/ Director
Roberto Rossellini
/ Cast
Vittorio De Sica, Hannes Messemer, Vittorio Caprioli
/ Length
132 min.
/ Year
1959
/ Sponsor
San Diego Italian Film Festival
Date :: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time :: 7:30 pm
Location :: UltraStar Cinemas Flower Hill
Cost :: $7.50
Tickets :: Advance tickets available at the Box Office
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Date :: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Time :: 7:00 pm
Location :: MoPA
Sugested Donation :: $5.00
Language :: Italian with English subtitles
Il Generale Della Rovere
General della Rovere
With Il Generale della Rovere, Roberto Rossellini returned to the themes of Nazi occupation and Italian Resistance during WWII that he had treated in his war trilogy of a decade earlier with Roma Città Aperta (Open City 1945), Pasià (1946), and Germany Year Zero (1947), recently released by Criterion Collection. Despite the acclaim for Open City, which depicted the resilience of the Italian population and the partisans’ resistance in the face of a cruel and inhuman enemy, none of the other films the director made in the subsequent years enjoyed much public success. Rossellini was interested in experimenting with the cinematic medium and with the newly emerging television, an interest that brought him as far as India, and had distanced himself considerably from his earlier themes.
When he first was offered to make Il Generale della Rovere, based on a story by writer and journalist Indro Montanelli who drew it from real experience, he was initially not enthusiastic. His attraction to the project grew, when he started to consider the casting for the film and could not stop thinking of Vittorio De Sica for the role of Bardone/Grimaldi, a swindler who loves gambling too much and pretends to be a Colonel in order to ingratiate people. Also known as one of the fathers of Neorealism, having directed films of the caliber of Ladri di biciclette (1948), Miracolo a Milano (1950), and the infamous Umberto D. (1951) condemned by the then Minister of Culture, “Il Divo” Giulio Andreotti, for “slandering Italy abroad,” De Sica seemed perfect for the part. So much so that many of his fictional character’s traits were, in fact, autobiographical. An avid gambler himself, De Sica had the nonchalant attitude and poker face to play the lead role. It did not hurt that Rossellini and De Sica were friends and knew each other well. The result was very well received in Italy and abroad, also winning the Leone d’oro at the Venice film festival and an Oscar nomination.
Despite the commonalities of themes, however, Il Generale della Rovere is not Open City.
Rossellini is considered a “magician of the real” for the way he makes his films seem so realistic, almost documentary-like. War-torn Rome offered the ideal set for such an endeavor, but in the late 1950s Italy had been reconstructed forcing the director to shoot all scenes set in Genoa and Milan in the studios of Cinecittà in Rome. Moreover, the springtime that was supposed to ensue from the ashes of the Resistance struggle, with a newly founded Italian Republic, did not quite materialize. Fourteen years later, Rossellini portrayed characters that were far more ambiguous and morally challenged on both side, instead of the pure good and pure evil of his earlier film. Life indeed was more complex, but the beauty of this film is that of showing how even flawed individuals can rise to the occasion when circumstances dictate it, so that when forced by the German police to pass as Generale della Rovere, to spy on partisans in the San Vittore prison in Milan, De Sica’s character faces tough but ultimately redeeming choices.
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