Roma, cittą aperta (Open City) poster & wallpaper
Get movie widget Recommend it Add to Favorites

Vito Annicchiarico, Nando Bruno, Aldo Fabrizi, Harry Feist, Anna Magnani ... see more see more... , Giovanna Galletti , Maria Michi , Francesco Grandjacquet , Marcello Pagliero , Eduardo Passanelli , Carla Revere , C. Sindici , Akos Tolnay , Joop van Hulzen , Amalia Pellegrini , Vito Annichiarico

Roberto Rossellini's Roma, Cittą Aperta (known in English as Open City) was one of the landmark films of the 1940s on several levels. Aesthetically, it was one of the first major works of Italian neor... read more read more...ealist filmmaking and perhaps the single most influential example of the style. Historically, it was among the first postwar European films to gain a significant audience in the United States, opening the door for a greater appreciation of international filmmaking in America. And politically, it was a work of tremendous bravery. The screenplay was written by Roberto Rossellini in association with Federico Fellini and Sergio Amidei while Rome was still occupied by German forces in 1943-44. Rossellini began filming in secret, using scavenged film stock without sound equipment, shortly before the city was liberated in June of 1944. Several key members of his creative team had been active in the Italian resistance movement. With its rough, documentary-style look, multi-layered narrative, and a cast that mixed amateurs with actors who didn't look like film stars, Roma, Cittą Aperta captured the harsh and unforgiving textures of real life as few movies of its time had dared. It set the pace for Italian Neorealism as an influential postwar film style that combined outdoor light and location shooting with non-actors, a focus on simple stories of everyday life, and a concern for the poor and for social problems. Roma, Cittą Aperta shows the lives of a group of people living in Rome during the Nazi occupation, after the Germans had declared it an "open city." Anna Magnani plays a woman in love with a member of a resistance group; in helping him, she risks not only her own life, but also that of her unborn child. Aldo Fabrizi plays a priest who aids the anti-Nazi cause and pays dearly for his activism. Marcello Pagliero is an outspoken communist who runs afoul of the Nazis. And Harry Feist plays a German officer who has taken an Italian lover, but whose affection for Romans does not run especially deep. While Roma, Cittą Aperta shows flashes of the melodramatic sentimentality that would mark much of Rossellini's later work, it still rings true as a chronicle of a city under siege and as the genesis of a powerful new film style whose influences include such later filmmakers, among many others, as John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Spike Lee. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Flixster Users

90% liked it

5,370 ratings

Critics

100% liked it

23 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 43 min.

Directed by: Roberto Rossellini

Release Date: February 25, 1946

Invite friends to see

DVD Release Date: October 15, 1997

Stats: 291 reviews

report incorrect info

Photos

None yet... Got one?

Your Rating


clear rating

Flixster Reviews (291)

