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Each month before the Supporting Actress Smackdown, Nick Taylor suggests alternatives to the actual Oscar nomination ballot.

by Nick Taylor

I gather that folks will have different ideas about whether Anna Magnani’s work in Rome, Open City belongs in the leading or supporting category. Magnani holds down the first half of her film similar to the way Janet Leigh leads us into Psycho, appearing as an indomitable central player until a cruel exit halfway through her film. Unlike Leigh, Magnani isn’t the only character driving her film, sharing a comparable amount of narrative focus as Aldo Fabrizi’s priest and Marcello Pagliero’s Resistance fighter, to say nothing of the other characters threaded through the first half who only grow more important as the film continues. Still, her presence is so strong that, like Leigh, you can’t forget about her even after she’s gone. It’s...

Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero: Filmed mostly on the streets in newly-liberated territory, Roberto Rossellini’s gripping war-related shows are blessed with new restorations but still reflect their rough origins. The second picture, the greater masterpiece, looks as if it were improvised out of sheer artistic will.

Roberto Rosselini’s War Trilogy

Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 500 (497, 498, 499)

1945-1948 / B&W / 1:37 & 1:33 flat full frame / 302 minutes / Street Date July 11, 2017 / available from the Criterion Collection 79.96

Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani; Dots Johnson, Harriet White Medin; Edmund Moeschke, Franz-Otto Krüger.

Cinematography: Ubaldo Arata; Otello Martelli; Robert Julliard.

Film Editor: Eraldo Da Roma

Original Music: Renzo Rossellini

Written by Sergio Amidei, Alberto Consiglio, Federico Fellini; Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Alfred Hayes, Vasco Pratolini; Max Kolpé, Carlo Lizzani.

Directed by Roberto Rossellini

Criterion released an identical-for-content DVD set of this trilogy in 2010; the new Blu-ray...

The Criterion Collection will venture to the Zone this July, and much more, as they’ve announced their new titles for the month. Andrei Tarkovsky‘s long-rumored sci-fi masterpiece Stalker will arrive with a new 2K restoration. The release will also include a new interview with author Geoff Dyer and newly translated English subtitles. Also arriving in July is Albert Brooks‘ satirical comedy Lost in America, featuring a new conversation with the director and Robert Weide, as well as interviews with the cast and crew.

One of the most notable releases of the month is Robert Bresson‘s masterful final film L’argent, which tracks a counterfeit bill through Paris, and the people it touches. Lastly, Roberto Rossellini‘s powerful War Trilogy is getting a much-deserved Blu-ray upgrade with new versions of Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero. Check out the high-resolution cover art below and full release details.

Top Thirteen Films of Mario Bava “Movies are a magician's forge, they allow you to build a story with your hands--at least, that's what it means to me. What attracts me in movies is to be presented with a problem and be able to solve it. Nothing else; just to create an illusion, an effect, with almost nothing.” –Mario Bava Mario Bava was born on July 31, 1914 in the coastal northern Italian town of San Remo. His father was a cinematographer in the early days of Italian cinema. Bava made his film debut in the early 1940’s working on films that featured such names as Gina Lollobrigida, Steve Reeves and Aldo Fabrizi. Bava was thrust into the position of director when then current...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

‘Rome, Open City’ movie returns: 4K digital restoration of Roberto Rossellini masterpiece at London’s BFI Southbank (photo: Anna Magnani in ‘Rome, Open City’) A restored digital print of Roberto Rossellini’s best-known film, Rome, Open City / Roma, città aperta is currently enjoying an extended run — until April 5, 2014 — at London’s BFI Southbank. Inspired by real-life events and made right after the liberation of Rome, Rome, Open City stars Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello Pagliero, and Maria Michi. Though not a local box office hit at the time of its release, Rome, Open City, shot with a minuscule budget in the ravaged streets of Rome, became one of the most influential movies ever made. Its raw look, "documentary" feel, and scenes shot on location (though studio sets were used as well) inspired not only other Italian directors of the post-war years, but filmmakers everywhere, including those in Hollywood (e.g.

The Grand Budapest Hotel | 300: Rise Of An Empire | Wake In Fright | Paranoia | The Stag | Escape From Planet Earth

The Grand Budapest Hotel (15)

(Wes Anderson, 2014, UK/Ger) Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, F Murray Abraham, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan. 100 mins

You wonder how long Anderson can keep accumulating star actors and creating ever more elaborate microcosms but, judging by this, he's a long way from running out of steam. It's a witty caper-within-a-reminiscence-within-a-flashback set in interwar Europe, through which Fiennes's debonair concierge must flee, protege lobby boy in tow, after an heiress's murder. It's breathlessly paced and breathtakingly designed, but with a solid core – like a fancy cake with an iron file concealed inside.

300: Rise Of An Empire (15)

(Noam Murro, 2014, Us) Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Rodrigo Santoro. 102 mins

With the bar for violent historical silliness raised by Game Of Thrones, this sequel pitches recklessly into another orgy of fetishised classical warfare with comic-book effects.

