PAISA

Hi, I'm Art Sandler , Professor of Philosophy at Webster University and director of Webster University's Human Rights Education Project . The film you're about to see, PAISA , is rightly held to be one of the masterpieces of Italian Neorealist cinema.

To understand the film, to enjoy it to its fullest, one has to know a little bit about each of three things: Italian Neorealism, the state of Italian cinema at the time PAISA was produced, and recent Italian history. The action in the film takes place between 1943 and 1945 and it follows the movement of American troops northward through Italy during the Allied invasion and the Alliesí battle against German troops. It depicts the collision, the confrontation, and the coming together of American troops with the war weary, war damaged Italian population.

Next, Neorealism. The author of the Italian Neorealist manifesto, Cesare Zavattini, in a 1942 manifesto, called for a new Italian cinema, a new kind of Italian film; one that abandoned the artificiality of the romantic comedies and the period pieces that preceded it; one that confronted the social reality that Italians lived in; one that did away with artifice, that did away - and this was a very radical manifesto - did away with plots and used non-professional actors. We'll see the powerful influence of Neorealist ideas in PAISA.

PAISA contains six episodes, moments, interludes in a fictional Italian history. They're separated, and connected, by actual newsreel footage. The newsreel footage adds an air of authenticity and blends seamlessly into the dramatic episodes that follow. When you look at the film, look for the techniques that the director uses to lend authenticity and to blend these two very different kinds of cinema together. Look also for certain themes that illuminate the social reality that Italians faced: mistrust and mutual dependence, clash of cultures and clash of circumstance, fellowship, love, and tragic loss. Enjoy the film; we'll talk a little bit more later...

I hope you enjoyed the film as much as I did. I'm going to talk about a number of different things. One is historical - the history of Italy and the way that history is tied to the history of the Italian film industry. A second is the film itself. I'm going to talk about the technique. Third and last, I'm going to talk about politics. All three fascinate me.

PAISA was a tremendously successful film. It won (or was nominated for) a number of awards . It was tremendously well received outside of Italy. Its reception in Italy was a little bit more mixed and part of that was political.

Let me start a little bit with the history of Italy. The Italy that Rossellini is filming, and that Rossellini is working in, is not the Italy we know today. It's not the Italy of Gucci pocketbooks and red Alfa Romeo convertibles. It's an Italy that's been through some really, really tough times. It's an Italy that suffered the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini , from 1923 until he's forced into "retiring" in 1943, the year the film begins. It's an Italy which is much, much poorer; which, like the rest of the world, has been through the Great Depression ; and which has suffered under Mussoliniís dictatorship, suffered a great loss of freedom.

Mussolini understood the power of film. He saw the Soviet Union use its film industry as a political tool and he went about building an Italian film industry that would be a political tool, an industry that would serve the purposes of the fascist state. He did a very good job in some ways. He built a very big, technologically very competent film industry. In 1939, the first year of the Second World War, there were 86 feature films produced . There was a lot of technical talent, screenwriting talent, but it went into pacifying the population. They were making romantic comedies. They were making period pieces ñ 1930ís Italian versions of todayís Merchant Ivory Productions . They were making big novels into blockbuster movies. The best of these are exquisitely produced; all of them are carefully censored .

Many in the Italian film industry are growing weary of the dictatorship -- and the artificiality. By 1943, which is a real turning point, the bloom is off the rose. Mussolini is replaced, the Allies have invaded, and the first great Neorealist film, OSSESIONE by Luchino Visconti (remade, twice, in the United States as THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE ) has been produced. And in the period that immediately follows, Rossellini makes two masterpieces. The first, ROME: OPEN CITY is so realistic that, when it opened, many think that it wasnít a feature film at all, but a documentary. The second, PAISA, is a skillful juxtaposition of documentary and very realistically shot episodes.

Let's take a closer look at least one of the episodes. In the first episode, which takes place in Sicily, a small group of invading American troops arrives in a small Sicilian town.

Right from the beginning, we the trademarks of Neorealist filmmaking: we are shown, have to pay attention to, authentic moments in the lives of real people. Frightened Italians are hiding in church, a traditional place of sanctuary. American GIs, uncertain if they are walking into an ambush, are also afraid.

What do we learn in the opening scenes? We learn that the Italian property has been damaged; that the Italian people have suffered losses and are afraid of what may follow; and that the Americans are in danger and equally frightened. Italians and Americans come together in mutual incomprehension: they don't speak each other's language, they don't know each other's ways, they don't understand each other's culture.

