Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Rome, Open City




Rome, Open City

You anxiously wait for the last straw and correspondingly for salvation. The occupation of Rome by the Nazis was famously and tragically depicted by Rossellini in Rome, Open City (1945) which might be the first example of the kind of cinema verite techniques evidenced in later movies like Battle of Algiers. The idea was to create a documentary effect on scripted film. Fascism was feared then as it is now. Liberation ideology is predicated on the notion of freedom an irrefutably desirable commodity. History repeats, but is full of amnesia.  De Gaulle, the great hero of the Resistance, was a villain to the students who manned the barricades in '68. The benevolent despotism of Tito was followed by the murderous Bosnian conflict. The irredentist notion of reconstitution led to murderous tribalism and a revivification of centuries-old hatreds between neighbors who had lived peacefully under the Yugoslavian flag. The democratic ideal is predicated on the notion of free expression and independence. The tragic paradox rests in the fact it contains within it the germs of dissension and ultimately hate. 

read "Francis Levy's Divine Comedy," Exquisite Corpse

and listen to "Love's in Need of Love Today" by Stevie Wonder


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