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Paisà (1946)
Rate:
2
Viewed:
8/25
8/25:
I waited a long time to start Paisà (Italian for Paisan) after seeing
Roma città aperta.
Once again, it's boring...very boring despite the excellent photography. There are six episodes, making the film
an anthology. None of them connects except for one underlying theme: they're set in Italy during WWII.
Everything is totally random, making me think Roberto Rossellini was filming whatever for the hell of it. I hate
that the film is roughly 70% English and 30% Italian and that Criterion Collection won't put in the subtitles
whenever the former is spoken. It's impossible these characters of different nationalities understood each other.
Remember that Italy was partners with Germany. Therefore, who cares about these people? Look at what they
did in North Africa by running concentration camps and slaughtering over 50,000 innocent civilians. All you have
to do is watch Lion of the Desert. Eventually, Italy agreed to pay
$5 billion to Libya for reparations.
Like I said in Roma città aperta: "Worse is the whitewashing of
history. Let's not forget the Italians, having taken the Nazis' side, played a huge part in killing citizens,
political prisoners, and Jewish people. According to IMDb, 'all the atrocities in the film are attributed to
the Germans. This was due to the policy of national reconciliation which was relevant in Italy during the
filming of the film.' In fact, there wasn't much of resistance going on prior to 1943. Thus, it's easier for
Italy to look good in 1944 only because it had surrendered to the Allies the year before, causing
Winston Churchill to joke, 'In Italy until July 25th there were 45 million of fascists; from the next day,
45 million anti-fascists. But I don't know that Italy has 90 million inhabitants.'"
All in all, there are hundreds of better war pictures than Paisà.