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Roma città aperta (1945)
Rate:
3
Viewed:
6/25
6/25:
After watching many samples of early Italian cinema in Martin Scorsese's documentary
My Voyage to Italy, I decided to check out Roma città aperta
aka Rome, Open City.
The movie failed to capture my interest in the first half hour, and I could be barely gripped by what's going
on. Therefore, it's been too much praise for nothing. My recommendation to these people who love it
is to watch at least one hundred WWII films and then go back to the other one to realize that
Roma città aperta is more or less the same like the rest. The better film with a similar storyline is
Soldaat van Oranje becuase it's exciting and happened for real.
I won't put down Roma città aperta because I'm sure it's realistic and may have been ahead of time
in 1945 with several dramatic scenes. But today, too many war pictures have been made with the same story,
creating a race to discover the very few that stand apart. Also, it doesn't help when the cast is made
up of nobodies save for Anna Magnani who made a career out of acting in the virtually same manner, especially
with her hands and face.
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 already 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, Roma città aperta is disappointingly bland.