Ryan Donahue (catbox9)

Vittorio de Sica's Umberto D. is an Italian neorealist film. This film depicts an old man, Umberto Dominico Ferrari, who is trying to make ends meet. He lives off a pension and the lady he rents a room from is threatening to kick him out. He tries selling a bunch of stuff to get the money he needs to pay his debts, but he only manages about a third of what he needs. He decides to kill himself, but he has a dog that he doesn't want to abandon.

Like de Sica's more famous Bicycle Thieves, this film is an Italian neorealist film. The main character is nobody important and his struggles are typical of people in post-War Italy. The film consists of mainly non-professional actors (as far as I can tell this is the only film Carlo Battisti, the man who played Umberto D., ever appeared in). The film is also filmed on location which is another characteristic of neorealism.

While this film is generally not as well-received as Bicycle Thieves, it is still a fairly well-regarded film. I actually liked this film better than Bicycle Thieves as I found the main character rather likable. People who do not particularly care for dogs probably wouldn't like this film since the dog is rather important in the film. Overall, this film is nearly flawless and probably the best Italian film I have ever seen.

95/100
A

Roberto Rossellini's film Rome, Open City (Italian: Roma, città aperta) depicts the German occupation of Rome during World War II. In the film there is a priest who helps the Italian resistance.

This film is one of the early examples of an Italian neorealism film. While current scholars tend to consider this film more melodramatic than neo-realist. Despite this, it has many of the notable characteristics of Italian neorealism - the film focuses on ordinary people; it has a loose, episodic story structure; the camera style is simple; there is an emphasis on emotions rather than abstract ideals; etc. While I suppose this is a decent example on neorealism, I was rather disappointed in this film. The only other neo-realist film I've seen is Bicycle Thieves, an outstanding film, and I was hoping this film would be of similar quality. While I suppose it did a good job at what it was trying to do, I just didn't care about the story at all. The only thing I liked about the film was a stretch of a minute or two which led to the iconic shot of one of the main characters being shot.

I should comment that the current DVD releases of this film are terrible and this could have contributed to my poor opinion of the film. There were large portions of dialogue in Italian and German with no subtitles making the film quite difficult to follow. Criterion is working on a release of the film which would almost certainly do a better job with subtitles. Perhaps the film is worth a rewatch at some point.
40/100
F