remember that we will try to include in each case, intervention operations concerning some or all of the film club movie "The scenes of power - The power of the scenes." Also we could extend the measures already posted above.
If you want to judge a movie, in this case Rome, Open City, begins: "For me Rossellini ..." must take into account the director's own words, otherwise the interpretation becomes creative and personal.
"They said, written and repeated in all the tones that I have discovered a new form of expression: the neo-realism. And 'certainly true, since, at this point, all the critics agree and no one ever had reason against the general opinion. But I can not easily swayed. This term originated with neorealism Open City. Success combustion delayed, as the bombs of the same name. When it was presented at Cannes in 1946, the film went totally unnoticed. They discovered much later and also are not sure they understood my intentions. At that time I have christened the inventor of the Italian neo-realism. What does this mean? I do not feel solidarity with all the movies you make in my country. It seems clear that each has its own realism and its estimated that each is better, including myself. My Neorealism staff is nothing but a moral position that can be explained in three words: love of neighbor. "On the one hand Rossellini and the other Italian cinema," as one critic once wrote in my regard, and it is terribly accurate. I try to react to the weakness that makes men prisoners volunteers - not to mention victims - out of cowardice or recklessness, their desire to be in harmony with everything and everyone. For idolatry of the rules we live in constant terror of being the exception, because we are used to identify the man whom you talk to the man spoken of evil. "
(Roberto Rossellini, Arts, June 16, 1954)
The above suffices to resize all the talk (right after the movie) on the quality of the neorealist times, then the absence or the presence of some post- ideology essentially pessimistic or optimistic ... However the director seems to complain more than anything else - with provocative vein - the blindness of Italian critics who was able to recognize the value of Rome, Open City, just as fundamental work of neorealism (film) Italian only when work was already acclaimed abroad. I believe that Rossellini has not woken up from day to day with the word "neo-realism" in the mouth and then do what he did. Is more sensible to think that his emotional and intellectual needs, for understandable that times and certain culture that raged, has been followed, consciously, all his work, which then called "neo-realism." This is clear.
The director himself said: "I have always tried to tell me that neo-realism was just a moral position. The moral position was objectively look at things and start putting together the elements that made things, not seeking to bring absolutely no feedback. Why are things in themselves, have their own opinion. And since I hate all that is overwhelming, this is just instinct ... This was the beginning. Then slowly these things I have become deeply rooted and are very clear for me. That is, what I did by instinct, then slowly I did it for conscience. When did this step is a bit 'hard for me to call it .... " And again: "I am constantly immersed in technical research, because I try - I am a worker - to create me a tool as nimble as possible. I always try to get to the pencil. To get to the pencil needs to be liberated patterns and needs of the productive capital. One of the first things is to reduce production costs. To reduce production costs, we must accelerate the production time, you have to do without many things. Here, for example, do without the buildings, not actors ... What has been said about the neo-realism I can swear that is completely untrue. 'Open City', the neo-realism - it was said - because there were no means, then have had to adapt to the means at their disposal and was born of neo-realism, that is the truth: the real walls, real people, the Zozzo true, and so on. No, it was instead a clear and determined their choice, I did this because I tried to do it and I did before coming to 'Open City'. The real truth is this: that the rite was celebrated in the temple of the cinema who was the studio. And the soundstage was in the hands of the owner of the studio, which to allow entry, made you pay for what he wanted. And then, as he was with the mania of photography and the absolutely perfect pan focus and cosine, etc.., I refused that. The most important thing for me was to say the things he wanted to say.
Cinema I understood instinctively, as a means to address the real life, so to get closer to the real things in a certain field. In fact, for Neorealism was me, really, a moral position and the effort to learn correct: no more than that. Then I realized that the film contains too much charm, and being too suggestive easily mythologized, and theorizes about its products too. So gradually that this instinct has become more mature, I rationalized, I also tried to rationalize my actions. This is the crossing point between the two ways of making movies. "
(Roberto Rossellini, in Pio Baldelli, Roberto Rossellini, and Savelli Samonà )
This is also a critical, given now to the world of conformist cinema of the "white telephone" which was so sweetened relations between classes, favoring wealthier classes and their relations with the bourgeoisie and the working class was forgotten at least in cultural circles. Perhaps the biggest risk was that they believed in proletarian what they saw and chased those same images, pulling their roots and risk, as well, of being left on land not suitable. Just as happens today, largely because of commercial television: the bourgeois (the poor most of the time without having the characters basically) who thinks he does well because its aesthetics proposed by the television, or the immigrants who risk life to arrive in Italy, driven by the dream wealth only seen on TV. A critical defining precisely the idea of \u200b\u200bcinema that had Rossellini: the director, so saying, he reclaims the term "neo-realism."
"I am a maker of film, not a perfectionist, and I do not know state with absolute precision what the realism. But I can say how I feel, what is the idea that I have done it.
