Toth Database - Cinema

  Paisà

Year: 1946 

Duration: 124 min

Color: B/N 

Genre: Dramatic

Director: Roberto Rosselini

Producer: Roberto Rosselini

Photograph: Otello Martelli

Editing by Eraldo Da Roma

Music: Renzo Rossellini

Performers and characters

Carmela Sazio as Carmela

Robert Van Loon as Joe

Alfonsino Pasca as Pasquale

Maria Michi as Francesca

Gar Moore as Fred

Harriet Whiet as Harriet

Renzo Avanzo as Massimo

Gianfranco Corsini as Marco

Willian Tubbs as Capt. Bill Martin

Plot

Episode I – Sicily

In July 1943, Anglo-American forces landed in Sicily to begin the conquest of the island. A group of American servicemen, engaged in scouring an imprevia area in search of the German enemy, reaches a church where dozens of inhabitants are sheltered from the bombings. Among them, a breed in search of relatives, Carmela offers to help the platoon to guide them in the direction of the Germans avoiding minefields. Heading north, they returned to a castle unattended on the and settled there. While the other soldiers do a reconnaissance in the surroundings, Joe remains in the company of Carmela, but the American catches the attention of the Germans with a lighter and is killed. The German soldiers then take over the castle and then find Carmela, before they can abuse her, the girl takes the shot soldier's rifle and starts firing at them. The Germans kill her and throw the body off the cliff. When the American soldiers return, they find Joe's body and think it was Carmela.

  Episode II – Naples

Pasquale, a scugnizzo makes the acquaintance of Joe an African-American soldier of the military police in a state of drunkenness. After telling him about his dreams of glory upon returning home, the soldier falls asleep and the boy takes advantage of it to steal his shoes. A few days later the military chance finds the little thief and forces him to accompany him to his house to have the malt returned. Here, however, the American reckons with the impressive images of the misery in which the boy lives, understands that his family has died under bombardment and desist in his intent.

Episode III – Rome

February –March 1944: The Allied landing in Anzio provokes the beginning of the German retreat from central Italy but it is only on The End that the Anglo-Americans light up the totally liberated capital. Six months later, on the streets of Rome, a prostitute lures a drunk American soldier named Fred and takes him with him to his room. Here the man begins to tell about his meeting with an Italian girl, Francesca, which took place on the day of the allied arrival in Rome.

The prostitute realizes that she is the girl she met months before and then lost sight of, in the despair caused by the war.

Despite trying to see him again the next day to turn out to be like francesca, Private Fred leaves without showing up for the appointment, thus ignoring forever the true identity of that anonymous street woman.

  Episode IV – Florence

The retreat of the Nazi-Fascists continues going up the peninsula, first through Lazio, then Umbria, then Tuscany, where the allies liberate the part of Florence south of the Arno. Fundamental is the contribution made by the partisans in the house-to-house struggle. Among them is the young English nurse Harriet, on duty in those areas, desperately looking for the man she loves and who has lost sight of: Guido Lombardi, a painter who is now a partisan leader called Lupo. The girl tries to enter Florence under siege to find him, with the help of the partisans and a friend of hers, Massimo, in search of his missing family.

With the exception of the Ponte Vecchio, all the bridges of the city have been destroyed, Harriet and Massimo manage to reach the Part manned by the Germans passing through the Uffizi Gallery.

Harriet's adventure ends in the most painful world, however, when she learns of Guido's death from a fellow partisan.

Episode V – Emilian Apennines

The Anglo-American advance has to come to terms with the Gothic line. In those areas, in a small convent on the Emilian Apennines, the meeting takes place between a community of Franciscan friars and three American military chaplains. A cause of disturbance that upsets the harmony and peace of the place of ha when one of the friars discovers the Protestant and Jewish faith of two of the chaplains, considered for this lost souls for whom to invoke conversion to Catholicism.

Episode VI – Porto Tolle

Winter of 1944: Across the Gothic line, along the Po Delta, the struggle sees partisans along with american parachute units.

In the hard battle fought between the polesine marshes, there is no shortage of violent reprisals by the Nazi-Fascists against the partisans, even on helpless civilians.

They will be the last barbarity of a tragic war that is about to end a few months later.

Notes

After Roma Città Aperta Roberto Rossellini, Sergio Amedei, write the screenplay, of this film.

In Maiori, in the province of Salerno, the scenes of the Sicilian episode took place, within the walls of the Norman Tower, and the Emilian episode, inside the convent.

Di Maiori is also the child of the Naples episode, Alfonso Bovino, who was chosen by Rossellini.

In this film, a very young Giuletta Masina, fellini's wife at the time, makes her first appearance, with a brief appearance as a woman who descends the stairs. In the film, Carlo Pisacane appears in a small part in the Sicilian episode.