Word: paisan
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Italy's swarthy, balding Director Roberto Rossellini (Open City, Paisan), on his first visit to the U.S., was taking the fast pace of Hollywood in stride last week. The telephone in his double suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel was kept ringing by cinema celebrities eager to entertain him. The evening he arrived, he dined with Ingrid Bergman (he expects to sign her up for his next picture). The next night there was a small, stylish dinner given by Writer-Director Billy Wilder. One morning David O. Selznick called...
...Said Distributor Joe Burstyn, whose firm imported Paisan, Open City and other highly successful foreign films, "When I see what a few young people with good ideas can do when they take a camera and go out on the streets of New York, I wonder why the hell we go overseas to look for good pictures...
When Producer Roberto Rosselini ("Open City") made "Paisan," he was not trying to create a polished masterpiece. He knew that war is not a plot, a story, a typewritten script. Rather, war is no more than an endless sequence of horrible episodes, and that, precisely, is what the movie "Paisan," successfully puts across...
...Paisan" has no plot, but this adds to the film rather than harming it. The movie is composed of six entirely unrelated episodes with the common background of war; specifically, the war in Italy. Each episode lights up one side of the conflict, giving the observer a closer glimpse into the effect of total war on ordinary, inconspicuous persons. Of the six episodes, two stand out so forcefully that they grip you, make you feel the awful futility...
...Paisan" was acted largely by non-professional Americans and Italians, giving it none of the forced histrionics of so many current films. Voted the outstanding film of the year by the National Board of Review, it is different from any American movie you will ever see, and so completely successful in purpose that it can ill afford to be missed...