Greater curiosity about the individuals. A need that is just the modern man, to say things as they are, to be aware of the fact I would say so ruthlessly practical, consistent with that interest, typically contemporary, for the statistical and scientific purposes. A genuine need, too, to see what people with humility, without resorting to the extraordinary stratagem of inventing the research. A desire, finally, to explain themselves and not ignore the reality of whatever it is.
Giving true value to anything, it means learning the true meaning and universal. There are still those who think of realism as something external, like an outdoor outlet, such a contemplation of rags and suffering. Realism, for me, is not that the art form of truth. When the truth is rebuilt, we reach the expression. If truth is a goner if they feel the falsehood and the expression is not reached. Subject
vivo realistic film is the "world", not history, not the story. It has no argument because they are born pre-established itself. He does not like the superfluous and the spectacular, which even refuses, but go hard. There is no end to the surface, but look for the thinnest thread of the soul. Reject the pimping and formulas, look for reasons that are inside all of us.
The film is realistic in the short film that sets and sets of problems: the film that wants to think.
We addressed after the war, right in front of this commitment. We had to search for the truth. The correspondence with reality. For the first Italian directors, said neo-realist, it was a real act of courage, and that no one can deny that. Then, behind those who might be defined as the field agents came innovators: they are perhaps more important, have sown the neorealism to a wider understanding. Then, as it is fatal. There's also the distortions and deviations. But neo-realism had already done much of his journey. [...]
With 'Open City' the so-called neo-realism has proved, more impressive in the world. Since then, and my first documentary, there was only one, single line but through different studies. I have no preconceived ideas or formulas, but if I look back at my films will undoubtedly reflected the elements in them are constant and repeated that there are not programmatic, but of course. First, the "chorus". The film itself is realistic choral (sailors White Ship matter what the population of Rome, Open City, Paisan as the partisans of the monks and nuns of Jester).
Then a "documentary" to observe and analyze, so the feedback loop, even in the documentation more closely, the "fantasy" because there is a man who tends to the real part and one that pushes the imagination . The first trend should not stifle the latter. In order the "religiosity." In the film story is essential to "wait" means any solution comes from waiting. And 'the expectation that gives life, the expectation that triggers the reality. The expectation that, after preparation, gives liberation. "
(Roberto Rossellini, in Retrospectives No. 4, April 1953)
I'm interested in resuming the argument that so impassioned souls: Rossellini proposes a shout ideology-with this film? I personally believe that a message he wants to, otherwise they would have been to be idle, instead of ending up almost on the pavement to create her work. More sensible would be to ask: Open City offers a clear message to the spectator-ideology? Thus changing the demand we take off the embarrassment, because a work, by the time it is offered to the public, it gains its independence from the manufacturer. However, it must be borne in mind the source of that work if you do not want to misunderstand it, but really understand it. So I will try to answer the question to travel between the positions of the director taken from excerpts of interviews (including even those above) and comments from critics of his time and the film itself. First, I would distinguish the terms post and ideology: the first is a proposal for deep reflection on a topic, the second is already the set of ideas and mentality of a company's own system or the conceptual basis of a conception of politics, religion etc.. We can say that they are two different times of the same thing, or should the message above ideology, which logically includes what precedes it. So it is more likely to be diverted ideology that message. I take a simple example and personal: I think there is no difference between the Christian message and the Catholic Church, the Church is based on an ideology that now is the Christian (if not, do not attend all the contradictions that mark). Again, I can not believer arrive individually and laity in the Christian message of charity and helping, for example, a sufferer, I see the hardest concepts to get to lay the basis for an ideology such as that of the Catholic Church: see Church's attitude towards suicide or euthanasia - that is, situations that involve the suffering - cases, these are present in the Bible and accepted or at least not explicitly criticized and sometimes even implicitly (Samson, Razis, Raul ...). I hope I have clarified the distinction I have in mind. Now, if I was still difficult to define the message of the film, the easier it is to speak of ideologies that I (presumably) seem to move the film. I will speak of these, because the discussion has appointed someone to Marxism, Christianity, someone else (someone else ... even Judaism).
