Paisà (1946) - film review

Six tales of ill-fated human contact set during the liberation of Italy by the Allied forces in World War II, between 1943 and 1944.  In Sicily, a group of American soldiers arrive in an Italian village and seek help from the untrusting locals.  A young woman, Carmela, agrees to lead them across a mine field.  Afraid that she may betray them to the Germans, one of the soldiers guards Carmela in a ruined castle whilst the others reconnoitre.  Although she is initially unwilling to communicate with her guard, Camela ends up risking her life to save him.  In Naples, a black military policeman is befriended by a young street urchin, without realising that his new friend intends to steal his boots.  When he learns something about the boy’s predicament, the soldier decides the young thief needs his shoes more than he does.   In Rome,  a prostitute takes an American soldier home.  She realises that they first met six months ago, soon after her town was liberated.  Now, jaded, cynical and drunk, he fails to recognise her.  In Florence, an American nurse braves sniper gunfire in a bold attempt to cross the River Arno to rejoin a resistance leader.  In rural Italy, three army chaplains arrive at a Franciscan monastery.  The monks’ initially warm reception turns cold when theuy discover that one of the chaplains is a Jew and one is a Protestant.  On the banks of the River Po, a group of war-weary Allied soldiers make one desperate bid for freedom, which ends in a bloody shoot-out.

The second of Roberto Rossellini’s trilogy of World War II films (sandwiched between Open City and Germany Year Zero) is this powerful work comprising six vignettes linked effectively by actual newsreel footage.  Often cited as Rossellini’s best work, the film paints a harrowingly realistic picture of Italy during its period of liberation, showing a country shattered, divided and suspicious of all outsiders.

The crudity of the editing and amateurishness of the acting performances adds to the film’s striking neo-realist feel, making the film appear more a documentary of the war (in a similar way to René Clément’s La Bataille du rail) than a conventional war film.  Indeed, the film’s final segment is so chillingly raw and naturalistic that it looks like Rossellini was actually filming the war whilst it was happening before his eyes.

Perhaps the theme which most strongly connects the film’s six segments is the notion of people trying and failing to communicate.  War is the most extreme example of human beings failing to understand one another, and it is appropriate that Rossellini’s film should use that as a central theme.  An inability to communicate inevitably results in a tragic outcome, and language, cultural and religious differences are just a few of the barriers to communication which the film touches on.

Although each of the segments has a sombre outcome, some of them are more optimistic than others.  In the first, an Italian woman gives her life to try to save an American soldier she has only just met – showing that human beings have an innate capacity to empathise which transcends conscious communication.  The reverse situation is shown in the more pessimistic third segment, where a prostitute in unable to re-establish contact with the soldier she fell in love with six months ago.

Although crudely made and unevenly structured, Paisà still stands as a masterwork of Italian neo-realist cinema.  Set in a country which is visibly in ruins and still bearing the scars of war, it is a film with a surprising power to engage and move the spectator.  Few war films convey the awesome tragedy and senseless destructive capability of war as keenly as this film.  Over and over again, it tells us that It is only when you try to pick up the pieces that you realises what has been lost.  As a testament to the folly of war, Paisà is an evocative and uncompromisingly honest work.

© James Travers 2003

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