Paisan

When Producer Roberto Rosselini ("Open City") made "Paisan," he was not trying to create a polished masterpiece. He knew that war is not a plot, a story, a typewritten script. Rather, war is no more than an endless sequence of horrible episodes, and that, precisely, is what the movie "Paisan," successfully puts across.

"Paisan" has no plot, but this adds to the film rather than harming it. The movie is composed of six entirely unrelated episodes with the common background of war; specifically, the war in Italy. Each episode lights up one side of the conflict, giving the observer a closer glimpse into the effect of total war on ordinary, inconspicuous persons. Of the six episodes, two stand out so forcefully that they grip you, make you feel the awful futility of war.

One shows a dishevelled, drunken, and discouraged Negro MP sprawled on a pile of rubble wistfully playing his harmonica for an Italian urchin. He falls asleep, and the boy steals his shoes. Waking, the MP chases the child to its bombed-out home, where, confronted by the sight of utter poverty and despair, he can only turn and flee back to the city, leaving his shoes and his anger behind in the ruins.

The other extraordinary scene is laid in a Franciscan monastery where three Army chaplains--Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish--seek refuge. War has passed by the monks, leaving them in their unreal tranquillity with no concern greater than the aim of converting the Protestant and the Jew. The monks are oblivious to the Catholic chaplain's attempts to reason with them; he begs them to accept the fact that the two "heathen" are just as religious in their own way--but the monks can only sit fasting in horrified silence.

"Paisan" was acted largely by non-professional Americans and Italians, giving it none of the forced histrionics of so many current films. Voted the outstanding film of the year by the National Board of Review, it is different from any American movie you will ever see, and so completely successful in purpose that it can ill afford to be missed.