Roberto Rossellini's Rome Open City

by Edited by Sidney Gottlieb

• ISBN13: 9780521545198
• ISBN10: 0521545196
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-06-14
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Roberto Rossellini's Rome Open City instantly, markedly, and permanently changed the landscape of film history. Made at the end of World War II, it has been credited with initiating a revolution in and reinvention of modern cinema, bold claims that are substantiated when its impact on how films are conceptualized, made, structured, theorized, circulated, and viewed is examined. This volume offers a fresh look at the production history of Rome Open City; some of its key images, and particularly its representation of the city and various types of women; its cinematic influences and affinities; the complexity of its political dimensions, including the film's vision of political struggle and the political uses to which the film was put; and the legacy of the film in public consciousness. It serves as a well illustrated, up to date, and accessible introduction to one of the major achievements of filmmaking.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
List of Contributors	xi
Introduction: Open City: Reappropriating the Old, Making the New	1	(30)
Sidney Gottlieb
Rossellini, Open City, and Neorealism	31	(12)
Sidney Gottlieb
The Making of Roma citta aperta: The Legacy of Fascism and the Birth of Neorealism	43	(24)
Peter Bondanella
Celluloide and the Palimpsest of Cinematic Memory: Carlo Lizzani's Film of the Story Behind Open City	67	(18)
Millicent Marcus
Diverting Cliches: Femininity, Masculinity, Melodrama, and Neorealism in Open City	85	(21)
Marcia Landy
Space, Rhetoric, and the Divided City in Roma citta aperta	106	(25)
David Forgacs
Mourning, Melancholia, and the Popular Front: Roberto Rossellini's Beautiful Revolution	131	(30)
Michael P. Rogin
REVIEWS OF OPEN CITY	161	(10)
New York Times (February 26 and March 3, 1946)	161	(3)
Bosley Crowther
Saturday Review of Literature (April 6, 1946)	164	(3)
John Mason Brown
The Nation (March 23 and April 13, 1946)	167	(4)
James Agee
Filmography	171	(18)
Select Bibliography	189	(2)
Index	191