Rome, Open City (1945)
10/10
Daniel Morley wrote a comprehensive analysis of Rome, Open City in his article on the origins and influence of Italian neorealist cinema, published in the latest issue of In Defence of Marxism. His analysis covers all the important bases, and I’ll include a link here as soon as it’s available online.
Directed by Roberto Rossellini and written by Sergio Amidei and Federico Fellini, Rome, Open City is the opening shot of Italian neorealism—the first instalment of Rossellini’s “Neorealist Trilogy”, and the antithesis to the glossy studio productions of the Fascist era, modelled on Hollywood fare. The film is set in 1944 and follows a group of ordinary people in Rome and their resistance to the German occupation, shot on location months after the Nazis had abandoned the city to the Allies. It features a cast of predominantly non-professional actors.
Watching Rome, Open City today, it can be difficult to shake off the legacy of 80 years of Hollywood productions in which Nazis have become generic villains, shorn of their political and class context and treated like the Empire in Star Wars—itself patterned on the Third Reich. The sadistic Nazi officer, exemplified here by Major Bergmann (Harry Feist, dubbed by Giulio Panicali), has become something of a stock character. It can be hard to imagine when Nazi occupation was a very immediate history that directly affected both the filmmakers and audience.
Part of why Rossellini’s film is so effective is because of its stripped-down, naturalistic approach, which helps the characters feel more like real people. There are “heroes” and “villains”, but we always understand their motivations. It helps that today, we have a more recent example of brutal military occupation by sadists who kill men, women, and children and consider their enemies subhuman: Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Of course Israel’s occupation has been going on for several decades. But since October 2023 we’ve seen the reality of Zionism play out in front of our eyes through history’s first livestreamed genocide.
When Nazis in this film talk about being the “master race”, it’s no different from Zionist officers declaring themselves the “chosen people” and Palestinians “human animals”. When Major Bergmann tortures Italian resistance fighter Luigi Ferraris, aka Giorgio Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero, dubbed by Lauro Gazzolo) and threatens priest Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi), it feels like a scene straight out of Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman torture camp. When the Nazis shoot down a woman in the streets—a death that is quick and brutal, just like in real life—it reminds one of the countless aerial videos of Israeli forces gunning down unarmed men, women and children in Gaza, snuffing out the lives of people who pose no threat to them.
By the same token, we also see how an entire people living under occupation takes the fight to the occupiers. Italian children blow up a German transport carrying gasoline. Resistance fighters ambush military cars holding their detained comrades. Don Pietro, a Catholic priest, volunteers to transfer messages and money to the resistance. In response, the German military treats the entire population as a threat. They search for resistance fighters in an apartment building and threaten everyone there, including the elderly. They shoot down civilians in the street. This in turn only further galvanizes the population against them.
In one scene, Major Bergmann rails against the resistance for the crime of threatening German soldiers. Today, imperialist western politicians and media treat Palestinians and anyone who supports the Palestinians as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers for the crime of supporting resistance against Israel’s occupation. But no amount of obfuscation and spin can override the fact that oppressed people have the right to resist. That was true in Italy in 1944, and it’s true in Gaza in 2025.
When Luigi is being tortured, Rossellini—as directors tend to—of course uses Christian references and imagery. The image of the revolutionary martyr broken, bleeding, and covered in scars; the priest’s declaration “It is finished”, were all bound to resonate with a predominantly Roman Catholic audience. The Italian neorealist movement later produced Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), hailed by Vatican City newspaper L’Osservatore Romano as the best film on Christ ever made. It’s a testament to the versatility of Italian neorealism that it could influence such a wide range of material, from contemporary war dramas to retelling the story of Jesus.
Rossellini directed numerous films under Mussolini’s Fascist regime. He never appeared to be a man of strong political convictions. Nevertheless, as a talented filmmaker adapting himself to conditions after the end of the German occupation, he couldn’t help but produce material true to life. Communism is the tradition of the Italian workers’ movement, and throughout Rome, Open City we see graffiti depicting the hammer and sickle or invoking the name of Lenin.
Luigi/Giorgio is himself a communist. At one point when torturing him, Bergmann attempts to get the resistance fighter to reveal the name of Badoglio’s generals by taunting him with the class collaboration of the Stalinist “Communist” Party, noting that the party’s monarchist and liberal “allies” would eventually betray them. It’s a politically sharp and revealing scene, accurately foreshadowing how the Italian Communist Party (PCI)—in classic Stalinist fashion—betrayed the revolution at a moment when the workers could have taken state power. Luigi’s sacrifice in the name of “patriotism” and class collaboration, as subsequent Italian history proved, would not be returned by his so-called bourgeois allies.
Even so, the film ends on a note of hope. As a character faces execution, boys whistle the tune of the Italian resistance. The notion that “children are our future” is a standard cliché, but one that becomes truly meaningful in the context where adult resisters have been systematically killed by an occupying power. Israel’s “war against Hamas”, for example, is really a war against children, creating the largest cohort of child amputees in history. Yet no matter the suffering of Palestinians today, their children offer hope for a future in which their people will finally achieve freedom.
As a depiction of the struggle for liberation by an oppressed people, Rome, Open City is one of the best films I’ve seen on that subject. There’s an incredible scene in which Pina (Anna Magnani) and her fiancé Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet, dubbed by Gualtiero De Angelis) are sitting on a stairwell and she expresses her fears about the future. Francesco replies: “We mustn't be afraid now or in the future, because we're on the just path… We're fighting for something that has to be, that can't help coming. The road may be long and hard, but we'll get there and we'll see a better world.” It’s an inspiring speech, particularly in times of great strife such as our own.
Rome, Open City asks us to consider what really matters in our lives and the cost we’re willing to pay for liberation. Yet it also raises the question of what “liberation” really means when capitalists control nearly every aspect of our lives. Ultimately, liberation isn’t possible without overthrowing capitalism itself. Rome, Open City at least hints toward that conclusion.