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.

Father Pietro Trying to calm down the grandfather (Turi Pandolfini)

Calm down old man, the soldiers are coming.

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.

Pina racing to save Francesco.

Pina shot dead in the streets by German soldiers.

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.

Father Pietro cradles the deceased Pina.

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.

Scorned lover Maria (Marina Mari) turns Luigi in to the authorities before he can escape to the mountains.

German sophisticate Ingrid (Giovanna Galletti) gets information from Maria, and in exchange keeps Maria out of poverty with gifts and drugs.

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.

Christ-like imagery of Luigi’s torture appears throughout the sequence.

Implements of torture and the brutality they suggest are almost as effective in creating shock and horror as seeing it carried out on Luigi.

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.

Marina and Ingrid partying next door to the torture room, drinking and smoking with German soldiers.

Major Bergmann takes a break from overseeing Luigi’s torture.

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.

Maria, horrified at the mutilated body of her lover, collapses in shock.

Moments before Ingrid removes the fur she gifted Maria.

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.

The boys, children of horror and witnesses of cruelty, walk towards their home city of Rome as the final shot of the film.

Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

QFS No. 122 - The invitation for September 27, 2023
Another Italian* film, you say? Well, you longtime members of QFS will remember that Sharat is making his way through the film requirements he was supposed to be have finished before beginning as a grad student at the American Film Institute. We previously watched A Man Escaped (1956, QFS No. 9), Burnt by the Sun (1994, QFS No. 58) and Swept Away (1974, QFS No. 82). Rocco and His Brothers is another one of those films** that Sharat needs to complete 22 years ago.  

Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti is a favorite of Martin Scorsese, calling him “one of the greatest artists in the history of cinema.” Scorsese listed Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) as one of his favorite films from the Criterion Collection, and I was lucky enough to catch The Leopard at the Aero Theater recently in Santa Monica. The Leopard is a lush production with a great cast unfolding a story over nearly three hours.

 I can’t say if Rocco and His Brothers will be the same, but the length sure is. I really enjoyed The Leopard and need to expand my knowledge of Visconti more in order to be a more effective filmmaker at the AFI Conservatory circa 2001. So thank you for helping me complete my AFI coursework! Join me to discuss.

*With this selection, Italy vaults back into the lead with most QFS films from a single country with six, over taking India’s five. Related, the best restaurant in Los Angeles is Pijja Palace in Echo Park which is an Indian-Italian fusion sports bar. Pijja Palace is No. 1 on the QFS Restaurant Critic’s list of Best Places for Sharat to Attempt to Eat More Food Than He Can Physically Consume list.

**The remaining, since you asked: Intimate Lighting (1966) directed by Ivan Passer; Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945) directed by Marcel Carne; Blue (1993) directed by Krzysztog Kieslowski and part of his “Colors” trilogy; La Guerre Est Finie (1959) directed by Alain Resnais; Vagabond (1985) directed by Agnes Varda. Either my final boss to defeat in this game will be La Guerre Est Finie – not available online and French – or Les Enfants Du Paradis, which clocks in at more than three hours long and is also French. Stay tuned!

Rocco and his Brothers (1960) Directed by Luchino Visconti

Reactions and Analyses:
Early in the film, when the family has moved into their basement dwelling in Milan fresh their migration from the south, Nadia (Annie Girardot) seeks refuge in their home. We’ve barely met the brothers and they all are somewhat indistinguishable from each other. Each handsome in different ways, a couple of them seem a little younger. But they feel somewhat broadly drawn.

As the film unfolds, we get a gradual fleshing out of each brother, as if from a fog with a detail of one becoming clearer. And then another and another as the film evolves. This continues, interwoven, as each “chapter” introduces a brother one-by-one. But the narrative continues forwards as well and at some point, perhaps halfway through the film, I felt as if I knew each of these brothers intimately. I did, because Luchino Visconti makes sure of it.