  • rubystevens
    November 22, 2010
    rubystevens
    altho not the first nor the definitive neorealist film, it was the one that caught the world's attention. filmed in the streets under difficult circumstances shortly after rome's liberation and still thrilling to watch, the film follows resistance fighters and ordinary people tr... read moreying to get on with their lives in the wake of nazi occupation. the criterion edition with high def digital transfer looks terrific. if you've tried watching this before but was put off by poor picture quality and bad subtitles check it out now :)
  • ajv2688
    October 18, 2010
    ajv2688
    A great early Italian Neo-Realism film, a must see.
  • flixsterman
    October 11, 2009
    flixsterman
    Has to be one of the first post-war films to come out of Italy after WWII. In 1945 the Italians had every right to be anti-German, yet this film is less about that than it is an homage to the men, women and children who fought against occupation in the underground resistance mov... read moreement. A fantastic film.
  • fb208103125
    December 5, 2011
    fb208103125
    "Rome Open City" is the first of Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy and is a stunning and realistic look at wartime Italy through the eyes of those that lived it. It's one of the most influential and prolific of all the Italian neorealist films and a tremendous show of bravery by a... read morell involved in the creation of the film. Rossellini who was aided by Fellini and Amidei making the screenplay had to film in secret using scavenged film stock and no sound equipment due to the Germans and was filmed in Rome shortly before its liberation. The realities of war are terrifying and realistic and don't always end happily. "Rome Open City" preserves a time and place and helped found a powerful and beautiful style of cinema that continues inspiring and capturing the hearts and souls of all those who see it! A masterpiece that shouldn't be missed.
  • smootysveen
    July 13, 2010
    smootysveen
    What I'll remember about this one: The scenes with the kids, and the androgynous German villain duo. They both scared me. Plus there're some really fantastic scenes at the midway point and at the end.
  • HuskersNC949597
    March 29, 2011
    HuskersNC949597
    If you don't understand what they're saying through those long stretches of dialogue with no subtitles, don't worry, just fill in the blanks. After all, Italians are people too, they were probably just talking about the Yankees.
  • jam233
    March 4, 2010
    jam233
    96/100. To fully appreciate this film, it should be researched, focusing on how it was made and the history behind it. It's an incredible movie. The cast is amazing, the realistic viewpoint is fresh even today, and was an amazing concept at that time. Superb and gritty photograph... read morey, the story is an unforgettable one, and it is all brought together by the genius Roberto Rossellini. It is so visually impressive. Historically such an important film in cinema, and it never fails to impress and fascinate. It is astounding how Rossellini manages bits of humor amidst extreme war conditions. There are so many images that you think about long after watching the film.
  • catbox9
    November 13, 2009
    catbox9
    Roberto Rossellini's film Rome, Open City (Italian: Roma, cittą aperta) depicts the German occupation of Rome during World War II. In the film there is a priest who helps the Italian resistance.

    This film is one of the early examples of an Italian neorealism film. While current ... read morescholars tend to consider this film more melodramatic than neo-realist. Despite this, it has many of the notable characteristics of Italian neorealism - the film focuses on ordinary people; it has a loose, episodic story structure; the camera style is simple; there is an emphasis on emotions rather than abstract ideals; etc. While I suppose this is a decent example on neorealism, I was rather disappointed in this film. The only other neo-realist film I've seen is Bicycle Thieves, an outstanding film, and I was hoping this film would be of similar quality. While I suppose it did a good job at what it was trying to do, I just didn't care about the story at all. The only thing I liked about the film was a stretch of a minute or two which led to the iconic shot of one of the main characters being shot.

    I should comment that the current DVD releases of this film are terrible and this could have contributed to my poor opinion of the film. There were large portions of dialogue in Italian and German with no subtitles making the film quite difficult to follow. Criterion is working on a release of the film which would almost certainly do a better job with subtitles. Perhaps the film is worth a rewatch at some point.
    40/100
    F
  • thrusz
    August 27, 2008
    thrusz
    This print is just God awful.

    I understand that this movie was lost forever. People had no idea a print of it ever existed. So why didn't Criterion get its grubby hands all over it and re-translate it. I mean, this translation is probably the worst part of the movie. I alm... read moreost feel guilty reviewing it because the translation was so bad. There was entire sections of text that were ignored, I guess, because they must not have been vital to the plot. Unfortunately, God forbid, I actually like the nuace and real life conversations that go on in movies. To top it all off, the guy who did the titles was credited right at the beginning. I don't think I've ever noticed the subtitle guy get a credit in a film, let alone in a film where the titles are extremely poorly done.

    The movie from there is pretty impressive though. Sure, I really didn't get a lot of the intricacies of the plot, but I did get what was going on. There's an interesting take about the peaceful warrior. The hero of this film is a Catholic priest who does small things that make a big difference. I don't know if that was initially the intention of the fillmakers, but I did find it extremely intriguing to see a war hero without the use of a gun. Now, most underground World War II movies have to do with France. That makes a lot of sense to me. After all, the French lost so much during the war and had some of the greatest cruelty to face out of the occupied countries. But the Italians really is a new perspective. Keeping in mind that Italy and Mussolini were part of the Axis powers, the underground had to be active in a world where everyone around them could not be treated as a friend. Perhaps most of the country didn't agree with the Facists, but there had to be only a few who could stand up against their friends and neighbors to return the country to its state of homeostasis. That's a really insane idea. This movie deals with the idea of betrayal and, goodness me, you hate the traitor for all that he or she is worth. (You think I'm going to ruin the end of the movie like the book did for me.)

