Paisà

original title:
Paisà
other titles:
Paisan
country / year of production:
original length:
120 min. , black/white
premiere:
I: 10 December 1946
based on:
cinematographer:
more:
plot synopsis:
Six episodes describe the closing phase of World War Two in Italy, the advance of the US-forces and the struggle of the partisans:
1. A Sicilian woman leads US-soldiers through a mine-field to a group of German soldiers in hiding. 2. A GI experiences the social misery in Naples as he befriends a street urchin, who steals his boots. 3. The romance of a US soldier with an prostitute in Rome, who met during the days of the liberation. Six months later he does not recognize her. 4. An American nurse trys to find a Italian lover with the help of a partisan in Florence. 5. Three American chaplains have theological argument with Fransican monks because one of them is a Jew. 6. An escaped American POW is shot as he tries to prevent partisans from being executed. This last episode is only shown in the German version. The original ends with an episode about a group of American OSS agents who have to fight a band of intractable Germans who refuse to surrender.
literature:
Apra Adriano (Ed.). Il dopoguerradi Rossellini. Roma: Cinecitta international, 1995.

Robert Warshow. The Immediate Experience. Movies, Comics, Theatre and Other Aspects of Popular Culture. New York: Doubleday, 1962.
remarks:
This is the second of Rossellini's "war trilogy" (bracketed by Open City and Germany Year Zero). It is a classic of Italian Neorealism documenting the social-political situation of its time in a combination of feature and report.
availability:
VHS