Paisan

The first three episodes are very touching, intimate stories. I really loved the first half of the movie. The second half of the film is a slight letdown. The 4th is okay, but lacks that personal touch and feels more like a simple adventure story. And the last episode is fairly typical war stuff. It's the fifth that confounds me. Either Rossellini is being ironic, or it's a celebration of Catholic intolerance. The musical score is bombastic and overbearing, but the cinematography is admirable.

Where the flaws and excessive dramatizations in 'Rome, Open City' contributed to its hipster veneer and appeal, they here too often cross the bounds of even those broad limits. Some vignettes also more importantly lack informative and documentative power, with in particular those vignettes focussing on drama bringing the score down several points.

Not good as a film but maybe as a documentary.

If you went by this film you'd never know the Italians were allied with the Germans for much of the war, and I have to admit that annoyed me. That complaint aside this is quite a wonderful, raw film about the Italian liberation, told through 6 interesting vignettes. The use of native languages was a good choice and helped convey the emotions and confusion underlying the situation. The second half wasn't as solid as the first, but the good direction made up for the less compelling characters.

This film is a testament to the way a well-chosen location can dramatically impact the power of a film. Like The Third Man and Rossellini's previous film to this, Rome, Open City, Paisan tells its stories in the midst of piles of rubble and trash, bombed out buildings and broken down cities. Rossellini, in telling six different stories, threads them all together with the march of the Americans north in WWII. The dramatic shift in attitudes toward the other on both sides is wonderful to watch.

The first half gets a 100, no doubt. I bet Jarmusch likes this. The 4th vignette really brings things down. Rossellini’s signature melodrama invades in the second half and the actors unfortunately aren’t capable of selling it. But those first three and fifth vignette are so perfect. You can sense Fellini’s elegance here structurally and pacing-wise. Quite enjoyable and likely will merit a rewatch.

65-50-35-45-55-?? . malesef bu film bana rosellini'yi sorgulattı. hikayeler mantık hatası ve amatörlük yuvası gibi malesef. bu verilen puanlara söyleyecek söz bulamıyorum.

I guess I'm being a bit harsh. A good deal of the performances and musical cues are just incessantly bad.

Much stronger than Rome, Open City. It utilizes six different episodes in order to provide a grand portrait of the war and its effect on Italy. The beauty (or horror, I guess) of the film comes in the way it illustrates the way the war happened inside of these people's homes. It's harrowing stuff. Unfortunately, the acting is poor, and the episodes are of varying quality. When it's at its best, Paisan is raw and moving stuff.

# 139

A far-reaching polemic about the effects war has in all the corners of a country, it's an example of the whole being better than its parts. Despite there being many things I didn't like: The obviously amateurish acting, the dated special fx, the overbearing sound design, the possibly racist second act; at the end of the day I enjoyed this. Both a triumph of neo-realism and the anthology format, it shows a far greater depth & breadth of storytelling in its runtime than films twice its length.

133

bad good good bad good bad

Mostly a slog to sit thru but when it hits its great!

What makes this one better than just the sum of its part is, how with each segment during the movie the relationship becomes better. We begin the movie with mistrust and condemnation and we end with fighting and dying for each other. For the first few segments the way one experiences the movies alters on which characters the viewer identifies the most with, the American or Italian, in the last that doesn't matter anymore.

89.00

Dramatically inconsistent, but made with an even-handed perspective. An authentic and occasionally moving depiction of war-torn squalor and cultural misgivings, but also of the most base fraternities: love, loss, fear, humor, faith.

Six short stories starring Italy during WWII, filled with the theme of "failure to communicate." The stories are hit-or-miss, but with the ongoing overdramatic musical score, they come across as melodrama. My favorite segment was the prostitute's O Henry-like story. I'm still struggling to figure out of the Catholic chaplain's resolution.

while it has some interesting historicity, each of the vignettes is filled with large amounts of schmaltz which makes the whole thing rather tiresome.

Tarihsel olaylar ile anlattığı kurgusal hikayelerin birbirleriyle örtüşmelerini çok şık bulduğumu söyleyebilirim. Fakat anlatılan öykülerin arasından fark edilir kalite farkları var, dolayısıyla dalgalanıyor film kendi içinde.

Easy film to get into and entertaining, even funny at times.

3>5>2>1>6>4

I think this film's episodic structure is what makes it stop just a little bit short of being a true masterpiece. I don't think the earliest chapters work quite as well as the later ones, and a lot of them tend to be more pithy than profound due to their shortness. Still, there's undeniable power in this film and it's best segments are truly profound.

I found this a big improvement over "Rome, Open City", and from a very broad perspective, I think Paisan paints a socially sensitive picture of Fascist Italy's downfall through the eyes of ordinary folk of every stripe. For maturity, it beats its contemporary American war cinema, which was fraught with glib patriotism. Held to Italian standards, however, Rossellini still seems to struggle with inconsistent acting, awkwardly choppy editing, overblown music, and oft simplistic text.

118

Episodic tale of the Allied liberation of Italy in WW2. The first four episodes seem to be loosely connected by a human connection between two people, communication difficulties, and melancholy endings, but the fifth and sixth episodes get away from this to a large degree. I found both kind of abruptly ended and odd. The acting is very mixed with much of it middling to poor and there's nothing particularly special about it technically. Just okay for me.

I liked this Roberto Rossellini classic better than his iconic Roma città aperta [Rome, Open City] (1945). This movie basically contains a bunch of short stories, so you get all types of angles to the end of the war. On a low point it leaves a many loose ends, but you gain a broader understanding of how the times was. And that part of the mission was immensely successful.

#124