    Honestly, since I was watching it more for the visuals since I was completely lacking in subtitles (Amanda, I could have used your help on this one), I did notice that Rossellini does tell a very visual story. It is well known that Rossellini used actual locations for pretty much everything in the movie, including Italian apartments. But when apartments are used in film, it always looks really low budget and crappy. (I blame movies like Carnival of Souls) This does have quite the cinematic look that you can expect from a war film without being an outright war film. Sure, there are Nazis and people die, but it isn't people behind enemy lines. This is the underground movement. Heck, even Burt Lancaster as a Frenchman fired more shots than this movie. But there's the famous scene of the new wife chasing her husband down the street only to get gunned down behind the car. That kind of stuff is just brutal. Visually gorgeous, but terrifyingly brutal.

    So the long and short of it is that this is a fantastic movie that I really didn't get to appreciate nearly as much as I wanted to because of a sh*tty print, but it is a fantastic story and absolutely gorgeous throughout.

View All Roma, cittą aperta (Open City) Reviews

Critic Reviews

September 9, 2005
Toronto Star

A classic of historic importance. Full Review

Bosley Crowther
May 20, 2003
Bosley Crowther, New York Times

The total effect of the picture is a sense of real experience, achieved as much by the performance as by the writing and direction. Full Review

July 20, 2002
Chicago Tribune

Remains a film of electric drama and high emotion, as well as a major turning point in film history. Full Review

Don Druker
January 1, 2000
Don Druker, Chicago Reader

Its realistic treatment of everyday Italian life heralded the postwar renaissance of the Italian cinema and the development of neorealism; the film astonished audiences around the world and remains a ... Full Review

Fernando F. Croce
April 8, 2012
Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

A galvanic document of human and filmic regeneration Full Review

James Kendrick
February 5, 2010
James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk

its rough, newsreel-like aesthetic gives the story's undeniably melodramatic tensions and clear-cut depictions of good and evil a sense of gritty reality and true gravity Full Review

Sean Axmaker
January 27, 2010
Sean Axmaker, Seanax.com

Roberto Rossellini had been a journeyman director working within Mussolini's Italian film industry when he redefined his career and all but inaugurated the neo-realist movement... Full Review

Christopher Long
January 17, 2010
Christopher Long, Movie Metropolis

(T)hese moments are so powerful that its easy to understand the effusive rhetoric the film has inspired. Full Review

Ken Hanke
September 27, 2006
Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

The true "realism" comes from within the film and from the sense of artists banded together to make something because they had something to say. Full Review

Emanuel Levy
July 12, 2006
Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

Announcing the arrival of a new, revolutionary paradigm, Italian neorealism, Rossellini's masterpiece shows the tension between his realistic docu-style and use of some melodramatic devices, but flaws... Full Review

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Cast

More Like This

Click a thumb to vote on that suggestion, or add your own suggestions.

  • The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    The Wind That Shakes the Barley (50%)
  • Schindler's List
    Schindler's List (25%)
  • Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection
    Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collecti... (0%)
  • Paisą (Paisan)
    Paisą (Paisan) (100%)

More Movies like Roma, cittą aperta (Open City)

Facts

No facts approved yet. Be the first

Roma, cittą apert... : Watch Free on TV

Movie Quizzes

No quizzes for Roma, cittą aperta (Open City). Want to create one?

Video Clips

No video clips yet. Want to upload one?

Meet Other Fans

Add Roma, cittą aperta (Open City) to favorites

Recent News

No recent headlines. Got one?

Recent Lists

Make a List |

View All Lists

Most Popular Skin

No skins yet. Interested in creating one?