Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy



Roberto Rossellini is one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. And it was with his trilogy of films made during and after World War II—Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero—that he left his first transformative mark on cinema. With their stripped-down aesthetic, largely nonprofessional casts, and unorthodox approaches to storytelling, these intensely emotional works were international sensations and effectively launched the neorealist movement. Shot in battle-ravaged Italy and Germany, these three films are some of our most lasting, humane documents of devastated postwar Europe, containing universal images that encompass both tragedy and hope.

* New illustrated essay by film scholar Thomas Meder on Rossellini’s relationship with his mistress Roswitha Schmidt
* New and improved English subtitle translations
* PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by director Irene Bignardi and film scholars Colin McCabe, James Quandt, and Jonathan Rosenbaum

Rome Open City



This was Roberto Rossellini’s revelation, a harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it. Though told with a bit more melodramatic flair than the other films that would form this trilogy and starring well-known actors—Aldo Fabrizi as a priest helping the partisan cause and Anna Magnani in her breakthrough role as the fiancée of a resistance member—Rome Open City (Roma città aperta) is a shockingly authentic experience, conceived and directed amid the ruin of World War II, with immediacy in every frame. Marking a watershed moment in Italian cinema, this galvanic work was an international sensation, garnering awards around the globe and leaving the beginnings of a new film movement in its wake.

* New, restored high-definition digital transfer
* Video introduction by Roberto Rossellini from 1963
* New video interviews with Rossellini scholar Adriano Aprà, Rossellini’s friend and confessor Father Virgilio Fantuzzi, and filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
* Audio commentary by film scholar Peter Bondanella
* Once Upon a Time . . . “Rome Open City,” a 2006 documentary on the making of this historic film, featuring rare archival material and footage of Anna Magnani, Federico Fellini, Ingrid Bergman, and many others
* New and improved English subtitle translations

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Paisan

Roberto Rossellini’s follow-up to his breakout Rome Open City was the ambitious, enormously moving Paisan (Paisà), which consists of six episodes set during the liberation of Italy at the end of World War II, taking place across the country, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley. With its documentary-like visuals and its intermingled cast of actors and nonprofessionals, Italians and their American liberators, this look at the struggles of different cultures to communicate and of people to live their everyday lives in extreme circumstances is equal parts charming sentiment and vivid reality. A long-missing treasure of Italian cinema, Paisan is available here for the first time in its full original release version.



* New, restored high-definition digital transfer
* Video introduction by Roberto Rossellini from 1963
* Rossellini and the City, a new documentary on Rossellini’s use of the urban landscape in these films, by film scholar Mark Shiel
* Excerpts from rarely seen videotaped discussions Rossellini had with faculty and students at Rice University in 1970 about his craft
* Into the Future, a new visual essay about the War Trilogy by film scholar Tag Gallagher
* New and improved English subtitle translations

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Germany Year Zero



The concluding chapter of Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy is the most devastating, a portrait of an obliterated Berlin shown through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy. Living in a bombed-out apartment building with a sick father and two older siblings, young Edmund is mostly left to wander unsupervised, getting ensnared in the black-market schemes of a group of teenagers and coming under the nefarious influence of a Nazi-sympathizing ex-teacher. Germany Year Zero (Deutschland im Jahre Null) is a daring, gut-wrenching look at the consequences of fascism, for society and the individual.

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* New, restored high-definition digital transfers
* Video introduction by Roberto Rossellini from 1963
* Roberto Rossellini, a 2001 documentary by Carlo Lizzani, assistant director on Germany Year Zero, tracing Rossellini’s career through archival footage and interviews with family members and collaborators, with tributes by filmmakers François Truffaut and Martin Scorsese
* Letters from the Front: Carlo Lizzani on “Germany Year Zero,” a 1987 podium discussion with Lizzani
* Italian credits and prologue
* New illustrated essay by film scholar Thomas Meder on Rossellini’s relationship with his mistress Roswitha Schmidt
* New and improved English subtitle translations

Yeah.

Anyone else surprised that Tag Gallagher is only barely included in the extras?

I noticed that, too. I'm actually a little disappointed since his contribution to the last Rossellini releases (including the notes in the Eclipse set) were quite good.

