Word: della
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...General della Rovere takes a long look at cowardice and heroism in "difficult times." These times are the last days of the German occupation of northern Italy where a bewildered civilian population is plagued by Allied air-raids and Nazi terrorism. Here Rossellini's cameras are most effective. Surveying the common misery they discover it in a simple heroism and solidarity. A brilliant sequence shows original films of an air-raid followed by shots of a resigned populace beginning to dig its way out of the rubble. Suddenly from behind a ruined wall Bardone appears, well-dressed, but detached...
...plot traces the moral ascendancy of Bardone to a heroism which, Rossellini-implies, all men can display in these difficult times. Arrested by the Germans, Bardone is planted among political prisoners as the Badoglian General della Rovere with the object of fingering the leader of the Resistance. Confronted and idolized by the genuine heroes of the Underground, Bardone recognizes the extent of his own cowardice and moves gradually to the determination that he must die with them...
Somehow the process of Bardone's self-regeneration doesn't come off. As the movie trudges toward its conclusion, moments of genuine feeling become more frequent, but they are still only isolated moments. As General della Rovere, Bardone's last words to his "wife" should be moving climax, but the trouble is that they do not really climax anything...
...plant Bardone, is the usual German colonel who spouts the usual phrases about "a just war," and a soldier's duty. "If you'd stayed in the army," he tells Bardone, "you'd be a real colonel by now." The most ambiguous figure of all is Giuseppe-Bardone-General della Rovere. The character-delineation of an imposter is hard to begin with, but the ambiguity of de Sica's role is compounded by the fact that Rossellini and his three script writers do not seem sure whether Bardone is more to be pitied or more to be censured. Rather than...
...point of General della Rovere is that being a man demands a sometimes heroic participation in human suffering, and that cowardice entails renouncing humanity and isolating oneself from it. It is a lofty theme, but unfortunately General della Rovere does it only sporadic justice...