Dieci italiani per un tedesco (Via Rasella)

In 1944, just before the end of the war in Rome, Italian partisans planted a bomb on Rome's Via Rasella that killed 32 members of a German patrol. When Hitler heard the news, he said that the Italians must be taught a "lesson of terror." And so 320 Italians, many of them simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, were rounded up. The men were taken to the Fosse Ardeatine near the catacombs and the Quo Vadis Chapel, where they were massacred in the caves. The film deals very poignantly with the last hours in the lives of the victims. The movie bears some resemblance to the period, if not the events, depicted in the more famous OPEN CITY of Rossellini, and is not of the same stature, but it is still very dramatic and very well directed and acted. Gino Cervi and Sergio Fantoni figure very importantly in the large cast. Another version of the same events was the 1973 MASSACRE IN ROME by George Pan Cosmatos, with Marcello Mastroianni and Richard Burton.

Following the death of thirty-two members of an SS battalion in a bomb attack carried out by Italian partisans in Rome's Via Rasella on 23rd March 1944, an incandescent Hitler ordered that ten Italians be executed for every soldier killed and that this be carried out within twenty-four hours. The officer assigned this gruesome task was Lt. Colonel Herbert Kappler who carried out the order with ruthless efficiency.

The style of this film by Filippo Walter Ratti, a director hitherto unfamiliar to me, is very much influenced by 'Rome, open City' but of course the stunning immediacy of the earlier film cannot be replicated. It remains however a gripping, visceral piece which concentrates mainly on the final hours of the hostages. They are played by actors who are probably unfamiliar to the average non-European viewer, notably Andrea Checchi, Sergio Fantoni and Ivo Garrani. As a baron who tries unsuccessfully to obtain a release for his son, Gino Cervi brings his customary solid presence. Kappler is chillingly played by Carlo d'Angelo. He is not the only actor to play the role as he has since been portrayed by Richard Burton in 'Massacre in Rome' and on the small screen by Christopher Plummer in 'The Scarlet and the Black'.

There is a connection between this and Rossellini's film in that one of those executed was the priest Don Pietro Pappagallo who became the inspiration for Don Pietro Pellegrini, so memorably played by Aldo Fabrizi. Most viewers will probably recognise in Mariella's desperate run behind the truck carrying her doomed lover an echo of Anna Magnani's iconic dash in the earlier film.

The stark cinematography of Aldo Greci and the ominous score by Armando Trovaioli add immeasurably to the film's power.

Particularly moving is the scene where Assunta reads letters from both her husband and teenage son telling her that they are soon to die.

It was political theorist Hannah Arendt in 1961 who first coined the controversial phrase 'the banality of evil' and no doubt Kappler claimed that he was only following orders. This is a highly emotive topic and films such as this serve as a distressing reminder of the depravity to which humans can sink.