Definitely, considering that Gallagher writes quite a bit about Rossellini, he has a book (and IMO is one of the best writers out there) one would think that criterion would've asked for more out of him, commentary would be great but a visual essay on each film would've just been as good.

Still this set looks great, there goes my cash this January on this and the Ernst Lubitsch box planned by MoC T_T

Yes, indeed. Maybe that visual essay will be a doozy, though. James Quandt and Jonathan Rosenbaum are good to have on the set at least. I'm also surprised that there isn't more Scorsese as well, but maybe he was too busy for extended consultation. Anyway, I'm glad it's finally here and available at $80!!

Priceless set, excellent month, I say!

Really, really looking forward to getting my hands on this set. Out of the three I've only seen Rome Open City before, and it WAS an abysmal print..I remember a notable amount of dialogue wasn't even subtitled. And another Bondanella commentary, nice.

Haven't seen any of these, held off on the UK dvd of Rome Open City because it was cut, hope the Criterion isn't! (I know, it won't be)

Wow, it's been a few months since I have been so anticipating a Criterion release the moment it's announced!

Only last week I was watching Voyage in Italy and thinking how unfortunate it was that these earlier films had not been released in satisfactory DVD editions. I do not own the Germany Year Zero DVD, but I remember watching it a few years ago and thinking how fuzzy it was.

The low presence of Tag Gallagher may indeed be surprising, but perhaps he feels he has said all he has to say in his massive and excellent biography/critical study of Rossellini. And anyway, Criterion still has time to update the extras, as they have done in some cases.

If it takes more commercial releases like Benjamin Button now and again to help bankroll projects such as this one, then I am all for them.

I've loved Gallagher's contributions to the previous DVDs, but of all the Rossellini films in the pipeline, these are the ones about which everybody's got something to say, so I'd much rather they kept him up their sleeves for Ingrid or more of the television stuff, where intelligent commentary might not be so thick on the ground.

I don't mean to rain on the parade here... but let's just hope to god that these aren't pictureboxed.

You mean hope that they are not pictureboxed right?

Most definitely Criterion of the year. I am overwhelmed. Thanks Criterion.

Yep, sorry... I fixed my comment.

Sort of off-topic, but I see the Walter Reade in NYC is programming a 40-film Italian neorealism series in November ... just the thing to whet my appetite for this release.

David Forgacs would have also made good commentary on ROME OPEN CITY, still we have his excellent BFI monograph on the same, and both Bondanella and he have fine chapters in RR's ROME OC edited by Sidney Gottlieb......

Blind buying this one.

The smoking gun no one has commented on yet: this is the first Criterion box set where the spine number for the set succeeds the individual spine numbers for the components of the set. Criterion has ruined and manipulated its spine number system just so the set spine number could be 500.

I think a boycott is in order.

Truly excellent. With that load of extras, all of which seem to be highly interesting, I'm very favourably reminded of what I used to associate with Criterion, and to associate with Criterion exclusively, until one or two years ago. A very fine way to celebrate spine #500 indeed. Blind buy for sure.

I think it would be safe to say, without having seen it yet that Tag's lengthy video essay will be far from a "low" presence on the set. As must be obvious Tag prefers video essaying to the intrusive practice of commentary tracks, so the essay format is precisely what he wanted to do. I think it's also true to say the version of Germany Year Zero would not have been the German soundtrack (correct) version without his involvement.

Dave, you should know- which of these films received the restoration everybody was ga-ga about a couple of years ago?

Are you thinking of the MoMA restoration of Paisan, circa 2005? But then Rome Open City was restored recently too, by the Cineteca Nazionale.

Yes it was Paisa. I can't say too much but the Open City version won't be the most recent restoration - it should still be revelatory after the horrors we've all been watching (like fucking Galeshka Moravioff's atrocious Cinfran versions on Films sans Frontiere). . Germany will be pristine. (incidentally the old British BFI/Connoiseur VHS of this was not bad.)

I think anyone who's seen Tag's essay on Francesco will be holding their breath for this. It's one of the finest - no the finest addition to a masterpiece I've ever seen on DVD. Never seen anything so spritually attuned and in such thrall to the original work.

Indeed-- I have a disc of Open City that I've owned for five years that I refuse to watch.. actually less deliberate than that. It was supposed to be 'restored' but it's such a horror that I literally, no matter how many times I try, can't stick with it.