A film without fascism: why the fascists were whitewashed out of Paisan

Watched some of the supplementary material on the Criterion disc of Rossellini's "Paisan" (thanks, Criterion/Janus - your discs remain unsurpassed!) - and got some new appreciation for and understanding of this groundbreaking but uneven movie. Interesting to hear in one of the Rossellini interviews that he says he hates (I think that was his word) the earlier Rome, Open City and loves Paisan. Why would this be? They are both part of his so-called War Trilogy, from the postwar Italian cinema, they both ushered in the Italian neo-realism (a term he also "hates," - why not just realism, he asked). But seeing a few clips from each I could see that Rome, though much more tight and tense as a narrative, and much better acted, is a traditional story with all the elements of Italian melodrama - it's almost operatic (Maganini shot dead in the street - a clip shown thousands of times). Paisan is by contrast much more experimental and unusual - an attempt to create a portrait of a nation in time through 6 unconnected vignettes. The pacing is therefore more erratic and uneven, but perhaps grander in the end - Canterbury Tales compared with Troilus & Cressida, as an analogy. Rome is obviously more appealing, but Paisan may have opened more artistic possibilities. One of the commentaries took on the issue rarely discussed: what about the Italian fascists? They are largely washed out of both films as we seem to see the partisans v the Germans as if Italian fascism played no role at all in the country's devastation and shame. Apparently the government at the time was focused on reconciliation and would approve no film that took on the fascists for what they were. The much later Night of the Shooting Stars, though not as good a movie, was more honest on this score.

Beauty v Truth: Rossellini's Paisan

Roberto Rossellini's 1946 "Paisan" is a curiosity today but highly influential on world cinema and still worth seeing and enjoying, at least once: made up of 6 episodes, each of about 20 minutes, it follows the invasion of American forces as they move north through Italy, from Sicily to the Po Valley, encountering some German resistance and linking occasionally with the Italian partisans. Some of the episodes are kind of melodramatic, but each presents a little story and each is a remarkably different setting: soldier picks of prostitute (and doesn't recognize her as someone he knew in the past), three chaplains stay in a monastery and are overwhelmed by the devotion, a partisan soldier and an American woman try to cross the Arno into partisan territory, a black soldier befriends a street urchin, and so on. Some of the scenes are strikingly beautiful, especially those shot along the Po river and the deserted streets of Florence, which looks like a DeChirico painting. Some are beautifully composed: the dinner in the monastery, with the monks fasting, which looks like a Renaissance tableau. Some of the production is ludicrously amateur by today's standards - Rossellini must have been working on a shoe string - with terrible shot-to-shot continuity. The terrible acting, especially among the American soldiers - who were these guys? GI's who stayed on in Italy after the war? - is a huge detraction. All of us should admire the resistance fighters, and who know whether any of us would have had the courage to take on the fascists or the occupiers, but this and other postwar films make it seem as if virtually the entire nation was partisan - someone must have supported Mussolini (and Hitler) or at least remained silent and unaware - the glorification of the Partisans may have done much to boost postwar morale but I suspect it's a bit of a fiction.