REV25: ROME OPEN CITY

80^th Anniversary

Regarded internationally as one of cinema’s great masterpieces, Roberto Rossellini’s fabulous neo-realist film is as much a documentary as narrative feature.

Filmed in the utterly destroyed ruins of Rome almost immediately after its liberation from the Nazis and secretly planned in during their occupation of Rome, Rossellini created a powerful choral story of a city dominated by fear, violence, moral degradation, and the raw courage of its inhabitants. 

The film follows Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero), a partisan leader, as he attempts to evade the Gestapo and enlists the help of Pina (Anna Magnani) and Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi), the local priest ready to complete acts of resistance. Along the way we traverse bombed out buildings, streets controlled and patrolled by Nazis and a city full of people afraid and confused in performances chillingly authentic and urgent.

Shot on the streets of Rome, and in a makeshift studio, only six months after the liberation of the city – while Germany still occupied Northern Italy – the film features a largely non-professional cast, except for Aldo Fabrizi and a magnetic and memorable Anna Magnani. 

Moving seamlessly between levity and brutality, this is reality in all its vivid dynamism and the beginning of a new way of seeing in cinema.

Narrative Feature | 1945 | Italy | Italian with English subtitles