"Open City"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 470, 25 June 1948, Page 25

"Open City"

-. — Open City, the Jtalian Resistance film which caused a furore in Britain and the United States some time ago, has just reached New Zealand, and the following notice was written by our Auckland correspondent, P.M., after a preview of the film there. DELAYS in seeing films in New Zealand are often irritating; those of us who take our filmgoing seriously rather than as a regular Saturday night sop are frequently kept on tenterhooks hoping against hope that some film which has caused ¢omment abroad will in due course find its way here. But the wait of two and more years to see Open City has been to our advantage. Had we seen it shortly after it had been filmed, which was literally as soon as the Germans were ousted from Rome, we would have experienced, in the main, the smug emotional reaction of being on the side of the heroes. Seeing this film to-day. after three uneasy years of peace, my reaction-and I think it will be the reaction of many others-was one of horror, not simply at the record of what had happened,, but at the thought that all too easily it could happen again. Open City, though fictional, is so sincere a report of what actually happened as to be almost documentary. Set in Rome the film tells a story of the German Gestapo’s war on the Italian partisans-in particular, the hunt for one of the leaders, Manfredi, and the rounding up of his associates. It is forcefully dramatic, but the few light touches-the priest playing football with his students and being embarrassed by the statues in an art shop, the confession of marital improprieties by the widow Pia-prevent it from degenerating into pure melodrama. There is no happy ending: With the exception of a group of children, who play an important part, all the major characters on the partisan side are killed or overpowered and the Gestapo remains in control. But their victory is a hollow one for they are thwarted in their main endeavour-to obtain information. There is no happy ending, as I have said, but the conclusion of the film is dramatically satisfying, and I could not help comparing it with that of another film I had seen recently, Call Northside 777. Those who saw the latter film (a very good one by Hollywood standards) will remember that having been given throughout its length a frank and unedifying picture of justice at work in the United States we were called upon to swallow in the final sequence some sanctimonious claptrap about the virtue of American justice admitting its mistakes, uttered-out of character-by the hard-bitten reporter. In Open City there are no false heroics, Freedom was mentioned but once; democracy not at all. Overseas critics have made a point of the characterisation of the Gestapo being stereotyped. This criticism is quite justified, though the weakness is excusable when the time and place of making the film is considered. The film has also been criticised for its lack of finish. Maybe this is a good fault. At any rate the film’s integrity more than compensates for any defects, and the last words of the priest, Don Pietro, are worth remembering: "It is not difficult to die well. It is cult to live well."