Rome, Open City (1945)

QFS No. 174 - The invitation for May 7, 2025
Oddly, this is our first QFS selection of a Roberto Rossellini film. One of the filmmakers who inspired Martin Scorsese (and whose daughter Isabella Rossellini was once married to Scorsese) and a pioneer of Italian post-war neorealist movement, his films have for some reason eluded our esteemed selection committee of excellence.

Rome, Open City is from 1945 and concern aspects of World War II. May 7th – when we will discuss this film – will mark the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe in that global conflict.

Oh, and we have hit the five-year anniversary of our little group (huzzah!), perhaps a less celebrated achievement than the conclusion of hostilities in continental Europe 80 years ago.

Watch and let’s discuss Rome, Open City!

*Rome, Open City* (1945) Directed by Roberto Rossellini

Reactions and Analyses:
What does it mean to live under occupation of a hostile power? Rome, Open City (1945) gives us a blueprint that’s slightly more than a fictional narrative portrayal. Director Roberto Rossellini lived, literally, under the conditions in which he depicted in the film. More accurately, he made the film on the heels of living under fascist rule in Rome.

It’s almost impossible to fathom that in six short months after Germany and Italy surrendered in World War II, Rossellini picked up scraps of film from American service members, documentary news crews and anything he could get his hands on and made this masterpiece on the streets of Rome, fictionalizing the experience of his fellow Italians who lived under a fascist regime just a few short months and years earlier. An early scene depicts a minor riot, where Roman citizens storm a bakery run by their own fellow Roman citizen in order to prevent their families from starving. One can imagine this or something like this happening during the height of the war only years earlier.

The crowd is hungry and restless outside a bakery early in *Rome, Open City* (1945).

Much has been written about Rome, Open City and how it ushered in neorealism in filmmaking, a movement that swept post war Europe and felt as far away as post war Japan, US and in the expanding Indian film industry as well. It sure feels like Rossellini’s masterwork is the godfather of that movement, a film that makes us feel like we’re a fly on the wall, that we’re experiencing something both realistic but also cinematic. However, Rome, Open City does not rely on realism exclusively – the film is full of cinematic suspense that is less true realism and more what we expect in a suspense thriller. Take, for example, a simple scene early on in the film. Father Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi) is given money to provide to Italian freedom fighters, printed in the pages of religious books. He conceals the books in a package and has to walk after curfew, an action he is permitted because he’s a priest.

Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi) and Pina (Anna Magnani), who unknowingly carries money for the Italian resistance, are briefly questioned by a German officer in the priest’s church.

But his neighbor Pina (Anna Magnani) offers to carry it for him as they pass through the city. She does and they have a conversation, but there’s this secret that we as the audience know and are worried Father Pietro will be caught. At the end of their walk, they encounter German and Italian soldiers, Pina gives the bag of books concealed in money back to the priest who manages to walk past the officers without a hitch. It’s not high suspense, but it does keep you on the edge of your seat. This in many ways classic narrative filmmaking, which is why calling Rome Open City “neorealism” minimizes its mastery by some measure. It is a movie, through in through, rooted in grounded realism.

Resistance leader Luigi Ferrari (Marcello Pagliero, left) hides at Pina’s home where she lives with her family and fiancé Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet)

About halfway through the film, another scene grabs us and brings realism and suspense together. German and Italian soldiers, convinced that Luigi Ferrari (Marcello Pagliero), a leader in the Italian resistance, has been hiding out in the building where Pina lives and they decide to raid the building. Pina, pregnant, is about to be married to Francesco, Luigi’s friend and fellow member of the resistance not yet wanted by the officials, lives with Pina in the building. But the raid begins and Francesco is captured, Luigi escaping.

German and Italian officers raid the building where Pina lives and Luigi hides out.

Meanwhile, the boy Marcello (Vito Annichiarico), Pina’s son, runs to the priest at the churchyard next door and says he needs help because his little friends have a bomb on the roof – the kids had, the day earlier, blown up some industrial plants in the city. The priest races over to help make sure the kids aren’t discovered but the raid has already begun. Francesco is being hauled away in the back of a truck to haul him off for questioning. Pina, shooing away a sleazy German officer holding her and the other women back from the action.

Father Pietro and Marcello manage to enter the building where bombs and guns are being hidden by the children.

The priest urges the soldiers that he needs to enter the building in order to calm the bed-ridden old man stuck upstairs in the otherwise empty apartment building. Under this ruse, with Marcello as his altar boy, they find Marcello’s friend with a bomb and weapons on the rooftop as Marcello said. Father Pietro convinces the boy to give him the weapons, but now the German soldiers are coming up to check on the priest and this supposed old man. Father Pietro and Marcello have to race downstairs, holding weapons, and duck into the old man’s room, where he’s asleep on the bed. The grandfather (Turi Pandolfini) is indeed asleep, but he awakes and becomes agitated and does not heed Father Pietro’s urging to calm down and listen to him because the soldiers are coming. The soldiers march up the stairs towards them while the priest and the boy scramble to hide the large gun hidden under the sheets.

The soldiers are coming up to see what the priest and altar boy are truly up to.

