared parodie intent. Both revolve around a series of
romantic clichés: the Roman episode presents the often narrated tale
of an innocent Italian girl falling for an American soldier, while the
Florentine episode presents the American woman and her love for an
Italian painter. Rossellini insists on the parodie nature of his tales as he
overtly employs the convention of the close-up on Francesca's slightly
tilted face as she lies on the bed recalling her initial encounter with the
dashing Fred, but undercuts such a trite and conventional representa-
tion of the enamored female as Francesca defends the honor of work-
ing girls and their ability to survive, a parodie intent reinforced by the
slurred words of the drunken soldier as he reflects on the lost virtue of
these fresh-faced Roman girls. In the Florentine episode the romance of
the city, of its Boboli gardens, of the Uffizi gallery is replaced by its cur-
rent military status. The aforementioned criticism of Marcus' "tourist
gaze" is equally critical of a romanticized Florence when we acknowl-
edge that, in better and more romantic times, Harriet and Guido most
probably gazed lovingly at one another in these very gardens and un-
der the porticoes of the Uffìzi gallery. Romantic convention is further
stymied when at the close of the Roman episode we see Francesca
waiting in the rain for the arrival of her beloved, a beloved

ing near the Colosseum, dismisses her romantic ambition b
ing the address she left him. Rossellini's parodie treatment
ventions of romantic narrative is made more explicit at the
Florentine episode when we see Harriet cradling the dying
The conventions of the love story provide us with a tried
precedent for a tragic tale ending in the death of one or b
lovers. We are familiar with images of the noble death of
the arms of his tearful beloved. However, Rossellini deliber
trates conventional expectation by staging this death with
partisan in place of the tragic romantic hero as Harriet fin
cradling a dying stranger, a stranger who, moreover, revea
of the death of her true sweetheart, Guido. These episodes m
sarily conclude without the hoped-for reconciliation bec
simply, those involved in the romantic relationship hav
even before the literal death of "Lupo." Those war-hardene
ters who have taken the place of the lovers seek an impossi
gic return to a sentimental realm of cliché that they are n
equipped to inhabit because they are indelibly changed and
unrecognizable.
Having worked through the parallel structures of Paisà, I
now to turn to the broader implications of Rossellini's closed
If classical narrative can be said to entail a causally motivate
movement toward a final denouement, the system of parall
etition created by these internal correspondences contrives t
impetus of the narrative impulse as the film folds in on itself i
of temporal paralysis, episode six denying the possibility o
from the circumstances of episode one, episode five bl
evolution of episode two, and, finally, episode four repeati
mobilizing episode three. Returning momentarily to Deleu
erations of the paralysis of action, we might argue that Ros
only fragments the organic logic of cinematic montage, but
to paralyze the action-image of historical discourse that w
political or more broadly nationalistic meaning in the suff
death. In effect, what the use of ellipsis achieved at the le
film's syntax, the film's global structure reinforces by explo
tive's traditionally linear movement and replacing its causa
with a fictional reality of involution. This assault on historic
stems from a directorial desire to wrestle these characters
the oblivion imposed by the temporality of history. Consi
Marcus as possessed of a memorializing intent (36), Paisà is
sepulchral in that it not only seeks to honor the nameless vic
Nazi occupation, but, equally and, perhaps more importantly
to resurrect and immobilize them in an eternal narrative pr
This eternal present of Rossellini's fragmented anti-history points us

directly to a key narrative impossibility embodied in Paisà, namely, th
incorporation of unknowable detail. The mystery of Carmela's death is
known only by the dead Carmela and, of course, those who killed her,
just as Dale's heroic sacrifice and that of his partisan comrades wi
remain equally obscured. This fact is made explicit when, toward the
close of the final episode, one of the partisans whispers his regret that
his family will never know his fate. However, a narrative telling of tha
which cannot be known would not seem incongruous had the directo
established a clear principle of narrative omniscience, but the afore-
mentioned "hybrid technique" (Bondanella, 66) of documentary news
reel and fictional invention seems initially to position the film within
regime of chronicle, that is, the record of past events. Yet while one can
conceivably imagine survivors relating their experiences as part of th
process of post-traumatic subjective reconstruction, Rossellini point-
edly opens and closes his film with the stories of those whose death
remains unknowable to historical record. In telling tales that, very sim
ply, cannot be told by a historical voice characterized by its focus on
documented fact, Rossellini points to the paradox of all testimony as
he insists that the true witnesses to the events of the war and liberation
are those who died. As Primo Levi makes clear in his reflections on
Holocaust testimony, the true witness to the event must be he who has
died: "We, the survivors, are not the true witnesses. [. . .] we are those
who by their prevarications or abilities or good luck did not touch bot-
tom. Those who did so, those who saw the Gorgon, have not returned
to tell about it or have returned mute" (Levi, 83-84).11 In Paisà,
Rossellini pointedly directs his lens, at the film's opening and conclu-
sion, from the perspective of the dead and, faced with the impossibil-
ity of bearing true witness to that which cannot be told, he turns to
the fragment and the "image fact" in order to posit a fractured telling
of immobilizing trauma, a telling that, in its insistence on a narrative
present, denies the validity of historical temporality and, equally, casts
doubt on the imminent Italian narratives of post-war nation formation.
DEBORAH AMBERSON
University of Florida
NOTES
1 Millicent Marcus identifies a call for a "national unity predicated on dif-
ference" (16) and sees the director's numerically episodic structure as a reflec-
tion of an activist aesthetic that calls on the viewer to intellectually reconstruct
a national whole (17). Peter Brunette acknowledges the unity of suffering, the
"latent humanity" or "basic sameness" (66) sought by Rossellini in his efforts
to counter the regional and individual differences manifested in the various
episodes, yet he recognizes the persistent intrusion of "fragmen

