Prudence, Resistance and Charity in Rossellini's Rome, Open City.

Roberto Rossellini's 1946 film Rome, Open City is generally regarded as one of the crucial films in the history of cinema. With its use of contemporary events, location shots, and a complex plot that mixes comedy, tragedy, and passion play, Rome, Open City is regarded as the founding film of the movement known as "Italian Neo-Realism," whose echoes in serious film continue to this day. Yet in addition to its cinematic genius, the film also presents a teaching on politics: indeed, it may have been the most effective presentation of the Christian teaching on the relation between religion and politics in the 20th century. Because that teaching was so at odds with its own time and our own it is hardly understood even today, sixty years after the film's release. Rome, Open City is a film about Nazi oppression and Italian resistance that teaches that resistance to oppression is noble, and frequently humanly irrepressible, but often childish and futile. It is not on the basis of tales of resistance, no matter how edifying or true, that Italy and Europe can be rebuilt, Rossellini argues, but on the basis of the Christian command to "love your enemies." Rossellini shows how one can acknowledge the human weakness that makes us not just resist, but hate the sinner, while at the same time acknowledging this hate to be a weakness the Christian teaching calls upon men and women to overcome. By reflecting on Rossellini's masterpiece I propose to examine the triumph and the tragedy of the Christian Democratic Europe that Rome, Open City foretold and helped to found. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]