MUBI

Rossellini’s follow-up to “Rome Open City” is more ambitious and polished, thanks in part to the celebrity of the first film. Six 20 minute vignettes tell stories of the American liberation of Italy from coast to coast; redemptive, like a scene in a country-side monastery, romantically devastating, like an Italian girl who falls in love with a GI but loses track of him and turns to the streets, and brutally tragic, like the famous ending where Americans and partisans are cut down by stray Germans in a bog just weeks before the surrender. Rossellini hones the Neo-realist style here with tremendous long takes, outdoor filming in bombed out buildings, and an invisible montage, creating one of the most powerful of all war films, and arguably the best film of his distinguished career.