Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942); Rome: Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)

Before I get onto Ordet: a double bill of films that we watched last night. Two films about occupation and anti-German resistance during World War Two, about patriotism and cynicism and about the moral choices that we make under duress: Roberto Rossellini's Roma, citta aperta, and Casablanca.

I don't know what I can say about Casablanca, except that to my surprise I found myself enjoying it a little more than Rome.


I think Rossellini's movie is absolutely great for about two thirds of its length, for which time it's a film about the connections that people make with one another in a city under occupation. A resistance leader has been sleeping with a young actress, but she doesn't know his name and he knows little about her; she is encouraged to betray him by a friend of a friend, of whom we know little; the inhabitants of a block of flats worry about the whereabouts of their children; a man is about to marry a pregnant young woman (Anna Magnani), and her family prepare for the wedding; a priest carries money to the partisans outside the city. The web of narratives emerges in a slightly confusing, piecemeal way. One meeting seems to drift to another, never quite coalesces into a single plot: it is an account of a city in which relationships are shadowy, in which men and women need to trust one another entirely but often know little about one another. A great urban movie: we see the comings and goings of city life under these terrible circumstances.

But then the film changes. It ends with a truly horrific scene, in which one of the resistance leaders is tortured. A blow-torch burns on the torturer's table; other implements of torture are visible for a moment; Rossellini's directorial restraint contrasts with the horror of the events. We had seen The Wind that Shakes the Barley a few days ago, and talked about The Battle of Algiers, and this movie brought both of those to mind: it is certainly no less harrowing than either, an incredible film to have been made in 1945. But it was at this point that, for me, it lost its moral complexity. It shifts from a depiction of the social life of a city under occupation to a glorification of the heroism of a couple of brave men under torture. And however terrifying this last section is, it has a little pantomime about it (the presiding officer, camp and cruel, with his threats - "you will never last out until dawn" and the suchlike - strutting away after throwing his gloves down on the table).

One of the resistance fighters says as he goes to his death at the end of the film that it is easy to die well: the really difficult thing is leading a good life. And that's what the best half of Rome, Open City is about: the mistakes that it's possible to make, the ease with which we can betray others, the way in which war and cruelty makes those social ties fragile, broken with great sorrow but little fuss, the terrible realisation of our casual wickedness. But the ending gives us a world of moral absolutes, the fearful courage of the silence of men under torture.

I'm giving Rome, Open City an A, and Casablanca an A too, dragged down by its structural simplicities, but bumped up for being just so slick.