This is a remarkable feat for a film that has five main male leads in it, a mother, a female lead, and a few supporting characters as well. Rocco and His Brothers (1960) is a thoroughly rich world created by a director who's known for creating rich worlds (case in point: The Leopard, 1963). If I hadn’t already known it going in, I would’ve guessed this influenced the likes of Francis Ford Coppola (his inspiration for the brothers in The Godfather, 1972) and Martin Scorsese. Scorsese in particular - the boxing sequences in Rocco and His Brothers are incredibly intimate, with the camera inside the ring right next to Rocco (Alain Delon) in his fight enhancing its intimacy. Scorsese goes even further in Raging Bull (1980) with his use of speeds and cutting. But in Rocco and His Brothers - the use of the crowd, the black and white cinematography, the lighting on the boxing ring, the cutting to the crowd - all of it feels like an origin story for Scorsese. For Coppola, it’s been well documented how he fashioned the Corleone brothers after the Parondi brothers. Not to mention hiring Nino Rota to create the score for The Godfather (1972). The Rocco and His Brothers score definitely gives birth to The Godfather’s.

Boxing sequences in Rocco and His Brothers (1960) Directed by Luchino Visconti. Twenty years later, Martin Scorsese makes Raging Bull (1980), influenced by Visconti’s work here.

What’s additionally fascinating for a film so long and sprawling is that Rocco and His Brothers has no central narrative. It is the tale of a family, an “immigrant” tale, and how a family evolves, fractures, and attempts to survive in the city. To tell a story about without a gripping plot, you need to have fully realistic characters - people who feel like real humans who you care about or at the very least are curious about.

Simone (Renato Salvatori) starts as sort of a lovable brute with base instincts, undisciplined, but when driven by jealousy or shame, he drops the “lovable” almost entirely - and yet, you understand him. Or at least, I feel like I’ve known “Simones” in my life. Rocco (Alain Delon) is selfless, blinded by loving his brother but also genuinely in love with Nadia. And Nadia genuinely falls in love with Rocco as opposed to using Simone. And she gets revenge on Simone by dragging him down by using his obsession against him - but it kills her too. It’s all sordid and when written out like that seems more like a soap opera. And yet, Rocco and His Brothers rarely feels overly melodramatic (caveat: this is a film from Italy; some melodrama can be excused).

The film, of course, takes an incredibly dark turn and features what is probably one of the most disturbing rape scenes in cinema history. Not the most graphic, but definitely among the most disturbing. And, I’d argue, perhaps one of the most disturbing knife killing in cinema history.

A QFS member brought up that this felt like a dark Grapes of Wrath. Which is a pretty spot on way to look at it. A family, driven by poverty, forced to migrate within their country and find shelter, comfort, and a living in a strange place.

I’ve noticed a common thread I’ve noticed in many QFS selections, that of this immigrant or migrant story. Human migration is a source of so much drama, such fascinating stories - and it spans eras and nations. Our most recent selection, How Green Was My Valley (1941, QFS No. 121), is in part about the causes of migration. America America (1963, QFS No. 87), directed by Elia Kazan only three years after Rocco and His Brothers, tells that tale from Turkey through poor Greeks leaving their homes. Apur Sansar (1959, QFS No. 16) is in many ways a story about what happens when a migrant from the impoverished countryside tries to make it in the city. And even L’Avventura (1960, QFS No. 116), made in a vastly different style by fellow Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni in the same year - there’s an undercurrent of class. The protagonists are wealthy but there are plenty of interactions with the poorer class and there an undercurrent of post-war Italy that both L’Avventura and Rocco and His Brothers portray in their own ways.

Close up of Alain Delon (“Rocco”) in Rocco and His Brothers (1960).

Rocco and His Brothers is a textbook in character portrayal, but it’s also a textbook in cinematography. The night work in this film are astonishing with big broad light and sharp shadows thrown against buildings. The close-ups are gorgeous (Pauline Kael criticized the lighting on Alain Delon: “who at times seems to be lighted as if he were Hedy Lamarr”) and the cathedral rooftop scene in particular could be a masterclass in blocking for actors and the camera. Rocco turns into a close up and a tear falls from his eye perfectly. I loved it - a QFSer who is an actor felt it was a little too much. He also felt that everyone in Parondi family needs therapy. Absolutely true, and yet it would’ve been a much shorter film had they done so.

As mentioned in the QFS invitation above, Rocco and His Brothers was on my list of films to see before starting at AFI. I’m more than a little upset it took me so long to finally see it. Not only is it historically important given how many filmmakers it influenced, but it is truly a spectacular film in all aspects - performance, cinematography, music, storytelling. One that AFI is right to require its incoming directors to watch. Rocco and His Brothers is, for me, an ideal balance of realism and artistry to tell a very true, human story of a family struggling to stay together.