The bridge is an Italian American GI who speaks the language of his father, of his parents, of his Italian ancestors. When he's talking with the villagers, it's a very telling scene --though it almost seems like a throwaway scene. He's talking to the people: "Yeah, my father's from Sicily." "No, he's not from Sicily." "Yeah, he's from Sicily." His commanding officer is anxious to go on with his military mission, tries to speed him up. The Italian American GI keeps on talking; he knows you have to talk to people to gain their trust. When his commanding officer tries again to rush him, the American, the Italian American GI says to his commanding officer, "You don't speak Italian in a hurry." The Italians and Americans, the villagers and the troops, don't understand each other. As a result, they don't trust each other.

But they're there, they're together, they're stuck. The Americans have to get to a certain place that they're looking to seize as potential headquarters. It's going to take them through a mine field. The only way they can get through a minefield is through the guidance of a young Italian woman. So what's the scene? What's the symbolism?

The Italians and the Americans, or an Italian and the American GIs are walking through a minefield together. The Americans are in danger; they need the Italians to help them. The Italians have been through a lot, and they need the Americans to kick the Germans out. Italian losses are already very great. The woman who leads the Americans through knows the way because she goes through it looking daily, for her missing father and missing brother. The losses on the Italian side are staggering.

What themes are sounded? Mistrust, Italian losses, American dangers. And then there's the skillful use of familiar images that might be thought of as stereotypes. Stereotypes often have a negative connotation, but these images give us a tremendous amount of information very quickly and economically. There's Joe from Jersey, stuck alone in a ruined castle - is that Italy? Joe is stuck alone in a ruined castle with Carmella, the young Italian woman, and they don't speak each other's language . Their predicament is the predicament of the American invading force and the Italian population. They don't speak each other's languages, but ñ somehow -- they communicate. At first they try and fail; then they succeed. And there's some real connection between them, a real spark. There is in fact some possibility that not only can Joe and Carmella come together, but so can these two different peoples, Americans and Italians.

But it's a possibility fraught with danger. Joe tries to show Carmella a picture of his sister. He lights his cigarette lighter to illuminate the picture. The flame of the lighter gives away his position and he's shot by a German sniper. Rossellini is reminding his Italian audience that Americans also suffer losses here.

The Germans come, they take the ruined castle. Carmella becomes their prisoner. Breaking free, she finds Joe's gun, kills a German soldier and, presumably, we never get to see it, is thrown to her death by the Germans onto the rocks below. Itís possible she may have committed suicide, as the only way out.

The returning Americans hear the gunfire; they roust the Germans; they find Joe's body; they see Carmella on the rocks below. This is what the beginning of the war is like. Americans are losing GIs. Italians continue to die. There's the possibility of real communication and real friendship, but the two groups donít yet know or trust each other.

Let's talk for a minute about the second episode. After the newsreel interlude we find ourselves in Naples. The Americans are no longer invaders; they have established themselves as occupiers. This isn't a battle scene like the first scene. Kids are wearing cast off GI clothes, people live in the rubble left by the bombing and artillery fire. What does this symbolize? Society is in ruins and people are living off the occupiers. Theyíre begging, and, as we'll see later, they're turning to prostitution. Society has been corrupted by war, loss and military occupation. It's in ruins literally and figuratively. Eight year old kids are smoking, and hustling in the streets.

Rossellini is not over-dramatizing. 35% of the housing in Western Europe was destroyed in the Second World War. While this may seem unimaginable to us, it is the reality that the Italians and other Europeans lived. And again, we have a chance for a surprisingly intimate encounter between an American GI, a black American GI - played by a non-actor , by the way, an American that Rossellini found in Italy at the time of the filming - and a young boy.

The black American GI is an MP, and the kid's a young hustler. The American GI is, in some ways, a shabby stereotype. In our more politically sensitive age, and from our side of the Atlantic, we don't like image of a drunken American soldier, particularly a drunken black American soldier. Here Rossellini is accurately reflecting the stereotypes many held, but he's also trying to counteract them.

There's a play within a play: GI and young boy end up at a puppet show, where the Crusaders, portrayed as Italians, are fighting the black Saracens. This play within the play is disrupted as the pride of the black American GI forces him to take action. We see that Rossellini is not endorsing the stereotypes he is using.

A funny kind of bond develops between the American and the young boy. The young boy is trying to roll him. He first tries to sell him, because the GI is drunk. The he's going to steal his shoes to sell them. The American is at first too drunk to notice. But as the scene progresses, the American sobers up. He finds the kid and is determined to get his shoes back. When he takes the young guttersnipe back to his home, and sees the circumstances in which lives, the GI is touched. He doesn't want his shoes back. He'd give the boy the shirt off his back. And here you see not the mistrust that ends the first segment, but the building of bonds between people. This is Rosselliniís Neorealistic cinema. People and society are shown as they are, along with the stresses that cause them to act badly. The desperation of the Italians, the temptation to abuse power of the Americans - they're both there. And throughout the film, alongside these weaknesses we see signs of genuine human warmth, of human sympathy for other human beings, of the very human ability to cross cultural barriers.

