This is the first Roberto Rossellini film I’ve had the chance to see and boy is this extraordinary. It is insane to think about this coming out two years after World War II ended. The landscape he shoots in was just ravished by war. I can’t imagine anyone wanted to go to the theater to see this since it just happened to them, but the stories the six writers wrote for him are so compelling and filled with human stories and scrumptious dramatic irony that I am sure they entranced the skeptics. It makes me think a lot about the turbulent times of today and how I think we should see things that do not reflect the times because we are so bogged down by then, but after being nearly 75 years away from this I see how these types of story are necessary. Most of these tales deal with language and it is one of the only films of its era that honestly portrays language barriers in war films. Everything I have seen from this era to most films of the 20th century, everything is in English to make things more palatable for US audiences due to the use of subtitles not making as much money as films lacking subtitles. I also love how Rossellini reconciles the use of the three languages (English, Italian, and German). The dramatic irony of each story is so gut punching it feels like Rod Serling saw this and then created THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Every time an episode started, I wasn’t that into what was happening, but by the end of each of them I was compelled. This was specifically the case of the final episode when the baby is crying walking through the decimated village where everyone is killed because the US troops were there previously. I couldn’t help but tear up. It is equal shocking when the man kills himself on the battle field. Rossellini is I am SO excited to check out more of Rosselini’s post-war work, specifically ROME OPEN CITY and GERMANY YEAR ZERO.
