1- Rossellini’s Rome, Open City exploded onto postwar screens with all the subtlety of a confession booth being kicked in. In your view, what makes this such a defining spark for neorealism and how did it rewrite the rules?
The use of real locations and non-professional actors, as well as a focus on the pressing social issues of the time—war, anti-fascist resistance, and the struggles of everyday people—gave the film an unprecedented feeling of authenticity. Similarly, both its documentary-like approach and the rejection of the escapist narratives of pre-war Italian cinema were ground-breaking for the time. However, by Rossellini’s own admission, the film was also full of “old ingredients”: Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani were established actors, some key locations were built as sets, and the script was carefully constructed as a melodrama. It is precisely this skilful blending of old and new elements that makes Rome, Open City so accessible and powerful—even 80 years after its release.
2- Six stories, six collisions. In Paisan, Rossellini skips across Italy like a skipping stone jagged, quick, and tragic. How does this fractured format shape his vision of war and its cost?
Paisan pushes the episodic tendencies of neorealism to the limit. Its six episodes are organized chronologically, following the northward movement of the Allied forces as they gradually liberate Italy. While the segments are largely fictional and independent from one another, they are linked by documentary footage of the military campaign, which often blurs the boundary between reality and fiction. Paisan explores the different ways in which various regions of Italy experienced the war, while also foregrounding the shared experiences: suffering, death, heroism, and sacrifice.
3- Bleak, brittle, and ghostly: Germany Year Zero stands like a broken statue in cinema’s memory. How do you read Rossellini’s portrayal of postwar Germany compared to the Italy of his earlier films?
Germany Year Zero, is the last instalment of Rossellini’s Neorealist Trilogy and it’s also the most radical and brutal one. While Rome, Open City and Paisan offer the possibility of a brighter future built upon the sacrifice of those who fought against fascism, in Germany Year Zero, Rossellini does not leave any room for hope. The only things that Edmund, the protagonist of the film, finds in post-war Berlin are corruption, despair and death.
4- In Ways of Love and Stromboli, we see women caught between the sacred and the volcanic. What themes surface for you in these tales of yearning, exile, and female solitude?
Ways of Love and Stromboli belong to a phase in Rossellini’s filmography—one that also includes Europe ’51 and Journey to Italy—in which the director explores both the institution of marriage and the tribulations of women in post-war European society. In many ways, these themes reflect not only Rossellini’s personal life but also broader societal concerns of the time. During the making of Stromboli, Rossellini began a scandalous affair with Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman (both were married at the time), which undoubtedly influenced the film’s themes. However, Rossellini’s work during this period is also shaped by wider societal changes regarding gender relations. It could be argued that his films serve as a litmus test for the social anxieties of the time, with the emancipation of women being a central concern of this phase of his career.
5- Critics say Stromboli marks his existential turn a slow-burning shift from rubble to reckoning. Do you agree? Where does the shift truly begin?
I do feel that Stromboli represents a move away from the pressing concerns of the war and the anti-fascist resistance that characterised the Neorealist Trilogy, to more existential issues such as the relation between individual and society.
“Truth—messy, uncomfortable, unrehearsed truth—can still be cinema.”
6- The Machine to Kill Bad People feels like a fever dream between morality play and Marx Brothers sketch. How do you place this oddity within his body of work? A misstep, or perhaps a wink from the master?
The film could be understood as Rossellini’s attempt to move away from neorealism by integrating elements from other genres, in this particular case, comedy and fantasy. Interestingly, it could be argued that Vittorio De Sica tried to do something similar with Miracle in Milan, a film produced a year earlier, during the late stage of Italian neorealism, which also blended fantasy and comedy.
7- Journey to Italy doesn’t scream, it aches. It doesn’t plot, it breathes. Why do you think this quiet little film whispered so loudly to the likes of Antonioni and Godard?
Journey to Italy influenced both Antonioni and Godard by offering a new approach to the portrayal of modern alienation. The film demonstrates that the inner lives of characters can be represented both through subtle details and a focus on atmosphere, rather than traditional narrative structures. From this point of view Journey to Italy could definitely be considered as an obvious precursor to both Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Godard’s Contempt.
8- With Fear, Rossellini seems to slip into melodrama, but what he finds there is cold and intimate. How does he use genre to deepen personal betrayal into something political?
As mentioned earlier in relation to Open City, Rossellini’s films have often deployed the conventions of melodrama and blended it with elements from other genres (in the case of Fear both film noir and expressionism). In turn, Fear builds on those generic elements to explore the social and political wounds of the war.
9- Is there a thread running from Open City to Fear? Between saints and sinners, rubble and ruin, what unites this wild pilgrimage of a filmography?
We should not forget The White Ship and the other films Rossellini made during the fascist regime, prior to Open City—though including them would likely complicate matters even further. One could easily write an entire book attempting to answer this question (and many scholars have done precisely that). In my view, the key themes of Rossellini’s work include the search for reality (both during and after the war); the relationship between the individual and their social environment; heroism and sacrifice; human weakness; and crises of faith. These themes are often interconnected, as it is through the exploration of reality that Rossellini reveals how individuals struggle against the social forces that both shape and constrain the human experience.
10- These films are old. The wounds are older. And yet, they still reach us. Why do you think Rossellini remains relevant in a world addicted to polish, speed, and spectacle? What can today’s filmmakers take from him if they dare?
I would say the quest for the real and the exploration of the relationship between the individual and society. Those are themes that will always be relevant no matter the historical or social context.
11- He lit with the sun, cast from the street, and let silence speak louder than score. Rossellini’s realism feels both humble and radical. What do you make of the ethical weight in his aesthetic choices? What does it ask of a filmmaker today?
Rossellini’s work demonstrates that the both inner lives of the characters and the overall atmosphere of the film can be rendered through economic and minimalist means, without overreliance on spectacle and special effects, just a profound understanding of the human experience.
12- Rossellini famously believed cinema could be a tool for education and truth. Do you think he would have embraced AI, not as a trick of convenience, but as a new kind of realism? How might he have used it….. or refused it in service of the human spirit?
Rossellini was quite knowledgeable about media technology and that knowledge definitely enhanced his work as an auteur. I really don’t know whether Rossellini would have embraced AI as a new kind of realism, but I believe that much of the strength of his films comes from the humanity of the story and of the performance, so my feeling is that he would have rejected it, but maybe we should ask Chat GTP…
— Roger Wyllie, View Mag
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