Rome, Open City (1945) w/ Elizabeth Lev

<p class="MsoNormal">Filmed in Rome just after its liberation from the Nazis, while the rest of Italy was still at war, Roberto Rossellini's <em>Rome, Open City</em> documents a unique moment in the history of the Eternal City. With its story of working-class Italians secretly resisting Nazi occupiers, <em>Open City</em> did much to dispose Americans more kindly toward a defeated Italy, and made the cinematic movement of Italian neo-realism internationally famous.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Art historian Elizabeth Lev joins the Criteria team to discuss this classic, included on the 1995 Vatican film list under the category of Values. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Catholicism is central to the film, with Aldo Fabrizi playing one of the great heroic movie priests, almost an Italian counterpart to the one in <em>On the Waterfront</em>. But it's also interesting how the film manipulates recent history to serve as a kind of propaganda for Italian unity and the rehabilitation of Italy's global image in the post-fascist period - "art as diplomacy", as Lev calls it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href= "https://www.elizabeth-lev.com/">https://www.elizabeth-lev.com/</a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href= "https://nwdouglas.com/about">https://nwdouglas.com/about</a></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. <a href= "https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com">https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com</a></p>