Review of Open City (2008) by Nicholas G — 26 Aug 2008

This print is just God awful.

I understand that this movie was lost forever. People had no idea a print of it ever existed. So why didn't Criterion get its grubby hands all over it and re-translate it. I mean, this translation is probably the worst part of the movie. I almost feel guilty reviewing it because the translation was so bad. There was entire sections of text that were ignored, I guess, because they must not have been vital to the plot. Unfortunately, God forbid, I actually like the nuace and real life conversations that go on in movies. To top it all off, the guy who did the titles was credited right at the beginning. I don't think I've ever noticed the subtitle guy get a credit in a film, let alone in a film where the titles are extremely poorly done.

The movie from there is pretty impressive though. Sure, I really didn't get a lot of the intricacies of the plot, but I did get what was going on. There's an interesting take about the peaceful warrior. The hero of this film is a Catholic priest who does small things that make a big difference. I don't know if that was initially the intention of the fillmakers, but I did find it extremely intriguing to see a war hero without the use of a gun. Now, most underground World War II movies have to do with France. That makes a lot of sense to me. After all, the French lost so much during the war and had some of the greatest cruelty to face out of the occupied countries. But the Italians really is a new perspective. Keeping in mind that Italy and Mussolini were part of the Axis powers, the underground had to be active in a world where everyone around them could not be treated as a friend. Perhaps most of the country didn't agree with the Facists, but there had to be only a few who could stand up against their friends and neighbors to return the country to its state of homeostasis. That's a really insane idea. This movie deals with the idea of betrayal and, goodness me, you hate the traitor for all that he or she is worth. (You think I'm going to ruin the end of the movie like the book did for me.).

Honestly, since I was watching it more for the visuals since I was completely lacking in subtitles (Amanda, I could have used your help on this one), I did notice that Rossellini does tell a very visual story. It is well known that Rossellini used actual locations for pretty much everything in the movie, including Italian apartments. But when apartments are used in film, it always looks really low budget and crappy. (I blame movies like Carnival of Souls) This does have quite the cinematic look that you can expect from a war film without being an outright war film. Sure, there are Nazis and people die, but it isn't people behind enemy lines. This is the underground movement. Heck, even Burt Lancaster as a Frenchman fired more shots than this movie. But there's the famous scene of the new wife chasing her husband down the street only to get gunned down behind the car. That kind of stuff is just brutal. Visually gorgeous, but terrifyingly brutal.

So the long and short of it is that this is a fantastic movie that I really didn't get to appreciate nearly as much as I wanted to because of a sh*tty print, but it is a fantastic story and absolutely gorgeous throughout.