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War to Roberto Rossellini is the ordeal that pushes to extremes the chaos inherent in human beings, Italy between the summer of 1943 and the winter of 1944 gives the rubble from the vantage point of bewildered G.I. Joes. A Sicilian peasant (Carmela Sazio) and an American grunt (Robert Van Loon) share an extended take inside a cave, the muddle of suspicion ("You people with guns are all the same!") gives way to perilous illumination (a lit match elucidates a family photo and attracts a German bullet). In the Neapolitan black-market, a soused MP (Dots Johnson) sits atop a bombed-out junkyard and pantomimes his struggles to the scavenging orphan (Alfonsino Pasca), he wakes up to stolen boots. Elsewhere, Rome since the Liberation has become such a swing-scored Gomorrah that the shy Yankee conqueror (Gar Moore) can't recognize the streetwalker (Maria Michi) who once chastely welcomed him, a sort of sorrowful response to Minnelli's The Clock. Florence under fire finds a culture at its most depredated—fascist snipers on roofs and documentary views of the Uffizi Gallery in pieces, "la fine del mondo." As a nurse (Harriet Medin) and a resistance member (Renzo Avanzo) cross the city, there's a fleeting glimpse of Giulietta Masina, a peculiarly funny shot of British officers on the meadow, and the startling point-blank shooting of collaborators. The Franciscan intermezzo is the eye of the storm, a gentle joke ("A Catholic, a Protestant, and a Jew walk into a monastery...") complete with Fellini bits (the monk's fulsome blessing of a Hershey bar). It all leads to the Po Valley, American and partisan together in the marsh. An improvised burial, the slaughter of a family, a weirdly soft-faced Nazi exalting the "new civilization," everything is chilling, blunt, overwhelming. An aquatic void fills the screen at the close, a nation pondering the depths while struggling to lift its head. Cinematography by Otello Martelli. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |