Night of the Shooting Stars: Heroes or Collaborators?

I saw "Night of the Shooting Stars" back when it came out, ca 1982, in a theater (of course, no other option then), and remembered almost nothing about it, other than that I was impressed, so watched it again last night and it holds up reasonably well, though a little creaky by today's standards: the ridiculous "wipe" montage, the overbearing soundtrack, the obvious and clumsy studio dubbing of the dialog, the awkward framing device (woman looks at night sky and recalls the same sky during a time of her youth). Today, this film could have been far more artful, but even so it has some wonderful elements to it, as we follow a group of Italian villagers who, rightly, distrust the command of the bishop to assemble in the cathedral and instead take off in the night, against the orders of the Germans (and their Italian Fascist henchmen) in search of sanctuary with the Americans. We follow them on a scary and surprising adventure across the countryside, encountering many obstacles and some incredibly tense and poignant scenes, notably the shootout with the Fascists in the wheatfield, the arrival of the stunned victim of the cathedral bombing, the first encounter with American GIs, and a night in an old farmhouse. The storytelling, however, is kind of clumsy, as it's extremely difficult to keep the characters straight and to have a sense of what they're doing on their trek (sometimes they seem to have to move only at night, at other times they're walking in broad daylight, for example). Also I;m somewhat troubled by the unstated political realities - great that this group wants to get sanctuary from the Americans, but what have they done throughout the war? How many of them cozied up to the fascists, and now just want to be on the side that's winning? Are they heroes, collaborators, opportunists, or just survivors? At least two of them were part of the resistance, it seems (from an encounter near the outset, but this theme is not developed), but not clear what the role of the average citizen was - probably played along to get along.