Open City is apparently considered Roberto Rossellini’s greatest work. With this being my first look at classic Italian cinema, I can’t comment on this.
What I can say is that this is a wonderfully passionate tale of a humbly heroic priest (humbly heroic seems contradictory, but you’ll know what I mean if you see this DVD) who puts his life on the line to help others in need.
Filmed shortly after the Nazi’s left Italy, shot on scavenged ends of film; Open City has a feel of authenticity through its documentary look. The quality of the film, and the seemingly sparse subtitles are remarkably easy to get used to, especially as the visual story telling never leaves you in doubt as to what’s going on.
Even with the slight propaganda feel, this remarkable tale of the struggles of occupation, is summed up by the priest’s best lines:
“Oh, it’s not difficult to die well. The difficult thing is to live right.”
Delivered in his almost joyous manner that typified his warm and loving character and gave the movie it’s air of hope.
Superb viewing, popcorn not required!
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1 comments to "Open City"
2:29 PM
Hehehe, I’d say anything is better than Runaway Bride, and I was guessing you only put it there ‘cause you saw it on TV the other night.
As for the new header – thanks, I like it too (funny that).
I’ve been experimenting with customising my Blog, I got the idea for links down the side, and linking in the text of my posts from you!! And I saw another Kiwi with an image in his header and discovered that using My Online Images as a host I could do the same.
I’ve also recently discovered that I can also link in any comments I make.
So not only has the world of Blogging enabled me to rant about good movies, and such, it’s also opened my eyes to the politics of Chinese development and has been a learning curve for me (I know nothing of html code, at least I didn’t a few months back!).
So Blogging is good.
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