Rome Open City

1945 slapstick comedy

Rating: 18/20

Plot: It's just like every skit that I ever saw on The Benny Hill show except with more Nazis and no "Yakety Sax" at all.

Stark, powerful look at the life of ordinary people and folks involving themselves in the Resistenza near the end of World War II, the "Not-So-Great" War. There aren't special effects or exterior sets needed. This was filmed right after the Germans were booted, and maybe better than any movie I can remember, it shows everything like it really was, even more than a documentary would. And definitely more than an Ernest movie would! The characters and their motivations are sketches, but I liked that. It made some of the twists in the story more twisty and helped lend a realism to everything that was going on. It never really felt like I was watching a movie. To be completely honest, it didn't always feel like I was watching a good movie. The lighting is bad in spots, and it looks cheaply produced at times. But when you take the film in context, it's impressive stuff and somehow seems to give the movie more ummph. It's really Open City's rough edges that make it the experience that it is. It's not the happiest movie you'll ever see, especially the devastating final fifteen minutes, but it's probably a movie you should see anyway.