dispersal" operated by the "real" (73). In line with Brunette's view o
diversity," Sitney points to a progression that allows the American
understand those they liberate (45). Angela Dalle Vacche acknowle
Paisà seems to have retrospectively contributed to the project of
restoration in its "containment of class and regional differences t
production of a composite, but homogenous, term of identification
Roy Armes, on the other hand, identifies Rossellini's aesthetic "i
dramatisation" (76) and underlines the fact that all the episodes en
of some kind" (80). Robert Warshow's analysis remains perhaps the
simistic as he focuses both on the senselessness of the sacrifices made and the
suffering undergone (259) as well as Rossellini's insistence on the universality

of death itself (256).
2 The American version of the film also relies on the repeated insertion of
the image of the map of the Italian peninsula on which the gradual progress of
the Allies is indicated by an ever-expanding area of white.
3 Marcus describes this in terms of a descent from a macrolevel of "epic cer-
tainties" to a microlevel on which soldiers are plagued by fear and ineptitude
(Marcus, 18).
4 Peter Bondanella addresses these allusions to horror cinema in The Films of
Roberto Rossellini, 70. Marcus sees these allusions in terms of a parodie intent of
the part of the director (21-22) and Sitney considers them as indicative of the
generalized confusion of the episode (47).
5 Marcus describes the transformation of Florence from "museum to battle-
field" as the master trope of this episode and identifies the resulting conver-
sions, from painter to partisan on the part of Guido, and American traveler to
Red Cross nurse in the case of Harriet (31).
6 Deleuze relies heavily on Bergson's discussion of perception and memory
throughout the cinema books, both with regard to the logic of the sensory-
motor schema or organic regime of classical cinema and the time-image of
modern cinema.
7 It must, of course, be acknowledged that Rossellini's previous film, Roma

città aperta (1945), relies heavily on this naturalizing narrative of abstraction
and frequently steers close, by virtue of its melodramatic tone and the techni-
cal strategies employed (close-up amongst others), to the paradigmatic
Hollywood film.
8 Bazin develops a series of comparisons with a variety of American authors
from Hemingway to Faulkner, considering this film in terms of a series of short
stories (Bazin, 34). P. Adams Sitney develops these comparisons and considers
the films as the filmic counterpart of the American literary style embodied in
the writing of Italian authors such as Carlo Levi, Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini
and Italo Cai vino (Sitney, 44).
9 While many have attempted to resolve or dilute the overt bigotry of the
Catholic monks who remain convinced that the Jewish and Protestant
Chaplains will remain forever denied true salvation by recourse to ambiguity
and impossibility of interpretation (Marcus, Brunette), others have invoked di-

rectorial irony as a means to understand the stance of the monks (Bondanella,
Armes). I would, on the other hand, suggest that the episode, though at times
comic, is presented entirely without irony and that the lesson of "humility,
simplicity and pure faith" is, in fact, utterly sincere albeit impotent in the face
of the realities of war faced by the three chaplains.
10 Marcus too draws attention to Joe's bulk in the Neapolitan context (23).
11 It must, of course, be acknowledged that Levi's reflections apply to the
unique horrors of the Nazi extermination camps. Here, in the space of the sys-
tematic dehumanization operated by the Nazis, the human becomes the "Musel-
mann" who, as Giorgio Agamben argues in Remnants of Auschwitz, exists be-
yond bios in a zone of "bare life" or zoe, in a space between the human and the
inhuman in which Rossellini's proposed bonds of paisanship would become
utterly unthinkable.
WORKS CITED
Agamben, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz. New York: Zone Books, 2002.
Armes, Roy. Patterns of Realism. London: Tantivy, 1971.
Bazin, André. What is Cinema? vol. II Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971
Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. New York: Zone Books, 1991.
Bondanella, Peter. The Films of Roberto Rossellini. New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1993.
Brunette, Peter. Roberto Rossellini. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Curie, Howard, and Snyder, Stephen, eds., De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives.
Toronto: University of Toronto, 2000.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement Image. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986.
1989.
Delle Vacche, Angela. The Body in the Mirror. Princeto

Press, 1992.
Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. New York: Vintage International, 1989.
Marcus, Millicent. After Fellini: National Cinema in the Postmodern Age. Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins Press, 2002.
Sitney, P. Adams. Vital Crises in Italian Cinema. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1995.
Warshow, Robert. The Immediate Experience. New York: Atheneum, 1974.

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Battling History: Narrative Wars in Roberto Rossellini's Paisà

Author(s): Deborah Amberson

American Association of Teachers of Italian is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

Italica Volume 86 Number 3 (2009)

progress of the allied forces.2 The disparity between the tem

ments and references that seek only to render linearity impossible.

Cesare Zavattini, theorist of Neorealism and frequent collaborator of

to partisans. However, the ellipses consistently transform th

tives that are undercut by a childlike and uncomplicated moment of

up the cliffs only to find themselves surrounded by distres

the view of those behind him. In this scene he is pres

auction of Fred whom she brings back to an apartment, presumably to

waiting in the rain for the arrival of her beloved, a beloved

This eternal present of Rossellini's fragmented anti-history points us

episodes, yet he recognizes the persistent intrusion of "fragmen

suffering undergone (259) as well as Rossellini's insistence on the universality

7 It must, of course, be acknowledged that Rossellini's previous film, Roma

and impossibility of interpretation (Marcus, Brunette), others have invoked di-

Delle Vacche, Angela. The Body in the Mirror. Princeto

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