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The first must-see film of the year.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Rome, Open City, or simply Open City, came out at a rather troubling time in Italy's history. The country couldn't afford modest-budget stories, so locals made films from scraps of film-stocks, cameras and on-location shooting with avant-garde filmmaking techniques that changed the future of European and international cinema.Open City has scenes of people getting shot, scenes of torture, and an execution of a Priest. It's very upsetting stuff for 1940s filmmaking, especially considering American films like Bonnie and Clyde wouldn't push the boundaries of cinematic content for another two decades to come.Open City is a very grounded, cutty, visceral and believable story that came from a rather depressing time in human history. It's worth a shot quite easily.

ROME, OPEN CITY is a very dramatic thriller about the resistance. Directed us to a superior, honest and realistic way shows human force in the fight for freedom. There is no doubt that this is one of the best films about the Second World War.The film was made in extremely difficult conditions, because at that time Italian cinema did not exist. However, open scenery is great. The streets, buildings and apartments perfectly fit into the atmosphere. Given the fact that this is a modest set, this is admirable.It is obvious that the emotions of the film under the influence of the then events. Love is strong, but in this context there is no room for weakness. Determination wins over hysteria. Evil is furious and cruel, but at the same time it is powerless. The struggle for freedom is exalted. However, the protagonists in this film do not have such a feeling. They simply do what they thought was right.The story is certainly based on real facts. Details are uncompromising, honest and shocking. The main participants were brutally killed. The woman for love, underground agent for secrets and priest because of faith in the good.Aldo Fabrizi as don Pietro Pellegrini is brilliant in the role of the priest who leads the dignity of man in front of the church and God. Marcello Pagliero as Giorgio Manfredi, alias Luigi Ferraris is very good in the role of leader of the resistance. Anna Magnani as Pina is humble and sincere woman who pay their love with death. Harry Feist as Major Bergmann is elegant, arrogant and spoiled. The villain in the true sense of the word.Rome, Open City is a real experience in every sense and return of neo-realism to the film scene.

It shouldn't work but it does. The movie is full of the most obvious stereotypical characters and formulaic situations, common to war-time movies.The story centers around Aldo Fabrizi as an unprepossessing and humble priest who helps the anti-Fascists in minor ways, but it's really an ensemble movie and Anna Magnanni, with her strong features and forceful yet vulnerable persona, plays a prominent role.Fabrizi is just fine, a flabby presence. He visits a shop and asks about the statue of a particular saint. The proprietor doesn't have that saint, but how about St. Roche over here? A beautiful representation, don't you think? Fabrizi stares at the little icon on the table without enthusiasm. Then he notices the statue of a nude woman next to that of the saint. With a barely perceptible shudder, he turns the woman's figure away from that of Saint Roche. But then he realizes that St. Roche is now staring at the woman's naked behind, so he adjusts St. Roche according to his precepts. His practical humanity makes his much less than operatic end that much more of a tragedy.If Fabrizi is the man trying to help others in distress -- he forges papers for deserters from the German Army, that sort of thing -- Anna Magnanni is the force trying to hold things together in a world that has become almost entirely unpredictable. She has a child. She's about to marry a good man who belongs to the resistance. Then the Germans intervene and that fake stability is utterly destroyed.The Germans could have come out of any flag-waver from an Allied country. First of all, the major who runs the show is effete and swishy. He's pale, his hair is gelled, and he smokes like a woman and seems to mince even when he's standing still. He has a woman agent whose job is to infiltrate the resistance and get them to squeal on each other. We meet her when someone opens a door and we see this villainous woman with deep shadows over her eyes, literally standing in a cloud of cigarette smoke. She's not only a duplicitous fiend who preys on the weak. She's a lesbian too.And then there are the scenes of torture and the speeches that go with them. "We must make him speak by tomorrow." Why? "If he doesn't speak by then he will have proved himself as good as a member of the Master Race, instead of belonging to the Slave Race." One of the German officers gets drunk and mocks the Master Race business and makes a speech. Then there's the execution, with the patriotic boys witnessing it and whistling a song of freedom for the victim.But for all that formulaic content, it's a gripping story about people of no special consequence. The performances, professional or otherwise, are convincing. In recent years many of us in the West have begun talking about the dark night of Fascism descending on America or some other country -- as if we knew what it meant.

On its initial release, Roberto Rossellini's 'Rome, Open City (1945)' was hailed for its harrowing documentary realism, sharing the 1946 Palme d'Or, and even today it is regarded as the type specimen of Italian neorealism, a movement that produced such treasures as 'The Bicycle Thief (1948)' and 'Umberto D. (1952).' The film's photographic style, which is coarse and unstylised, could certainly be considered classically neorealistic, as could Rossellini's unavoidable preoccupation with Italy's fascist history and war-time devastation. One might suggest that the film's unexceptional film-making technique was imposed upon Rossellini rather than being an entirely deliberate artistic decision; the Germans had only just withdrawn from Rome, and its citizens were still reeling from years of Nazi occupation and Allied bombing. Just as Carol Reed filmed 'The Third Man (1949)' amid the crumbling ruins of war-torn Vienna, Rossellini uses the backdrop of a fallen city to emphasise the disintegration of a formerly unified nation, now surviving only in fragmented patches of human spirit that must now be forged back together again.Rossellini's film is most often praised for its realism, and for its primary focus on the ordinary citizens of Rome. However, during the film's first half, I didn't find this approach entirely successful. Rather than centering the film intimately on one or two characters, as Vittorio De Sicae did in his two well-known neorealist films, 'Open City' instead jumps from one to another, manufacturing a sense of unity among the oppressed citizens of Rome, but also diluting the viewer's ability to identify with any one character. In this sense, the film is similar to Pontecorvo's 'The Battle of Algiers (1966),' or even Eisenstein's 'Battleship Potemkin (1925),' in that individual characters hold lesser prominence than the ideals for which they are fighting. Suggesting that the art of neorealism took several years to perfect, Rossellini also occasionally veers towards melodrama. Scenes involving the arrogant Major Bergmann (Harry Feist) establish a simplistic "us versus them" mentality, offering Germany as the outright villain in a manner similar to that of any early 1940s American propaganda film.I must admit that I found myself less-than-captivated during the film's opening half, perhaps because Rossellini wouldn't focus exclusively on any one character. The most interesting moments were those tinged with drama – a German soldier unexpectedly removes a gun from his pocket, a terrorist bomb shakes the city buildings. But if I had any doubts about the director's technique, then the harrowing realism of Anna Magnani's death, photographed as though through the lens of a bystanding newsreel camera, without any dramatic fanfare or unnecessary cinematic punctuation, convinced me of its merits. Notably, Rossellini deviates towards drama in his film's second half, but I considered this an improvement, my complete sympathy now directed towards a specific character, the dignified Roman priest Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi). The German treatment of captured rebels is unflinching in its hostility, including a prolonged torture session with a blow-torch, and a sombre firing squad execution as city children watch on with downcast eyes. Interestingly, Rossellini doesn't end the film with an Italian victory, as might be expected. The misery lingers; any victory could only be hollow.