Rossellini’s message of unity against injustice, wish for peace and hope for the future remains incredibly relevant and timely even today as the spectre of Fascist seems alive and well

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 14, 2024

One of the toughest, bleakest, war films ever made, this Roberto Rossellini classic simply couldn't be any other way.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 28, 2022

One emotionally powerful scene follows another.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 3, 2021

Rossellini forever changed the way we look at movies. By shooting just six months after World War II, he was able to film Italy's recovery through actual bombed out buildings, using a mix of professional and non-professional actors for authentic results.

| Apr 5, 2020

Changing the face of cinema.

| Aug 19, 2019

The neo-realist film's genius lies in a slow undertow, inexorably dragging the audience from laughter to tears.

| Jan 2, 2018

he started working... before Rome fell to the Allies and shot his drama of partisans fighting the Germans and the Italian Fascists in the streets of the liberated city, amidst the poverty and devastation and uncertainty of the future.

| Aug 4, 2017

Handheld cameras tremble with the urgency of open wounds and violent emotion in Roberto Rossellini's 1945 drama of the Italian resistance to the capital's occupation by Nazi Germany.

| Oct 26, 2016

Written in desperate circumstances during the occupation and filmed soon after the liberation, it has all too skilfully trapped in the camera lens the atmosphere as well as a picture of those hideous times.

| Dec 14, 2015

A world cinema landmark, but that dusty, respectful word does not do justice to a film that has not lost its power to surprise and even shock.

| Feb 19, 2015

Today it doesn't feel like a documentary at all. It's a street opera, caught on camera during wartime, a story performed by a mixed cast of amazing professionals and earnest non-professionals.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 31, 2014

Roberto Rossellini's film owes part of its emotional power to its mixture of politico-religious symbolism and quotidian humor.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 8, 2014

Ubaldo Arata's visceral cinematography blends the grit of a documentary with the heart and soul of a drama (Fellini collaborated on the screenplay) as the people of Rome wrestle with the constraints, compromises and collusions of life during wartime.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 9, 2014

An innovative fusion of documentary and melodrama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 7, 2014

Aldo Fabrizi excels as the courageous priest and there are few films that have a finale as heartbreaking.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 7, 2014

The torture and execution scenes are harrowing and moving.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 6, 2014

Roberto Rossellini's benchmark 1945 work of abrasive political realism presents a crumbling Rome that's been ravaged by war.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 6, 2014

[Rossellini's] towering melodrama set during the Nazi occupation of the Italian capital, in the grinding endgame of the Second World War.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 6, 2014

Made on a tiny budget with a largely non-professional cast and filmed on the streets where similar events had just occurred, the rawness of the movie give it an immediacy that still hits home.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 3, 2014

A galvanic document of human and filmic regeneration

| Apr 8, 2012