The Taviani Brothers on Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy
Posted July 12, 2017 06:44 PM by Webmaster
The Criterion Collection has released an excerpt from excerpt from an archival interview with directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (The Night of the Shooting Stars, Kaos) in which they discuss the enormous impact the films (with specific comments about Paisan) of Roberto Rosselini had on them and their work.
Synopsis: Roberto Rossellini is one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. And it was with his trilogy of films made during and after World War II—Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero—that he left his first transformative mark on cinema. With their stripped-down aesthetic, largely nonprofessional casts, and unorthodox approaches to storytelling, these intensely emotional works were international sensations and came to define the neorealist movement. Shot in battle-ravaged Italy and Germany, these three films are some of our most lasting, humane documents of devastated postwar Europe, containing universal images of both tragedy and hope.
Rome Open City (1945)
Synopsis: This was Roberto Rossellini's revelation, a harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it. Though told with more melodramatic flair than the other films that would form this trilogy and starring some well-known actors—Aldo Fabrizi as a priest helping the partisan cause and Anna Magnani in her breakthrough role as the fiancée of a resistance member—Rome Open City (Roma città aperta) is a shockingly authentic experience, conceived and directed amid the ruin of World War II, with immediacy in every frame. Marking a watershed moment in Italian cinema, this galvanic work garnered awards around the globe and left the beginnings of a new film movement in its wake.
Special Features:
NEW high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Introduction by Roberto Rossellini
Audio commentary from 2009 by film scholar Peter Bondanella
Once Upon a Time . . . "Rome Open City," a 2006 documentary on the making of this historic film, featuring rare archival material and footage of Anna Magnani, Federico Fellini, Ingrid Bergman, and many others
Interviews from 2009 with Rossellini scholar Adriano Aprà
Rossellini and the City, a 2009 video essay by film scholar Mark Shiel on Rossellini's use of the urban landscape in The War Trilogy
Interview with film critic and Rossellini friend Father Virgilio Fantuzzi, who discusses the filmmaker and the role of religion in Rome Open City
Paisan (1946)
Synopsis: Roberto Rossellini's follow-up to his breakout Rome Open City was the ambitious, enormously moving Paisan (Paisà), which consists of six episodes set during the liberation of Italy at the end of World War II, and taking place across the country, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley. With its documentary-like visuals and its intermingled cast of actors and nonprofessionals, Italians and their American liberators, this look at the struggles of different cultures to communicate and of people to live their everyday lives in extreme circumstances is equal parts charming sentiment and vivid reality. A long-missing treasure of Italian cinema, Paisan is available here in its full original release version.
Special Features:
NEW high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Introduction by Roberto Rossellini
Interview from 2009 with Rossellini scholar Adriano Aprà
Excerpts from rarely seen videotaped discussions Rossellini had in 1970 about his craft with faculty and students at Rice University
Into the Future, a 2009 video essay about The War Trilogy by film scholar Tag Gallagher
Germany Year Zero (1948)
Synopsis: The concluding chapter of Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy is the most devastating, a portrait of an obliterated Berlin, seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy. Living in a bombed-out apartment building with his sick father and two older siblings, young Edmund is mostly left to wander unsupervised, getting ensnared in the black-market schemes of a group of teenagers and coming under the nefarious influence of a Nazi-sympathizing ex-teacher. Germany Year Zero (Deutschland im Jahre Null) is a daring, gut-wrenching look at the consequences of fascism, for society and the individual.
Special Features:
NEW high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Introductions by Roberto Rossellini
Italian credits and prologue from Germany Year Zero
Roberto Rossellini, a 2001 documentary by Carlo Lizzani, assistant director on Germany Year Zero, tracing Rossellini's career through archival footage and interviews with family members
Letters from the Front: Carlo Lizzani on "Germany Year Zero," a podium discussion with Lizzani from the 1987 Tutto Rossellini conference
Interview from 2009 with Rossellini scholar Adriano Aprà
Interviews from 2009 with filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
STREET DATE: JULY 11.
*Last year, in the United States the Cohen Media Group also released on Blu-ray The Taviani Brothers Collection, which includes new 2K restorations of Padre Padrone (1977), The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982), and Kaos (1984).