Rome, Open City

So after our class on Italian neo-realism I thought I’d better catch up on the associated screening I had missed when filming the Brodsky Quartet. I like realist films. I think they’re a useful antidote to Hollywood and a great example of the power of cinema as a means of mass communication and, in some way, documentation. Rome, Open City was a great example of a film that captured a moment in history and didn’t just show me what it was like but actually made me feel what it was like. That surely is the magic of cinema. Yet we must be careful when it comes to realism that it does not descend into soulless propaganda. Every great story is about the fight of good against evil but when it comes to social realism one has to take sides in order to define this. In the case of Rome, Open City the Nazis are the ‘evil’ and this works because most would agree with this stance. All cinema is truth to some degree but I believe that realism is closest to actual life and therefore requires very careful handling.