Often dismissed as a founder of Italian Neo-Realism whose career degenerated either at the start or the end of his much publicized relationship with Ingrid Bergman, Roberto Rossellini remains one of the most underrated directors in cinema history...
Exploring the links between fiction and documentary, observation and education, and the individual and society, he was an important figure in the development of the cinema...
Rossellini said of the film: 'In Paisá there were two worlds which came into contact, each with a different psychology and mental structure. From this contact was born a great confusion; so much so that in the end there were neither victors nor vanquished, there remained only the everyday heroism of the man who clings to life. And who lives, despite everything, whether he is one of the victors or one of the vanquished.'
Rossellini followed 'Rome Open City' with the equally impressive Paisá, whose six, often barely dramatic stories of part-comic, part tragic encounters between Italians, Germans and liberating Americans were rooted in specific locations (the Po Valley, the Uffizi Gallery), but were universal in their portrait of an entire nation destroyed and divided by war...
Already Rossellini's taste for long, mobile takes in long shot (rather than montage and close-up) gave evidence of his desire to relate individuals to the world around them...
In using a number of non-professional cast, and combining them with his improvisatory techniques, Rossellini get an universally acclaimed human document of rare quality and compassion...
Georges Sadoul wrote that Rossellini had 'damned the horrors that war had brought to his country and his heart cry was emotionally and enthusiastically understood around the entire world.'