In the scene where the printer Francesco and Pina (Anna Magnani) are sitting on the steps of the palace, when she talks about the happy times that were and he, of happy times that will be hard, the first seems to speak the language of the Communists is true that he stands by his friend Mr. Manfredi explicitly, because he studied this ... I mean, it seems to me that the only film that could be moving in the communist ideology is really bad, but decent, fine, 's Ing Manfredi precisely. Most who fought against the fascists but were not Communist anti-fascists, which is different and even more natural. Their ideology was the hope of being able to return to live peacefully as before, without any sophistry. If you really want to find dominant ideology, to be found in the figure of Don Pietro Pellegrini (figure inspired by a real character: Don Luigi Morosini), which was certainly not a communist, but he helped the needy, is that the partisan red Nazi sorry. However, his is a strong figure that carries the message of Christian charity, which is always an anarchist!, But not of a Christian ideology (I'm thinking to Syllabus eighty "major errors of age Our ", published by Pius IX in 1864, which condemned addition to pantheism, rationalism, liberalism, indifference, even latitudinarian socialism and communism - even when it clearly expresses concern about ambiguous events such as the Holocaust). To resize as I said
"The religious experience I've never had it, I tell the truth. Of course, I was born in Italy ... I grew up Italian, breathing, strength, Catholic atmosphere. And so I reject this notion that cultural roots, because it is one of my cultural roots. But I never believed, I never had faith. I thus have a very dramatic moment in my life when I lost a son who was nine years old. And then, there, of course I put all the questions ... I think that to face the death ... we need a huge dose of heroism. Then I tried desperately consolation. And where did you find? You will find them or the reality-reality, that is to imagine life as a biological phenomenon of scientific precision and so on. With all its details; or another aspect, which is all metaphysical. I was in a storm, I'd say great, at this time, however, seems clear to me that I have accepted the biological rather than the other party. And then ... maybe, just by education Catholic, Christian, I've had, I this ideal of the hero was born: that is, to risk everything, which seems to me something very important. To me the risk, the continued risk: that is, never get bored here, I put it in other terms "(1971)
To enhance even further the discourse on ideology:" If you have a preconceived idea, do a demonstration of a thesis. And 'the violation of truth, and is also a violation of education. Yes, my film can be described as a cinema of attention, of that determination. When we look at a human being, what we have? His intelligence, his desire to act, and then its immense weakness, his poverty. In the end, things become great for this ... What is moving and the frailty of man is not his strength. In modern life the man has lost all sense of the heroic life. Ridarglielo must, because man is a hero. Every man is a hero. The daily struggle is a heroic struggle. To describe this we must start from the bottom ...
You know things outside of any ideology. Every ideology is a prism. I think you can see without one of these prisms, if you do not believe I would not have made life so difficult. The starting point is here, and can be completely right or wrong: either you have faith in man or you do not trust humans. If you have confidence in man, then you may think him capable of all the best. I believe that man is capable of all the best, if you know ... Every ideology of good and bad, but it limits you in your own freedom. And freedom is the center and the engine of all. If you come to a discovery by free is a formidable thing, if you come to be in perfect conformity, this has nothing heroic. And what worries me is to make this heroic sense of life ... If a man has ability, I think this is the discovery of morality. Take Hitler causes people to obey. The Germans are in his morale because they obey. The danger becomes very heavy. If man is able to make the choice then becomes a man. But this choice must begin with total freedom. They all run the risk of errors and adventure. And the risk of being lost. E 'in what he becomes heroic. What is a saint? And 'one who has run the risk of being lost. It 'always on the verge of being lost. A small misstep can do tumbling. The only right that belongs to man and to him alone, you may appeal. All other human behavior found them at the animal, to varying degrees more or less developed: obedience, the habit ... The animal instinct of the directions that are or tropisms. He goes to things that are simple, practical, cost-effective. Life should not be just a practical fact. Today you created this myth's pragmatic life. What has become of morality? And 'this is serious. The heroism is never an individual matter. Everyone must be in harmony. How? Through tolerance. It 's a virtue that comes from a deep wisdom. Being tolerant means to get out of obedience to anything out of your consciousness. What is serious is that in today's world we live in classifications. The classification does not lead to knowledge, then this need not lead to perfect heroic "(1966).
Again, what is the message that the film suggests? I do not expect a response of definition, and it will be difficult to extrapolate from the director today.
Certainly the facts as they were, the film is a representation of them, they make us think about the war, then the power. "Where is the power in this film?", Asked someone the audience during the debate. I do not think it is useful to point you in the film, or formulate a response from the basis used the same dictionary. 'Open City' is expressed with a powerful emotional force, that the documentary is not always able to have, not only have an attention to the fact that often the films have not: how the tragedy Greek offers the opportunity for a catharsis and a first reflective approach to that historical period: it offers so many ideas to the broader considerations that must be made on the power, without claiming, however, to confirm it with the film itself. For this reason do not feel like venturing more serious about power, not because I think I can reasonably do.
wanting to finish out that I quote these excerpts of interviews or articles, not cut them further, so there facades up your own mind, does not mean that I agree with everything the director says, indeed, as often happens, to make talk about an artist out of context is congenial to him to be disappointed. Call
, However, those who have not yet seen the film that I wrote to see him soon.
Lorenzo Nicolai
PS responsible for this action is the undersigned and not directly the association: new to me all corrections, notes, criticisms, insults or threats ... I apologize if there are errors in the text or missing pieces, but I had technical problems: This blog does not seem to bear the inverted commas and the Word, so I had to format the text and rewrite all the words in inverted commas that had mysteriously come missing, quotes in different ways.
