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Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero: Filmed mostly on the streets in newly-liberated territory, Roberto Rossellini’s gripping war-related shows are blessed with new restorations but still reflect their rough origins. The second picture, the greater masterpiece, looks as if it were improvised out of sheer artistic will.

Roberto Rosselini’s War Trilogy

Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 500 (497, 498, 499)

1945-1948 / B&W / 1:37 & 1:33 flat full frame / 302 minutes / Street Date July 11, 2017 / available from the Criterion Collection 79.96

Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani; Dots Johnson, Harriet White Medin; Edmund Moeschke, Franz-Otto Krüger.

Cinematography: Ubaldo Arata; Otello Martelli; Robert Julliard.

Film Editor: Eraldo Da Roma

Original Music: Renzo Rossellini

Written by Sergio Amidei, Alberto Consiglio, Federico Fellini; Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Alfred Hayes, Vasco Pratolini; Max Kolpé, Carlo Lizzani.

Directed by Roberto Rossellini

Criterion released an identical-for-content DVD set of this trilogy in 2010; the new Blu-ray...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Mubi is playing General Della Rovere (1959) in the United States September 1 - 30, 2016.For a time, it seemed Roberto Rossellini was ready to leave behind the devastation of World War II, a milieu he as much as anyone helped to indelibly commit to cinematic memory with his Neorealist masterworks. While a traumatized psyche remained in films that followed his trilogy of Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), and Germany Year Zero (1948), it was revealed via a more subtle manifestation of conflict related angst. Rossellini had moved beyond explicit depictions of the war and its aftermath, even while lingering psychological effects still abound (see his collaborations with Ingrid Bergman). This would change in 1959, with the release of General Della Rovere, Rossellini's first full-fledged wartime film in more than 10 years. While not of the caliber of these earlier titles (not really even in...

Fear

Written by Sergio Amidei and Franz von Treuberg

Directed by Roberto Rossellini

German/Italy, 1954

The moral furor that erupted when Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman began their much-condemned affair in 1950 did not, thankfully, hinder their productivity or their creativity. Despite the outrage, the two embarked on a cinematic collaboration that produced a series of excellent films in a relatively short period of time. While their marriage lasted until 1957, their final feature together was Fear (1954), out now on a new DVD from the British Film Institute. Though the film’s home video release is a welcome one—any Rossellini film made available is a good thing—the film itself pales in comparison to their earlier efforts.

Just as he had on many of his brother’s films, Renzo Rossellini provides the score, which here is instantly redolent with the sounds of a thriller. The opening likewise looks as if it’s a standard film noir,...

Back in 2009, the Criterion collection released Roberto Rossellini’s 1959 film General Della Rovere on DVD, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and saw the auteur receive celebratory reception, the first since his famed collaborative efforts with then wife Ingrid Bergman earlier in the decade had all been deemed critical and financial missteps. While that release has lapsed out of print, Raro Video, which has focused on releasing cult and classic oddities from around the globe (recently, they delightfully resurrected several Fernando Di Leo titles, and have a host of other upcoming refurbishments from Italy, including titles from Liliana Cavani and Umberto Lenzi), has thankfully been graceful enough to grant this mid-career notable from Rossellini a Blu-ray release. While it’s a return to Rossellini’s celebrated rendering of a historical period, the ‘father’ of neorealism is operating in recuperative mode here, a distinctly unique conversation piece to his 1940’s War Trilogy,...

I had not yet seen a Roberto Rossellini film, which made Il Generale Della Rovere my debut feature from the helmer. No worries, I just queued Rome, Open City, which according to the video essay in the Della Rovere is his only other "big success." That statement, of course, is in reference to Rossellini's box-office prowess, and does not reflect his filmmaking ability or the effect his films had on cinema and his peers. Starring Italian cinema icon Vittorio De Sica (director of The Bicycle Thief) the film is set in Italy during World War II. Germans occupy the city of Genoa and Emanuele Bardone (De Sica) has made a nasty habit of taking advantage of his fellow Italians by exploiting their family losses and conning them into thinking he will help them find (and potentially save) their missing loved ones. As an addicted gambler he continues down a path...