Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1945 • Italy
Starring Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello Pagliero
This was Roberto Rossellini’s revelation, a harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it. Though told with more melodramatic flair than the films that would follow it to form The War Trilogy and starring some well-known actors—Aldo Fabrizi as a priest helping the partisan cause and Anna Magnani in her breakthrough role as the fiancée of a resistance member—ROME OPEN CITY is a shockingly authentic experience, conceived and directed amid the ruin of World War II, with immediacy in every frame. Marking a watershed moment in Italian cinema, this galvanic work garnered awards around the globe and left the beginnings of a new film movement in its wake.
Up Next in Palme d’Or Winners
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Miss Julie
Directed by Alf Sjöberg • 1951 • Sweden
Starring Anita Björk, Ulf PalmeSwedish filmmaker Alf Sjöberg’s visually innovative, Cannes Grand Prix-winning adaptation of August Strindberg’s renowned 1888 play brings to scalding life the excoriating words of the stage’s preeminent surveyor of all thin...
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Gate of Hell
Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa • 1953 • Japan
Starring Kazuo Hasegawa, Machiko KyoA winner of Academy Awards for best foreign-language film and best costume design, GATE OF HELL is a visually sumptuous, psychologically penetrating work from Teinosuke Kinugasa. In the midst of epic, violent intr...
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The Wages of Fear
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot • 1953 • France
Starring Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter Van EyckIn a squalid South American oil town, four desperate men sign on for a suicide mission to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over a treacherous mountain route. As they ferry their explosive...
