Open City (Roma, Citta Aperta) - "You Killed My Priest"

Open City (1945)

H: The reason that this movie interested me in the first place was that it was the first post-World War II Italian movie. It was made in 1945, so the subject matter is really fresh and really relevant. Also, I think it's the start of the new wave cinema, that thing that Martin Scorsese is always rambling about.

K: This movie reminded me of the Battle for Algiers (1966) because it uses non-actors and talks about politics and historical events. Do you find these movies better than a movie that's made today about 9/11? Do you think those movies about 9/11 are going to be seen as good by people in the future? Wait, tell me what you think twenty years from now.

H: This movie is fresh because it was made so close to when the events it depicts happened.Now, when movies are made about events that just happened, they're not able to separate it from melodrama. They're not able to separate themselves enough - I think when you're making movies or writing about catastrophic events, you do need to separate yourself. I applaud this movie for having the facts, having the freshness, but also being able to maintain a certain distance on the subject, a certain objectivity.

Movies today about 9/11 come off as melodramatic. I don't think the United States is capable right now of making a good movie about 9/11.

K: 9/11 movies seem to be about the event itself rather than about specific people dealing with an event. It's about a specific person, but we see all of the facets of saving all these people or helping a community - we see the priest, the policemen. That's what's missing in current movies about big events like this.

H: 9/11 isn't really a war event. This movie took place during World War II, it wasn't a specific day. It wasn't D-Day, it wasn't Iwo Jima. It's much more like Three Kings (1999). It was made close to when the events it depicts happened and it's not melodramatic. There's enough fiction in it to make it interesting and to make it good.

K: What did you think about the torture scenes?

H: Those scenes specifically felt like a parable - really simple and really complex at the same time. You have the priest who is, in a way, not supposed to have earthly connections. The church is above sides in a war, theoretically anyway. This priest is very much interested in what's happening in the world and he's chosen sides. So you have this partisan priest standing up for Manfredi, who we find has always been a rebel. He was a communist fighting the Italian regime in the 1920s. Now he's anti-Nazi in the 1940s. It felt like a Graham Greene novel, especially "The Power and the Glory" because a priest is involved in earthly matters. He also has choices whether to ease suffering in the short term which could lead to more suffering in the long term.

K: That whole location where the German commanders are meeting is all very lush, with furs and liquor going around. And then, across the hallway, they're torturing people and you can hear the people screaming in this party atmosphere. It's done so obviously that you almost don't question the realities of it. You're thinking, "Yep, that's probably how it was." You don't feel like the people behind the movie are making something up or trying to dramatize it.

H: It feels real, the non-actors and the honest camera work make it feel real.

K: I want to add Z (1946) to the trilogy of political movies like this, along with "Battle for Algiers". Do you think people that make these kinds of movies are capable of making other kinds of movies?

H: They ask that question in the special features of "Z". I think they answered it saying "No". This movie felt less political than the other two but I agree that they're all linked. This movie is a little different because there was no controversy. In 1945, everybody in Italy agreed, nee the world world, agreed that the Nazis were evil. But if you look at 1942, I don't think you'd have that unanimous opinion. The other two movies were still trying to convince the audience of something, that French rule was evil in Algeria or that the politician in Z was assassinated by an evil government still in power in Greece.

I wanted to tie in The Great Escape (1963) where he talked about how there were things happening in occupied Europe and Germany that were obvious if you didn't avert your eyes, but also had this below the surface quality, the Jewish question and the Polish question and all those questions, as in "Where are these people going?". The party scene reflects the intentional looking the other way of the Germans, because they're partying right next to the torture room. And they just keep having a good time and are willfully oblivious.

K: I want to talk about the German dissenting officer. He wasn't being insubordinate in the sense that he was trying to change things, he was just stating the realities. He said something about being the supreme race...

H: To the effect of "I used to agree with you that we were the supreme race, but when other races didn't crack under torture"...

He was saying in order to prove the superiority of the German race, they had to make other races crack under pressure all the time. So, if an Italian stood up to them, it meant the Germans weren't the superior race.

K: I just thought he was a really interesting character.

H: Yeah, he's the 1945 German, not the 1942 German, where he's like, "Yeah, what we did was fucked up." But at the same time, rather than doing something about it, me medicates himself on alcohol and drowns out his conscience.

K: This movie relates to City of God (2002) too. The more you piss off a group of people, the more the younger generation is going to want to retaliate, like the children who blow something up and hide the bomb in the apartment building. They're minds aren't capable of understanding all that the war is, but they know there's a right and wrong and they're on the wrong side. They have to keep fighting and they're willing to look at the priest getting murdered, they're willing to deal with these bombs, hide each other, take punishment from the parents, in order to fight the war their own way. Also, the guy who wasn't the boy's father who left him shows us how many kids are orphaned in really weird ways.

H: In the last scene, where the kids watch the priest get executed, I thought the same thing you did, where it hearkens back to "City of God". I thought, "Those Nazis are in such trouble now. You killed their priest." Those are the fighting words.

K: I want to talk about the women in this film. You have the pregnant one, and the actress one, and the drunk one.

H: Are those the three kind of women? The mother, the prostitute, and what's the third one?

K: The actress is like the prostitute because she backstabs. At least it was a representation. And they do talk about love in a time of war and what that means. That aspect was interesting but heavy-handed. The guy can't be perfect in every way, but he was pretty damn close to being a hero.