Roma, città aperta (1945) | Roberto Rossellini

Developed in Rome during the Nazi occupation, shot in the Eternal City shortly after the Nazi withdrawal, Roberto
Rossellini’s Rome Open City stunned audiences the world over who saw in it an unmediated authenticity more
evocative of the documentary quality of wartime newsreels than of the artificiality of earlier, more conventional
WWII dramas.
It wasn’t cinéma vérité, but it was clearly something new, and in time there was a name for it, neorealism. In
retrospect, Rome Open City was a sort of transitional film, combining elements of what would be called Italian
neorealism with elements of traditional studio melodrama, but it was new enough to put neorealism on the map.
Scenes were shot on sets, but Rossellini also made use of still war-torn Roman streets that could never have been
duplicated in studios, with rubble-strewn alleys and scarred buildings. A few spaces, such as the triangular stairwell
in an apartment building, become so familiar that we feel we know exactly where and how the action unfolds.
Professional actors played a number of the leading roles, including Anna Magnani as the pregnant bride-to-be Pina
and Aldo Fabrizi as the heroic priest Don Pietro, but many of the anonymous players could be said to be playing
themselves, and scenes like the looting of the bakery are hardly Hollywood-type contrivance.
The leading Nazi figures — brutal Major Bergmann, the predatory Ingrid — are stereotyped villains, decadent and
subtly sexually depraved (in contrast to fertile Pina and her virile fiancé (Marcello Pagliero), partisan leader Giorgio
Manfredi). But there’s nothing inauthentic about the rank-and-file stormtroopers in the film’s big set piece, the
rastrellamento or military sweep of Pina’s apartment building, in which real Nazi POWs played themselves,
recapitulating the tactics they had carried out in reality months earlier.
Filmstock was scrounged or acquired on the black market, including some from captured German stores, though
with less variability than was once believed. Inconsistent brightness and contrast, previously attributed to different
types of film, was more the result of poor processing — or wear and tear on degraded film elements, as the recent
restoration of the Criterion edition startlingly illustrates.
The moral heart of the story, co-written Rossellini and Federico Fellini, is its humanistic celebration of the solidarity
uniting all manner of Italian citizens — ordinary civilians like Pina, Communist partisans like her fiancé Giorgio
Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero), monarchists like the unseen forces of Badoglio, clergy like Don Pietro, and even
children like Pina’s boy Marcello (Vito Annichiarico) — against the racist reign of terror represented by the Nazis.
The engagement of the Communist Manfredi and the less-than-devout but still Catholic Pina, who plan to be
married by Don Pietro rather than a Fascist official, is a dramatic token of this solidarity.
The film introduces Don Pietro on a buffoonish note, somewhat ineffectually refereeing a boys’ soccer game and
getting beaned by the ball when distracted. Later, in an amusing but contrived moment, Don Pietro stops at a shop
to pick up money and smuggle it to the resistance movement, where he uncomfortably contemplates a small statue
of St. Rocco a bit too closely juxtaposed with another statue of a voluptuous nude, and has to make two adjustments
before he is satisfied that the saint’s chastity is suitably honored.
As the film goes on, though, the priest becomes an increasingly heroic figure, relying on his clerical privileges to go
about resistance business even after curfew. In the rastrellamento scene at Pina’s apartment building, Don Pietro
boldly walks past Nazi soldiers into the evacuated building, on the pretext of administering the anointing of the sick
to a terminally ill man, but in fact intending to prevent the rabble-rousing boy upstairs from coming to grief by
attacking the Nazis with contraband weapons. Though the scene ends on another comic note, the priest’s coolness
under pressure is established — and when he and other resistance figures are arrested, Don Pietro’s coolness
becomes the rock-like moral resolve of a martyr in his last trial.
In a key exchange in the Nazi headquarters, while Manfredi is being tortured in the next room, Major Bergmann
tries to turn Don Pietro against Manfredi: “He is a subversive and an atheist — your enemy.”
“I am a Catholic priest,” Don Pietro replies calmly. “I believe that anyone fighting for justice and liberty walks in the
ways of the Lord. And the ways of the Lord are infinite.” This “baptism” of the atheist partisan leader is heightened
as Manfredi’s stripped and beaten body is pressed cruciform against the wall, a secular Christ figure.
