Il generale Della Rovere

Filmed in thirty-three days and edited in ten, this is the first of Rossellini's films post 'Rome, Open City' to be both critically and commercially successful on its release which irked the director no end. Although it lacks the immediacy of the earlier film and its location shooting has been replaced by studio sets whilst being sluggishly directed at times, it remains both gripping and exciting due to the splendid performances by Vittorio de Sica as charlatan Bardone and Hannes Messemer as SS Colonel Mueller whose relationship provides the linchpin of the piece.

Unlike Rossellini, de Sica had no qualms regarding commercialism and as a director excelled in neo-realism and when that genre went out of fashion, Commedia all'Italiana, at the same time creating an artiste from the raw material that was Sophia Loren. He actually logged more time as a actor, mainly to pay off his gambling debts. Had he not been a first class director/actor he would undoubtedly have been a magnificent snake-oil salesman and this, combined with his compulsive gambling, makes his casting here a masterstroke. Hannes Messemer is called upon to be cruel and calculating but is able to imbue his character with a certain nobility and is probably best known to English speaking viewers as the 'decent' German in 'The Great Escape'. As a self-sacrificing partisan Aristide Belchelli gives a fine performance whilst on the distaff side there are touching turns by Sandra Milo and Anne Vernon with Giovanna Ralli looking incredibly edible.

It has been adapted from the story by Indro Montanelli who himself served time in San Vittore and based Bardone on a fellow inmate named Bertone who was killed by firing squad. Upon the film's release Bertone's family filed a defamation suit against the director.

From being out of favour, Rossellini has regained some of his prestige by returning to his origins of war and resistance. Although he felt that by making this film he had 'sold out', this more conventional piece remains by far his most accessible and one of his most powerful.

Winner of many top international festival prizes, this was one of Roberto Rossellini's most widely seen films in America after OPEN CITY and PAISAN. It is a superbly written, directed, and acted drama about a petty conniver, Bertone, alias Grimaldi, played by Vittorio De Sica in what is possibly his greatest acting role. He is not above loving people and swindling them at the same time. He does this to survive the hard times of Mussolini's Salo' Republic period. The film is set in Genoa after the Badoglio armistice has been signed with the Allies in the south. Bertone tries to help Italians who have relatives imprisoned by the Nazis. Sometimes he can help; other times he cannot but always takes their money. When his game is finally up, he is imprisoned but offered an opportunity by the Germans. He is to impersonate a revered partisan leader already killed by the Nazis in order to furnish them information on another partisan leader in the anti-fascist underground. It is at this point that Bertone gradually undergoes a transformation, choosing patriotism over capitulation. The con-man becomes a hero. Other standout performances here are given by Sandra Milo as a prostitute, Hannes Messemer as the Nazi commandant and Vittorio Caprioli as an inmate barber.

The story of the film concerns "Colonelo" Bertone a self-appointed community intercessor and thief in World War II Italy, passing on bribes from families to the Germans in order to help their sons (or gambling away the bribes and eating their food parcels). It's definitely a film of two halves, the first half of the movie to me feeling decidedly Pasolinian. Bertone, though undoubtedly a scoundrel does his best to keep people happy, is a character that spreads a certain amount of charm in the world. For some people who have never known love or had anyone to look up to, he provides a show, his charisma is like ambrosia. Having been brought up with Protestant vales it has been a revelation to me in life how people value charm as most precious, a Veblen good, more prized when it is most demanding, how a charming person is valued above all others even when they live in a moral vacuum.

The second half of the movie is, in structure, a more conventional prison movie where Bertone, working for the Germans in order to save his skin, becomes an impostor pretending to be Generale della Rovere. Whilst pretending to be the general he begins to assume many of the general's characteristics. This part of the film is very patriotic, and contains a beautiful fresco of Italian cities on the prison wall. The ideology of this part of the movie is all about recognising the efforts of the largely Communist, Partito d'Azione and Socialist partisan resistance, bodies who were largely excluded from the post-fascist Italian government, which was dominated by the Christian Democrats, who many felt to have been tainted by association with fascism.

Pontecorvo's movie Kapò was released contemporaneously, and features a similarly caricatured version of the Teutonic gaoler and slightly ebullient view of World War II, that would become refined in future decades. That said, Il Generale della Rovere, is undoubtedly a masterpiece.

Roberto Rossellini, as a filmmaker, cannot be compared to anyone else. Not because of any camera technique but because his mind, to tell a story, took shortcuts through truly dangerous territories. The nervous center of the Italian human nature is dissected with fierceness, compassion and even a touch of admiration. Redemption coming in the most unexpected form as a last, final test. Who am I, really? Could I at the last moment of my life become the man I always wanted to be? Beautiful, poignant, terrifying. Vittorio De Sica gives one the best performances of his eclectic and extraordinary career. The traveling of his thoughts seem to come out of the screen with the same intensity as his real smallness, his fear, his painful self awareness. Truth, with all is uncomfortable connotations 24 frames a second.

I have little to add to what the first two commentators have written.

Rossellini has a penchant for melodrama and rhetoric, but, fortunately, he keeps this tendency for the most part in check in this case. This film is dry and sober, and yet touching in the way it describes the transformation of a petty swindler, who manages to survive by cheating those who are unlucky enough to have their loved ones arrested by the Nazis and try everything they can in order to save them from execution or deportation to Germany, into a man who realises that, when faced with the choice between right and wrong, he ultimately has to take sides. And, when the time comes, he will do what his conscience will tell him to do, even though this will mean his own death.

Vittorio De Sica is great, as usual, in this dramatic role as well as in his comic ones. Non-Italians may find interesting the fact that Vittorio De Sica was himself an unrepentant gambler in real life as well, to the point that, if I'm not mistaken, his dead left his family saddled with debts. The film also gives a good idea of what life was like for ordinary Italians under the German occupation between 1943 and 1945. Many had to make difficult choices in a confused situation, and they reacted differently. Some took sides and risks, on both sides; others tried to survive. Some came to accept humiliating compromises in order to save their loved ones from death (consider the character of Borghesio, the old, retired lawyer who mortgages his house in order to gather the money that is needed in order to buy the German officer responsible for choosing the prisoners who are bound to be sent to Germany as forced labourers, which often meant death, or of Ms Fassio, the wife who ends up humiliating herself in a desperate and vain attempt to rescue his husband and is torn between her inner contempt for the Nazis and the urge to do everything possible to save his husband). Some others tried to profit from the situation. Some others made different choices in different moments, sometimes cynical parasites, sometimes heroes. However, everyone faced dilemmas, often about their very survival.