Paisà [Paisan] ***** (1946, Carmela Sazio, Joseph Garland Moore Jr, William Tubbs, Maria Michi, Harriet Medin) – Classic Movie Review 7542

The 1946 Italian war drama Paisà [Paisan] is director Roberto Rossellini’s classic neo-realist account of how Italians lived in chaos, peril, emotional upheaval and hunger during the allied invasion of 1943-44, as the Allies head north from Sicily, linking with the partisans.

In the highlights of the six varied tales, often improvised by non-professional actors, an African America GI (Gar Moore, aka Joseph Garland Moore Jr) meets an Italian hooker (Maria Michi) in Rome, some monks realise that they are entertaining a prostitute and a Jew, and a nurse (Harriet White, aka Harriet Medin) from America scours the ruins of Florence for her lover from before the war.

Paisà [Paisan] is an incisive, amusing, touching, heartbreaking and historically valuable film, with an Oscar-nominated script, notably by Rossellini, Federico Fellini, Sergio Amidei, Alfred Hayes, Annalena Limentani and Marcello Pagliero.

It was released as Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy on the Criterion Collection, along with Rome Open City and the 1948 Germany Year Zero [Germania Anno Zero].

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7542

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