In the end, when the priest placidly predicts that Manfredi won’t talk — adding that he will pray for him — the
conflict between the Nazi and Catholic worldviews comes to a head in the silence of a Marxist partisan. “I’ve got a
man who must talk before dawn,” Bergmann confides to an older officer, Hartmann, “and a priest who’s praying
for him.” When Hartmann inquires whether Manfredi might not talk, Bergmann shoots back, “That would mean
that an Italian is as good as a German! It would mean there’s no difference in the blood of a slave race and a master
race! What would be the point of our struggle?”
Hartmann, though, has seen too much to accept the party line. He fought in the first World War; he saw French
patriots die without talking. “We Germans simply refuse to realize that people want to be free,” he tells the
scandalized Bergmann.
Don Pietro’s faith, and the stubborn Catholic sensibilities of the Italian soldiers in the climactic scene, give a
triumphant sense of spiritual uplift to what would otherwise be a merely downbeat, defiant finale. Religious, moral
and political themes intertwine to the end: The boys watching outside the fence whistle a partisan tune, either to
rattle the soldiers or to encourage the priest, who uses extra seconds of grace to whisper the oft-repeated words
of forgiveness first uttered from the cross. The final shot prominently features Saint Peter’s Basilica — San Pietro,
named for the apostle declared to be a rock — on the horizon over the boys as they go on their way, the next
generation in the struggle for justice and liberty.
*
“Rosselini decidedly makes his film one which focuses on the concept of power, and those who have it, and
therefore have the ability to bestow and revoke said power, and those who do not. Rossellini castrates his male
characters endangered by the SS occupation of Italy by rendering them powerless to save their families and the
women they promised to protect. In doing so, Rosselini not only creates dueling groups in his film, the good and
the evil, he also explores the depths of the melodrama genre.”
While it can be argued that Roberto Rossellini’s 1946 film, Rome: Open City bears a resemblance to documentary
film, the resonating thematic elements of the film tie strongly to melodrama, specifically that of the male
melodrama. In his narrative, Rossellini examines the following hallmarks of the melodrama: morality, through
creating and juxtaposing two poles of morality, one which is good and one which is evil; a victim-dominated story;
and he considers what power men have to assert over, at a macrocosmic level, society, and at a microcosmic level,
the family, when they have been rendered impotent by forces which are uncontrollable and more powerful than
they.
The earliest origins of the melodrama genre were “dramas and novels based in codes of morality and good
conscience. . . about familial relations, thwarted love and forced marriages” (Hayward 228). Something which
Rossellini focuses on through visual and narrative dichotomy is the melodrama’s insistence in focusing on “moral
values,” specifically referencing its early narratives which “pitted bourgeoisie against feudalism”.
Some of melodrama’s conventions are as follows: the films feature a man who “has to function on terms that are
appropriate to the domestic sphere. In this way, he becomes less male and in the process more feminized,”
something which is argued by Susan Hayward as being one of the reasons why melodrama appeals to female
viewers; it focuses on a victim; and is “[f]or the most part,… nostalgic: it looks back at what is dreamt of as an ideal
time of respectability and no anti-social behaviour. It dreams of the unobtainable”. Some of the conventions of the
masculine melodrama are as follows: in a masculine melodrama, “[b]ecause patriarchal culture, in its over-
evaluation of virility is in contradiction with the ideology of the family, the male. . . has to achieve a compromise
between the male and the female sphere” and in a masculine melodrama, the focus in on the “portrayal of
masculinity in crisis” as a means to “expose masculinity’s contradictions”
In an essay by Linda Williams, she dissects the concept of the melodrama, discussing how people consume art,
saying that there are some pieces which we view as being “in the realm of the ‘gross’” and some that we deem
acceptable, whether personally or as a society. She states that “[a]s a culture we most often invoke the term [gross]
to designate excesses we wish to exclude,” providing the example of Robert Mapplethorpe, and how some of his
photographs are considered acceptable as art and others are not to explain that we divide art into categories: those
pieces of art we deem serve a function so that they may be considered art and those pieces which we view as
excessive, and therefore unpalatable.
