Paisan (1946)

I have mixed feelings about Roberto Rossellini. He has produced some of the most shattering images of post-war trauma in the history of film (Germany Year Zero), but he can also be a sentimental director enamored with convetional storytelling and film archetypes. Paisan is also a movie about war. The film has a rushed style and I get the sense that the material is assembled in a sort of panic. This might seem a clear weakness, but there is also the historical aspect of this. The film was made in 1946, one year after the war. The events of the war were still part of the present in many ways. Paisan comes out as a restless, frenzied document, a form of testimony. Instead of a neat narrative with a start and a resolution, this film delves into six different incidents. They are connected by one theme: people's lives are torn apart during the events of WWII. All incidents are set in Italy, but some of the characters are soldiers from the US. Many of the stories chronicle cruel and incomprehensible encounters between soldiers and civilians. In one of these, an American black soldier meets a small boy. The boy steals the soldier's shoes, and later on, the meet again. The tragedies on display are not heroic; the many killings we see in the film are rendered with a sense of hopelessness and even absurdity. The last segment of the film is bloody and merciless. The pictures are raw and no diversions are offered: we are forced to watch. Even though this film can seem cluttered and disorganized, its chaos can be said to have a purpose: it teaches us something about different aspects of war without taking a recourse to familiar plots about heroes or villains. The effect of these incidents: war is portrayed without a hint of glorification or romanticism.