The films of Roberto Rossellini, Ranked

“There is nothing in his films that belongs to literature or to poetry, not even a trace of “the beautiful” in the merely pleasing sense of the word. Rossellini directs facts. It is as if his characters were haunted by some demon of movement. His little brothers of Saint Francis seem to have no better way of glorifying God than to run races… The world of Rossellini is a world of pure acts, unimportant in themselves but preparing the way (as if unbeknownst to God himself) for the sudden dazzling revelation of their meaning… The art of Rossellini consists in knowing what has to be done to confer on the facts what is at once...