Rome, Open City (1945) on Netflix
Rome, 1944. Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is hunted by the Nazis and hides at the home of Francesco, whose pregnant fiancée Pina and the priest Don Pietro Pellegrini help him.
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- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1944, Rome lives under Nazi occupation: a curfew, rationed food, and a search for Resistance members and anyone who shelters them. Pina, a widowed mother who is pregnant, is about to marry her neighbor Francesco, an atheist, in a ceremony performed by the Catholic priest Don Pietro Pellegrini. The day before the wedding, Francesco's friend Giorgio Manfredi, a Resistance leader Pina has never met, comes to the house needing a place to hide. He asks Don Pietro to help.
Cast
- Ákos Tolnayas Austrian Deserter
- Joop van Hulzenas Captain Hartmann
- Carla Rovereas Lauretta
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Rome, Open City (1945)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After a few days of shooting, production on Rome, Open City stopped for lack of cash, and Roberto Rossellini persuaded Aldo Venturini, a wool merchant who had invested in the film, to finish it as producer, arguing that was the only way to safeguard his money.
- The production ran out of film until Rod E. Geiger, a New Yorker serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, met Rossellini. Geiger supplied discarded Signal Corps stock, short ends and complete rolls that might have been fogged, scratched or otherwise unfit, enough to finish the picture.
- Rossellini first planned a documentary titled Storie di ieri about Don Pietro Morosini, a Catholic priest who was shot by the Nazis for helping the partisan movement in Italy.
- Cinecittà Studios could not be used when shooting began in January 1945: the facilities had been damaged in the war and were requisitioned by Allied forces to house displaced persons.
- The film's newsreel look came from three stocks: Ferrania C6 for outdoor scenes and the more sensitive Agfa Super Pan and Agfa Ultra Rapid for interiors. A 1995 Cineteca Nazionale restoration blamed the original print's shifts in brightness on inadequate processing.
- Rome, Open City was banned in West Germany from 1951 to 1960, and in Argentina it was withdrawn in 1947 following an anonymous government order.
- Rome, Open City won the Palme d'Or at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, and it launched director Roberto Rossellini, screenwriter Federico Fellini and actress Anna Magnani into the international spotlight.
- Fellini's account of Rod E. Geiger's involvement in the film was the subject of an unsuccessful 1983 defamation lawsuit that Geiger brought against Fellini.