It's a touching piece. Part of what the makes it so touching is the technical expertise Rossellini brings to the film and that's what I'd like to turn to now. Consider the way Rossellini constructs the film. Notice how the dramatic episodes are cut, and joined, by the newsreel episodes. The newsreels are actual newsreels. The voice-overs are exactly what anyone who went to a newsreel in the 1940s would have experienced. The musical background is exactly the musical background that would have accompanied these news photos, this film footage. And as we move from the newsreel images of Naples in the second scene, or Sicily in the very first, we've got the music continuing, we've got the voice-over continuing. In effect, we have the director telling us that what follows in the dramatic episode is every bit as true, is every bit as real as the news footage that preceded it.

These seamless linkages are beautifully done. The images are significant. Is Italy in ruins? Show us the ruins. The ruins of the little street boyís house are symbolic of the physical ruin of much of Italy. The ruin of this boy's life - seven year olds, nine year olds smoking; seven year olds, nine year olds talking about selling a drunk GI, the chance to roll a drunk GI is the high point of these boysí day, maybe their week- is a symbol of the devastation that the war has brought.

This theme is picked up again and again. It's picked up in Rome where another intimate encounter, one between an American GI and an Italian woman that could blossom into love, is corrupted by the circumstances that drive her into prostitution.

But it's not all ruin and despair. We find elements of heroism throughout. We find it mixed with tragedy in the Po Valley episode. Here we find islands of decency (loyalty to oneís comrades, for example), in a sea of destruction. In the episode that takes place in the monastery, people for different world come to understand their common humanity and religious difference ceases to divide.

Iím inviting you to reflect on the third, fourth, fifth and sixth episodes. Try to pick out the themes that were part of the humanistic, Neorealist manifesto - of love and of courage and of hardship and of loss. Pick out the techniques, the use of images - the tree that no longer blooms in the courtyard where the young GI met the young Italian woman; the ruins in which the Italian boy sleeps; the marshes, that literal and figurative quagmire in which the Americans and the Italian partisans, the Resistance fighters, find themselves together.

Try to go through each of these segments, the way I've tried to take you through the first two, and I think you'll find it rewarding. Thanks very much.

Questions to a discuss with the class before watching the film should include some questions about basic historical facts.

• When was World War II?
  
• Were the United States and Italy on the same side?
  
• Who else was fighting?
  
• Where is Italy?

If itís a history or social studies class, one might want to focus on:

• What does this tell us about World War 2 that we donít find in our readings?
  
• What was fascism?
  
• Does our answer to that question help us answer the question ìWhat is democracy?î
  
• What does the film tell us about communicating across cultural and linguistic divides?
  
• Do immigrants to our country, and refugees who have fled to our country, face the same kind of difficulties that Joe from Jersey faced?

• What do we mean when we talk about different genres?
  
• How does it help us to understand different genres?
  
• How would you describe the Neorealist genre?
  
• What are some of the features of PAISA that make it a Neorealist film?
  
• What is symbolism?
  
• What symbols are used in PAISA?
  
• How does discussing them help us understand the film?
  
• What are the messages that Rossellini intended us to take away after
• watching the film?
  
• Do you agree with Rosselliniís messages? Why?

Links for PAISA:

• For information about films generally, visit the enormously valuable ìInternet Movie Databaseî (IMDb).

• A good short description and analysis of PAISA, along with a list of credits, may be found at RottenTomatoes.com.

• A surprisingly good short biography of Rossellini may be found on the Yahoo! Video Shopping page.

• Peter Bondanellaís, The Films of Roberto Rossellini, a new volume in the excellent Cambridge Film Classics series, contains a full treatment of PAISA in the context of Rosselliniís other work. Click here for a brief description of the book.

• For a look at an image of the poster used to promote PAISA in the US in the 1940ís, click here.

• For a good short account of the major characteristics of Italian Neorealist cinema, click here. That site also contains valuable links to more information.

• A timeline integrating important dates in Rosselliniís career with Italian history and politics may be found here.

• Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was dictator of Italy from 1922-1943. A good introductory account of his life and career can be found atBBC.com. A slightly more detailed account can be found atBritannica.com. A good next step up in complexity may be found at Grolier.com.

• The world-wide great depression, which actually began before the stock market crash of 1929, was a very complex phenomena. Itís interrelation with the radical and authoritarian politics of the period is even more complex. A good introduction to some of these issues may be found here.

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  Continue on to:
  The Scarlet Letter
  Paisan
  The Trial Of John Peter Zenger
  Zero de Conduite
  Birth Of A Nation