Product Details

• Directors: Roberto Rossellini
• Producers: Rod E. Geiger
• Format: Import
• Subtitles: Portuguese
• Region: All Regions
• Number of discs: 1
• Studio: VERSATIL
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000TCXVHI
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #393,693 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Six vignettes follow the Allied invasion from July 1943 to winter 1944, from Sicily north to Venice. Communication is fragile. A woman leads an Allied patrol through a mine field; she dies protecting a G.I., but the Yanks think she killed him. A street urchin steals shoes from a G.I. who tracks him to a shanty town. A G.I. meets a woman the day Rome is liberated; in six months they meet again: he's cynical, she's a whore. A US nurse braves the trip across the Arno into German fire in search of a partisan she loves. Three chaplains, including a Jew, call on a monastery north in the Apennines. Allied soldiers and partisans try to escape capture in the marshes of the Po.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Slow Storytelling Can Still Have Good Ideas, May 10, 2011

By 

nottheaveragemoviegoer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paisa (Roberto Rossellini) (DVD)

If there's one thing movies need, it's actors who can play the roles. Directors need people who are trained to perform their characters as best as the director visions them. Good actors get recognized and continue performing as well as they can. Yet, in the 1940s, Italian directors pioneered a certain form of filmmaking called "neorealism". This involved filming on location as opposed to a set and even had actual Italians performing the roles. Many of these had little to no experience acting, but the directors believed that their stories would be better told using actual Italians. Think of it as "for Italians, by Italians, starring Italians." One of the movies to incorporate this idea was Roberto Rossellini's post-WW II movie Paisan.

A large number of people would think that something like putting actual Italians to tell this movie would be a pretty interesting idea, and it actually is. Rossellini took something that hadn't really been done before at the time. Many of his movies are pretty famous because of it, and the idea itself has been pretty influential. Paisan really is no exception. Instead of using Italian actors, Rossellini used actual Italians in different roles combined with American actors. It's a pretty ingenious idea in terms of filmmaking. Unfortunately, the movie feels a little dry. It's probably the realism of the movie or the stories that come across in the film.

I say stories because the movie itself is actually a series of five vignettes as opposed to one full story. All of these have to deal with American soldiers in Italy after World War II. The first story deals with Americans in an Italian city who take one girl from the town to a seaside cliff. One of the soldiers tries to communicate with her but finds it hard because he doesn't know Italian. The second story is about a black American soldier who befriends a homeless boy that stole his boots. The third story has an American sleeping with an Italian prostitute musing about an Italian girl he used to love and tried to find again. He has no idea that the prostitute is the very girl. The fourth story has an American nurse meeting a painter who is a revolutionary leader named "Lupo". They struggle to get across the Ponte Vecchio and to safety. The last story is about American soldiers who are captured by the Nazis and executed before the war was over.

The interesting thing about this movie is that because these are actual Italian people portraying Italian people, it appeared as if they were Italian people. The little boy wasn't trying too hard to play a poor Italian boy because...well, he IS one. However, it's easy to tell that there is no experience with these people. The prostitute could have been done by an Italian actress, one who didn't really say her lines really monotonously. She realized who the guy she had was; she could be a little more shocked. The American actors were fine. Many of them felt like they actually were their characters as opposed to just acting them out. This makes it more interesting and even improves their acting. It's one thing to communicate with someone you know is faking it as well; it's another to communicate with someone who probably isn't. You have to be convincing enough to them, and that makes you convincing enough for the audience.

The ideas of communication and friendship are very heavy in this movie. The Italians are speaking Italian, but many of the Americans don't understand and find it hard to connect with these people. Rossellini tries to emphasize that in the first story. The Americans in the other stories knew some Italian, but it was the ignorance of the other Italian characters that cost them. The soldier with the boy didn't realize that the boy was homeless from the war and became mad at the boy when he stole his boots. The soldier with the prostitute didn't trust her judgment, and the story doesn't end too well for the both of them. The same can be said about the fourth story. Connecting with the people around you is important in these stories, and it becomes even easier if you understand them.

Unfortunately, this movie is a bit dry for me. When you try to make a story as real as humanly possible, you wind up making it so real that it feels like you're there. That works on numerous occasions such as mystery thrillers or suspenseful films, but these stories do come across as boring at times. The pacing of the movie has some part to play as the stories seem to go on and on. By the time something exciting or really dramatic happens, the scene is over. That may have been Rossellini's intent, but it doesn't help when there's nothing to keep us wanting to see these stories continue.

Bottom line: Paisan is a potentially good showcase because it uses potentially interesting concepts. The realism in the acting and the set really make the movie convincing. The ideas about communication and connection really do come across in the stories, but the stories don't pace well and have very little dramatic worth. The filmmaking ideas are influential and have good intents, but it helps when the story itself is interesting. Not everyone is an aspiring filmmaker, but those who are can learn a lot from this movie.

4.0 out of 5 stars A series of short stories about World War II, April 28, 2011

By 

Zia Haider - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paisa (Roberto Rossellini) (DVD)

Roberto Rossellini's Paisa is a series of short stories focusing on slice of life style narratives of Italy during World War II. They run the gamut from romance stories to action stories and all of them are dark and realistic, keeping in line with the Italian Neo-realist style. The Neo realist style emphasized the in your face reality of the film, directors would film on location and the films usually did not have proper beginnings or endings, acting as a window through which the viewer sees the events in a person's life for a few minutes. Its a great style that de-dramatizes the stories being told. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to become familiar with the Neo-realist style or who just wants to watch a different take on World War II.

4.0 out of 5 stars Paisa, April 27, 2011

By 

SBishop - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paisa (Roberto Rossellini) (DVD)

This film is a masterpiece and it is a definitive Roberto Rossellini film. If you've seen Rome Open City, you will really, really enjoy this film. This film explores the world of documentary, education, society, and politics. The most memorable scene I keep thinking of is the scene in which the young boy and the African American soldier are sitting on rocks singing. One cannot help but look at this scene with a warm heart; thinking of the war and the cross-cultural implications and mixing of cultures--it is made evident the harrowing nature of war itself. Rossellini does well to incorporate relatable individuals and establishing them within the city/backdrop that they find themselves in. Again, using the traditional Italian neo-realism method, Rossellini establishes a masterpiece by using non-professional actors and on set location. As in every Rossellini film, the story is the most important aspect of the film. Here, the story is really being told and it is told in great detail. The relation between Italians and Americans are exceptionally profound in this film. The scene in which the Italian woman finds herself in a camp full of American soldiers is especially innovative directing. This film should be in every person's library--often times this film feels much more as though it were a documentary than it does a fictional film. This is Rossellini's genius--blurring the lines of fiction with that of documentary. There are countless film stills from this film that are worth a 1,000 words. This film is exciting, it is intellectually stimulating, and it is enjoyable. The moving image of the baby wandering without a sole to comfort him/her is incredibly hard to watch but at the same time this scene alone encapsulates the film--Rossellini showcases and illustrates the nature of war and the nature of humanity. This is a great, great film.