In discussing the topic of excess, she delves into the subject of melodrama, which she calls a “more nebulous
category”. Williams states that this style of filmmaking “has long been hampered by assumptions about the classical
nature of the dominant narrative to which melodrama and some individual genres have been opposed”. She further
elucidates her point, exemplifying how negatively and anti-artistic melodrama has been cast in the discussion of art
by discussing Rick Altman, who argues that those who practise a Classical Hollywood style of filmmaking “cannot
accommodate ‘melodramatic’ attributes like spectacle, episodic presentation, or dependence on coincidence
except as limited expectations or ‘play’ within the dominant linear causality of the classical”.
Williams explains that melodrama is an art form which has been relegated to the realm of the absurd and ugly,
similar to pornography and horror films, where “Pornography and horror films are two. . . systems of excess.
Pornography is the lowest in cultural esteem, gross-out horror is next to lowest”. She argues, that melodrama is
something that will always be considered by some to be distasteful and ridiculous, as it is “considered as a filmic
mode of stylistic and/or emotional excess that stands in contrast to more ‘dominant’ modes of realistic, goal-
oriented narrative”.
Considering these ideas and definitions, and how even in this course which focuses on Italian Neorealism, we can
venture within a genre of film and have one film, such as Rome: Open City, be a work of melodrama, and another
film, such as The Bicycle Thieves, not be considered melodrama, I argue that melodrama is a style of film rather
than a genre. Melodrama has a set of conventions which can be applied within any genre of film, as long as its
narrative and the way in which it portrays its characters falls into the category of that which is more excessive and
subversive in regards to male identity, a concept which was addressed thoroughly in Rome: Open City, and
therefore less palatable to a mainstream audience.
In Rome: Open City, Rossellini simultaneously places importance on and references melodrama’s earliest origins
through the obsession some of his characters, specifically Marina and the SS officers, have with opulence and a
hoarding of excess at the expense of human beings. This concept is best exemplified in the scene, at approximately
the 1:27:00 mark of the film, wherein Major Bergmann leaves Don Pietro to watch the torture of his friend,
Manfredi. It is this scene in particular which highlights Rosselini’s “set of precise techniques that would become
foundational to art cinema; long shots to induce spectator speculation about a character’s psychological makeup
and narratives without the sort of closure and happy ending that characterized Hollywood cinema in particular”.
When Major Bergmann leaves the door open so that Don Pietro is at the perfect vantage point where he can watch
Manfredi be tortured, Rosellini not only conveys his depraved nature, juxtaposed directly against a priest who
refuses to betray his friends, he also invites the viewer to desensitise themselves in the same way Major Bergmann
does. Although Bergmann leaves the door open to the torture room, Rossellini cuts away from this room just before
the torture begins. In doing so, Rosselini creates a tension in the viewer: relief that one does not have to witness
what is happening and the building of searing anticipation, as Rosselini refuses to show the violence, only permitting
the viewer to hear the tortured screams until the final moments of the film.
After opening the door to the torture room, Bergmann exits his office, where he leaves Don Pietro, and enters
another room. This room is visually and tonally overwhelming. Not only is the quiet, interrupted only by a piano
playing, in direct contrast to the screams heard in the other room, but it also visually careens away from excess of
abuse to the excess of vapid materialism. This other room, through which Rosselini tracks Bergmann as he glides
through it, is lavish and excessively opulent. Bergmann nonchalantly walks past walls adorned with ornate mirrors
and paintings; a long sofa on which Marina and Ingrid sit, splayed out and smoking cigarettes; a massive ornate
throne on which the SS officer, Hartmann, sits; and finally stops at a grand piano on which another SS officer plays,
lighting his cigarette with the flame of a candle on the massive candelabra which sits atop its surface. As if there is
no human injustice happening in the other room, Hartmann asks Bergmann, "Strenuous evening?." Bergmann
replies, flippant and unbothered, "Not very."
Rome: Open City is a film which elevates what most think of when they consider the melodramatic. I wonder if the
reason why melodrama is not taken seriously in film discourse is because melodrama is a style which has not been
able to shake its early roots in, as Susan Hayward outlines, “the French romantic drama of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries and the English and French sentimental novel of the same period”.
I believe the reason why Rome: Open City is so transformative when considering melodrama is that it reconsiders
and reformulates its original tenants, subverting what masculinity means and how it can be rendered basically
useless as a measure of social power or familial hierarchy.