It’s riveting, with a touch of humor – off camera, the old man has fallen back asleep somehow and the Germans burst through the door, only to find the priest and his altar boy quietly praying next to the man’s bed. Satisfied they leave without searching the old man’s bed where the weapons and bombs are hidden, and we learn that Father Pietro used a frying pan, cartoon-style, to knock out the grandfather between scenes. (Not sure what that will do for the old man’s other conditions, but at least they weren’t caught…)

But the scene isn’t over yet! Pina, restrained outside with the other women and children in the building, sees her fiancé Francesco being hauled away. She breaks free, shouting after her him, but soon she is shot dead in the streets, an innocent pregnant woman striving to make sure her soon-to-be husband isn’t “disappeared” in a shot that feels very much like it could’ve been a black-and-white front page news photo of the era.

Pina racing to try to save her fiance Francesco from being hauled away.

It's wrenching and terrifying and it doesn’t take much squinting to see how this feels very modern and real in America today. Perhaps that’s another reason the movie hits so close to home – its realism grounds us. Look to the past to learn about the present, and movies like this one give us that looking glass through which to peer.

Ultimately, the insidious forces of the regime capture Luigi too and they get to him by use of a time-worn tradition – exploiting the pain of others. In this case, a scorned lover. Luigi’s periodic girlfriend Maria (Marina Mari), a showgirl who wants only to avoid the poverty that’s become the fate of so many around her, has become addicted to cocaine.

She’s also an unwitting informant (some in our QFS discussion group disputed about whether she’s a collaborator or just careless) aiding a local German high society woman named Ingrid (Giovanna Galletti) who provides gifts and money to Maria. Luigi has found refuge in Maria’s home after the raid at the apartment building but rebuffs Maria’s invitation to share her bed. Ingrid uses Maria’s disappointment and pain to extract information, and the German-Italian authorities capture Luigi. While Maria only cares about being loved and having wealth, Luigi cares about liberating his people above his own personal well-being and interests. It leads him into the clutches of the fascists.

Major Bergmann (Harry Feist) threatens Luigi before sending him to be tortured.

What happens next is a truly astonishing series of scenes and what must be a landmark in movie history. Luigi is tortured by the Germans while the priest Don Pietro is forced to listen to his screams. Mind you, this is 1945 – it’s hard to imagine anyone had actually seen torture portrayed on screen up until this point. And it’s gripping and brutal. The priest calmly tells the German officer that Luigi will not betray the people of the resistance no matter what they do. Then, we are shown Luigi, a Christ-like figure body stripped to the waist, whipped and beaten. His face is obscured by sweaty hair. And then, unmercifully, they use a blowtorch on his skin – and we see it, the audience, in a quick but unmistakable moment. How the filmmakers accomplish this, practically, is one question that I’m still puzzling over. But the effect of it is shocking, truly, to the core.

Is this the first realistic depiction of torture in a motion picture, especially detailing the cruelties of the fascists in World War II? Given how shocking the scene is now, one can only imagine its effect in 1945.

The scene is more than simply for shock value. There’s an element to it that feels particularly relevant today. While the torture is being conducted, Major Bergmann (Harry Feist) knows that Luigi will give in, because otherwise, “Then it would mean an Italian is worth as much as a German. It would mean there is no difference in the blood of a slave race and a master race. And no reason for this war.” And immediately adjacent to the torture room is a ballroom, a party. German officers, Italian fascists, in a fancy club with Ingrid and her guest Marina, wearing the fur coat she gifted her in an earlier scene. They are drinking, piano is playing, having a grand old time. Just on the other side of the doorway, a man is being tortured to death in the hopes of extracting information.

This struck me as particularly relevant to the time we live in today. There are atrocities happening just on the other side of our door, just beyond our view. And the people who commit those atrocities cavalierly step from one side to the other as we go about being entertained in a metaphoric party of our (relatively) untouched and easy lives.

Luigi dies from his wounds, never having given in to the Germans just as the priest foretold. But Marina, who is high from partying in the other room with Ingrid and the others, happens to wander in to the torture room and sees the collapsed body of Luigi, tortured and beaten, lying on the floor. She faints. Ingrid goes to her but then, instead of seeing if Marina is okay, she simply removes the fur coat she had gifted and takes it back. It’s an incredible, cruel touch added by Rossellini that paints a vivid picture of dehumanization, of seeing people as less valuable than a fur coat.

The priest, taken out to be executed, paraphrases Christ – forgive them for they know not what they do. (“They” being the executioners.) The Italian firing squad appears to miss intentionally, and for a moment we believe the young boys watching nearby behind a fence will save him somehow. Instead, the older German officer – who earlier expressed empathy towards the Italians having seen the resilience of the French in World War I – takes out his pistol and puts it to the priest’s temple, doing the job himself.

Father Pietro’s last moments before the firing squad.

Young boys witnessing the priest’s execution.

In the film’s final coda, Marcello and the boys walk away from the site of the execution towards the city, the Roman skyline in the distance. Perhaps a message about hope for the future, that this is the generation that witnessed and will live on and fight. Rome, Open City reminded me as I’m at times reminded by great cinema – when you want an insight about the bleak times in which you are living, learn from the past. And especially from the movies of that era. Rossellini gave a gift to us from the past so we may watch and learn and hope for a better future.

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