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COMMENTARY: Rome Open City, by Roberto Rossellini.

Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945) is set in Rome during the Nazi occupation and portrays the
experience of a group of Italian resistance fighters in their struggle for liberation and subsequent
executions by the monstrous SS leaders who sought their capture. Hailed as the ‘ultimate example’
of Neorealism, the piece expresses everything that Neorealism as a movement embodied, whilst
simultaneously challenging neorealist orthodoxies, as well as other ‘cinematic, political and moral’
conventions.1 We see this in the examination of a diverse range of stereotypical characters, some
more naturalistic than others, as moral representatives of Italy’s varied reactions to the period after
the fall of Mussolini’s regime and before Allied liberation. The characters of Pina (Anna Magnani),
Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi), Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet), Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero), and
little Marcello (Vito Annichiarico) are all virtuous symbols of the ideology of the resistance, while
Marina (Maria Michi), Lauretta (Carla Rovere), Ingrid (Giovanna Galletti) and Bergmann (Harry
Feist) represent the evil, sin and moral degradation brought to Rome by the fascist regime and Nazi
occupation, yet this strong dichotomy only becomes truly apparent in the latter half of the film, after
Pina’s death.

The death of Pina is undoubtedly the most pivotal sequence in the film, causing the subsequent
narrative to unfold in a way that makes the second half an entirely different cinematic experience.
The sequence itself is shocking, upsetting and crushing of hope, particularly due to Pina’s
characterisation as the ‘Madonna’ and her efforts in the resistance, motherhood and love, and
furthermore, in the knowledge that she was based on real-life woman Teresa Gullace, who also had
children and was pregnant at the time of her brutal shooting by a German petty officer when trying
to run to her arrested fiancee. This goes to show how the film is, as Stewart puts it, ‘a collage of
moments, drawn from real life, and thus representative of Roman experience during the
occupation.’2

The sequence causes the tone of the film’s narrative to shift swiftly from relative light to darkness.
Before Pina’s murder, while the characters are still highly stereotyped, they are grounded in the
realism of daily domestic life, the ‘carry on’ attitude of the Italians in a time of crisis and the hope
for change and the arrival of ‘spring’. Rossellini makes time to capture the humanity that still
existed despite ongoing horrors by allowing for themes of love, marriage, family and humour to

1 Sidney Gottlieb, “Introduction: Reappropriating the Old, Making the New” Roberto Rossellini's Rome
Open City, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). pp. 4.
2 Fiona M Stewart, ‘Libera Nos a Malo:Violence and Hope, Image and Word in Rossellini's Roma Città
Aperta’, Journal California Italian Studies, 2016, 6, 2. p.4.
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detail the first half of the film. Mundane but comedically touching moments like the family
bickering, the music-hall humour of Don Pietro turning the nude statue away from St. Rocco,
Manfredi and Don Pietro finding a small slice of happiness in whistling and the young boys playing
football before the ball hits Pietro’s head (actually a poignant and saddening omen of what is to
come for Don Pietro), all allow the audience to believe they are watching an authentic documentary
of these peoples lives. Furthermore, the importance of time being made for love was clearly
important to Rossellini as his focus on moments between Francesco and Pina, and even Francesco
and Marcello, indicate the belief that love provides strength, unity and is timeless, being a
fundamental part of human existence that can overpower hatred. The event of Pina’s death brings
these touching, real, private lives on to the brutal public stage on which the history of the regime
and WWII was played. A shroud of darkness descends on the film as we witness the evils of war,
and, particularly after the capture of Manfredi, Pietro and the ‘deserter’ and we are plunged into the
world of the Gestapo, humane humour is lost and replaced by sadistic sarcasm, as seen when Ingrid
and Bergmann share a laugh when he suggests Manfredi’s fake cause of death should be a heart
attack.

Pina’s death also drives change in the representation of the characters and what is most apparent is
that the events which unfold afterwards amplify both the Italian and German characters, forcing
them to fully develop into their heightened stereotypes. The Italian men are elevated as great
partisans and martyrs of the resistance and anti-fascist ideology. Both Manfredi and Don Pietro are
lifted to martyrdom as the events following Pina’s death lead to their arrest, torture and execution;
as Marcia Landy notes, they both ‘exemplify the high-minded ideals of anti-Fascist Resistance,
identified not only with the Communist Left but with Christian morality.’ 3 This is equally true for
the Germans, their representations as sadistic, soulless Nazis are highly emphasised and this is
emphasised most during the interrogation sequences where we see the ‘good’ in the Italians and the
‘evil’ in the Germans come together and contrast sharply with each other. Here, the grotesque as a
narrative mode is pitted against the realism brought by the Don Pietro and Manfredi and their
grounded but staunch and valiant refusal to give up their comrades.

This distinction is apparent from a technical standpoint too, as the realism of Italians’ world
portrayed in their capture is shown by Rossellini ‘from a distance perhaps to increase the
documentary look of the sequence’ which contrasts with the immediate delving into the Gestapo
interrogation chambers where the film becomes the most ‘stylised and symbolic part of the film’.4

3 Marcia Landy, Italian Film (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 322.
4 Sidney Gottlieb, “Introduction: Reappropriating the Old, Making the New” Roberto Rossellini's Rome
Open City, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). pp. 16.
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Furthermore, while there are few close-ups in the early scenes of the film, during Manfredi’s torture
there is a sequence of shots which cut between close-ups of Bergmann, Manfredi and Pietro,
isolating them in intimate images where we see them for who and what they really are and the
contrast between the heroic Manfredi and villainous Bergmann is striking. Here we see just how
polarised Rossellini’s view of Italians and Germans was; the sense morality and anti-fascism upheld
by Manfredi and Pietro is strongly juxtaposed with the sadistic, morally and sexually perverse
portrayals of Ingrid and Bergmann, who are donned in monstrous-looking make-up and
physicalised through melodramatic actions which makes us perceive them as farcical caricatures
next to the grounded Italians.

Furthermore, the absence of Pina is potently felt when we are left with the remaining ‘triptych’ of
female characters; Lauretta, the ‘flighty’, trivial woman happy to consort with the Nazis, Marina a
drug-addict who also relies on Nazi lovers and betrays Manfredi, Ingrid a ‘woman-seducing
demon’5. After the death of Pina, who signified the virtuousness of the female partisan effort and
motherhood, the three remaining women are accentuated in their stereotypes and their choices are
criticised. That they have not only excluded themselves from this effort but have, in a sense, chosen
to thrive off of the obvious sins of the Nazis, shows that perhaps Rossellini did not view women as
equal in the struggle against the regime. He praises women like Teresa Gullace (Pina), but her
death and the female characters left thereafter infers that they were few and far between, and that
their activism still centred around providing for their families, as we see with Pina instigating the
robbery of the bakery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gottlieb, Sidney. “Introduction: Reappropriating the Old, Making the New.” Roberto Rossellini's
Rome Open City, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004). pp. 31–42.

Landy, Marcia, Italian Film. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 322.

5 Sidney Gottlieb, “Introduction: Reappropriating the Old, Making the New” Roberto Rossellini's Rome
Open City, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). pp. 10.
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Stewart, Fiona M, ‘Libera Nos a Malo:Violence and Hope, Image and Word in Rossellini's Roma
Città Aperta’, Journal California Italian Studies, 2016, 6, 2. pp. 1-18.

Wood, Mary P. "Realisms and Neorealisms in Italian Cinema." Italian Cinema. (Oxford: Berg,
2005.) pp. 82–109.