A scene which I argue best exemplifies the undermining of male authority in the family and society when faced with
the chaotic nature of reality in Rome: Open City is that where Francesco has a conversation with Pina, telling her
not to be afraid of the fight for the liberation, as it will give them a freedom that will be all the more sweet after
the suffering they have endured during the war. This scene is an example of one of the moments within the film
where men tell women their purpose and how to feel, as men assume the role of assuring them that everything is
alright. This is a sentiment and male position which is rendered impotent throughout the film; in this instance,
Francesco’s soliloquy to Pina is undermined when he is captured by Nazis and Pina is shot in the street as she runs
after him, screaming for him, leaving their young son to cry over her body. Unlike what he told her, everything was
not alright, and this was not something he could guarantee, although he acted as though this were something he
had the ability to do as the man of the household.
A character in this film who has a particularly interesting character arc is Don Pietro. Although Don Pietro is
someone who is righteous and, as far as the film’s context is concerned, an outstandingly good person and friend,
sacrificing himself and his morals to aid in the revolution, his end is not one which provides comfort for the viewer.
Rather than be exempt from suffering, Don Pietro suffers the same as everyone else in this film.
One of the reasons why I find this film so poignant and transgressive is that no one is exempt from consequences
or harm. When Don Pietro is executed, most of the soldiers refuse to kill him, leaving the final shot to be taken by
one soldier who shoots him unceremoniously in the head. As he prays and waits to be killed, his back to the soldiers,
children watch, not far away, and whistle in a heartwarming attempt to provide him kinship.
When Don Pietro dies, I believe that the hope of the film dies. His is a character who persisted in his faith in a
higher power despite ample evidence that one may not exist; even when he cursed the Nazi officers for killing his
friend, Manfredi, he fell to his knees and beseeches God for forgiveness.
I argue that Rossellini’s outlook on all types of power in this film, not only male, is extremely bleak, as his is a film
where not even God can save or provide any hope for the future and the godly meet a worse fate than those he so
clearly portrays as evil.
When the children walk off down the road, holding onto each other, in the final sequence of the film, with St.
Peter’s Cathedral in the distance, I believe this is simultaneously one of the most hope-filled and yet most tragic
moments of the film. In this final sequence, these children convey a hope for the future while they walk, like in a
death march, towards a reality which holds nothing good for them and offers them no comfort or security.
I understand how on its surface, it may seem as though my commentary on the end of the film is contradictory. I
argue this is not the case as the film closes on children, offering hope as children can bring in a new generation, and
therefore new hope for the future. And as we all know, although World War II was atrocious, in the end, the world
still exists and so do we. I believe this film, in its closing image is asking us to consider the fact that horrific things
happen in the world all the time, every day, and if we do not find some small sense of hope in this bleak reality,
then we have nothing to look forward to in the future. I believe the reason why this film ends on the image of
children walking away from violence is to offer the audience a sense of hope so that they can look towards and
hope for a better future for this town and the children that we are not shown, rather than finish the film on images
of violence and negativity.
The reason why I simultaneously reference that the children walking away brings to my mind the image of a death
march is that the audience is not sure of their future; we do not know which children will live and which will survive,
or if any of them will survive. Furthermore, the imagery of the children walking away is extremely reminiscent of
pictures of death camps where prisoners are forced to march to their deaths.
As for what overall theme the film is attempting to convey, this is something that I am unclear about, and I argue
that it is something which the film is unclear about as well. As with all Italian neorealist films, they would not be
Italian neorealist films if we could tie together a succinct message for them; doing so would defeat the point and
diminish their value, so this is not something that I will attempt to do.
When at the end of the film, Rosselini leaves Marina lying on the floor, face down, having passed out at seeing the
body of her dead lover, he delivers to her character one final blow by having her fur coat taken off of her
unconscious body, one of the objects she was rewarded for her betrayal of Manfredi. In doing so, Rosselini
decidedly makes his film one which focuses on the concept of power, and those who have it, and therefore have
the ability to bestow and revoke said power, and those who do not. Rossellini castrates his male characters
endangered by the SS occupation of Italy by rendering them powerless to save their families and the women they
promised to protect. In doing so, Rosselini not only creates dueling groups in his film, the good and the evil, he also
explores the depths of the melodrama genre.