Rossellini, Pontecorvo, and the neorealist cinema of insurgency

Abstract

This article examines the tradition of Italian neorealism and the importance it has for films depicting guerrilla insurgencies. It looks in particular at the two films by Roberto Rossellini Rome Open City and Paisa as well as the later film by Nanni Loy Four Days in Naples. It then proceeds to locate Gillo Pontecorvo's iconic film The Battle of Algiers within this neorealist tradition and examines the degree to which the director succeeded in continuing the basic traditions of neorealism into the context of the Algerian war of Independence. The article concludes that while this film remains of great interest it should be situated in the period when it was produced and is in many ways radically disconnected from many insurgent movements of the present day.

Keywords::

• Algeria
• Ali La Pointe
• Ardeatine Massacre
• Cinnecitta
• FLN
• Frantz Fanon
• Hollywood
• Mussolini
• neorealism
• Nanni Loy
• General Massu
• Naples
• Pius XII
• Gillo Pontecorvo
• Roberto Rossellini
• Franco Solinas

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. See in particular Ben-Ghiat, ‘Neorealism in Italy, 1930–1950’; ‘Towards a Poetics of Neorealism’.

^2. Bazin, What is Cinema? Vol 1, 38.

^3. Scrivano, ‘Signs of Americanization in Italian Domestic Life’.

^4. Rhode, ‘Why Neorealism Failed’, 30.

^5. Liehm, Passion and Defiance, 43–46.

^6. New York Times, 26 February 1946.

^7. Robbie Collin described her as ‘the fiery embodiment of Rome's indomitable working class spirit’, Collin, ‘Rome Open City Review,’ The Daily Telegraph, 6 March 2014.

^8. Katz, The Battle for Rome, 183.

^9. Gottlieb, Roberto Rossellini's Rome Open City, 94.

^10. Tyler, Sex Psyche Etcetera, 49.

^11. The role of women in the Italian underground in Rome would not be portrayed in Anglo-American films until the release of the film Massacre in Rome in 1973 when the real-life Anna is shown working alongside her lover.

^12. The massacre is overlooked in the film The Red and the Black starring Gregory Peck, which focuses on the moral struggle between the Catholic prelate, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty (played by Peck) and Kappler.

^13. See, in particular, Katz, The Battle for Rome, 241; Cornwell, Hitler's Pope, 320–321.

^14. Katz, The Battle for Rome, 263.

^15. Gottlieb, ‘Introduction’ in Roberto Rossellini's Rome Open City, 20–21.

^16. Bondanella, The Films of Roberto Rossellini, 77.

^17. Ibid., 66.

^18. Ben-Ghiat, ‘Towards a Poetics of Neorealism’.

^19. Celeste, ‘Beyond a Myth’.

^20. Katz, The Battle for Rome, 67.

^21. Fisher, Radical Frontiers.

^22. New York Times, 21 September 1967.

^23. Evans, ‘The Battle of Algiers’.

^24. Ibid.

^25. Celli, Gillo Pontecorvo, 50.

^26. Ibid., 51.

^27. Pepe le Moko was an interesting film for the way it depicted in quite an erotic manner an anxious and guilt-ridden masculine character in pre-war French cinema. In the end, though, Gabin's gangster character Pepe is betrayed by an Arab police inspector as well as the dark-skinned woman Inez, reinforcing Orientalist images of the untrustworthy and duplicitous East. See Morgan, ‘In the Labyrinth’.

^28. For a discussion of the pitfalls of urban insurgency, see Joes, Urban Guerrilla Warfare, esp. 1–7.

^29. Fisher, Radical Frontiers, 133.

^30. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.

^31. See, for instance, Darwin, The Empire Project.

^32. See, for instance, Geismar, Fanon, 107.

^33. Lacquer, Terrorism, 250.

^34. Caute, Fanon, 48–49.

^35. anon., ‘Algeria: Features of the Armed Struggle’, 254.

^36. Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 184.

^37. Frantz Fanon, ‘Algeria Unveiled’ in Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 43.

^38. Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 185.

^39. Mellen, ‘An Interview with Gillo Pontecorvo’.

^40. Sharpe, ‘Gender, Myth, Nationalism’.

^41. Trinquier, Modern Warfare, 11.

^42. Dine, Images of the Algerian War, 24–25.

^43. Ibid., 44.

^44. Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 189–190.

^45. Ibid., 190.

^46. O'Balance, The Algerian Insurrection, 80.

^47. Celli, Gillo Pontecorvo, 49–67.

^48. ‘The Battle of Algiers: Neo Realist Revolution,’ Cinetropolis, 4. http//cinetropolis.net/the-battle-of-algiers-neo-realist-revolution (accessed 4 August 2014). The New York Times critic Stuart Klawans suggested as recently as 2004 that the film was banned in France until 1971 (Klawans, ‘FILM’).

^49. Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me; Liehm, Passion and Defiance, 215; Briley, ‘Terrorism on Screen’.

^50. New York Times, 7 September 2003. See also Masco, ‘Counterinsurgency, The Spook and Blowback’.

^51. Celli, Gillo Pontecorvo, 70–71.

^52. Ibid., 75.

^53. Ibid., 324–325.

^54. Ibid., 320. Brando gave up the opportunity to star in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to play the part of Walker in Queimada, one of the few occasions at this time when a film dependent on European finance and direction represented a better prospect than a mainstream Hollywood movie.

^55. Mellen, ‘Interview with Gillo Pontecorvo’.

^56. ‘The Dictatorship of the Lens: Notes on Gillo Pontecorvo's Queimada’, 14 February 2010. www.http://blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/dictatorship-of-lens-notes-on-gillo.htm (accessed 12 January 2015).