Roberto Rossellini's Rome is dazed, disoriented and at the mercy of Nazis in this classic of neorealism

The Rome of Rossellini's film (now on rerelease) has a dazed, disoriented, stateless look – like the Vienna of Carol Reed's The Third Man or the studio-created Casablanca in Michael Curtiz's movie. The action is set over the winter of 1943-44: it is an "open" city because this was the wartime status conferred on it: in return for a cessation of bombing, the authorities would abandon its military defence. This was a concession to the Allies: but Rossellini's irony is that Rome is "open" to Italy's occupier, Germany, as the capital of northern Italy's new Nazi puppet-state, the so-called Salò Republic (which inspired Pier Pasolini's film Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom).

The former stronghold of empire is unprotected, open to the forces of history – and to a new kind of film-maker.

War is hell, for sure, but war can make for undeniably brilliant movie-making. Here, the Guardian and Observer's critics pick the ten best

• Top 10 action movies

• Top 10 comedy movies

• Top 10 horror movies

• Top 10 sci-fi movies

• Top 10 crime movies

• Top 10 arthouse movies

• Top 10 family movies

10. Where Eagles Dare

As the second world war thriller became bogged down during the mid-60s in plodding epics like Operation Crossbow and The Heroes of Telemark, someone was needed to reintroduce a little sang-froid, some post-Le Carré espionage, and for heaven's sake, some proper macho thrills into the genre. Alistair Maclean stepped up, writing the screenplay and the novel of Where Eagles Dare simultaneously, and Brian G Hutton summoned up a better than usual cast headed by Richard Burton (Major Jonathan Smith), a still fresh-faced Clint Eastwood (Lieutenant Morris Schaffer), and the late Mary Ure (Mary Elison).

Parachuted into the German Alps, they have one...

The pope depicts art as an enterprise as important as prayer. Does he see the church – or himself – reflected in his top picks?

The wide-ranging and audacious interview given by Pope Francis to 16 Jesuit journals worldwide is already making waves for its frank talk about social issues and its argument that the church should be a "home for all". But Francis's big interview has another important component: it features extensive discussion of culture, as it figures in Francis's own life and as a portal into Christian thought.

The first Jesuit pope turns out to be a voracious cultural aficionado – "a Jesuit must be creative," Francis says at one point – but do his literary and artistic inclinations reveal anything about his religious orientation? Well, there's no overarching link among the many cultural touchstones – art, music, literature, cinema – that Francis drawn on in the interview. That pluralism is in itself a statement,...

Italian film director and screenwriter who established a new school of social-realist comedy

The Italian film director Mario Monicelli has died aged 95, after jumping out of a hospital window in Rome. Monicelli directed more than 60 films, most of which he co-wrote. He was best known for I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal On Madonna Street, 1958), which was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film. It was remade by Louis Malle as Crackers (1984) and turned into a Broadway musical, Big Deal, by Bob Fosse in 1986. Monicelli's original is one of the most internationally admired Italian comedies of the past 60 years.

Born in Viareggio, Tuscany, Monicelli was the son of a journalist, Tomaso Monicelli, who founded one of the earliest Italian film magazines. Tomaso killed himself in 1946. Mario studied at the universities of Milan and Pisa and took an early interest in films. With the future publisher Alberto Mondadori, he collaborated...

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The film follows the fate of several Romans during the last days of the German occupation. Central to the film are Aldo Fabrizi’s Don Pietro, a priest dedicated to helping members of the resistance and the heart-rending performance of Anna Magnani as Pina. Rome, Open City is considered as a major turning point in film history and as a testament to the film’s lasting impact, Jean-luc Godard famously said “All roads lead to Rome Open City”. Widely regarded as the father of Neorealism movement in cinema, Roberto Rossellini (8 May 1906 – 3 June 1977) brought the real world into films by mixing non-actors and authentic locales with actors and studio sets. And it was with his trilogy of films made during and after WorldWar II—Rome, Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero...

It’s almost February and some really great movies are hitting store shelves this week for the first time and for the first time on Blu-ray. This week’s releases include This Is It, Surrogates, Whip It, Saw IV, the complete run of NBC’s canceled-too-soon Southland and the Blu-ray release of Wim Wenders’ classic Paris, Texas with Nastassja Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton. (pictured above).

Check out this week’s new releases:

Movies

Atonement ~ James McAvoy (Blu-ray)

Bright Star ~ Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw (Blu-ray and DVD)

Fame (1980) ~ Irene Cara (Blu-ray)

Give ‘Em Hell Malone ~ Doug Hutchison, Thomas Jane (Blu-ray and DVD)

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell ~ Matt Czuchry, Geoff Stults (Blu-ray and DVD)

IMAX: Wild Ocean ~ (Blu-ray)

Little Ashes ~ Javier Beltran, Robert Pattinson (Blu-ray and DVD)

Michael Jackson: This Is It ~ Michael Jackson (Blu-ray and DVD)

Paris, Texas (Criterion Collection) ~ Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell...

My first experience with the work of Roberto Rossellini was when I reviewed Criterion's Il Generale Della Rovere back in March 2009 (read that here). Less than a month after that I watched the first film in Rossellini's War Trilogy, Rome Open City, for the first time via a Netflix rental. The film was excellent with specific moments of true terror as citizens of Rome struggle against the occupying Germans during World War II. However, the DVD transfer was awful and had I been reviewing it I never would have recommended it. So to say I was anxiously waiting to see what Criterion would deliver with their three-dvd release of Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy would be an understatement, but once again Criterion manages to impress beyond expectations.

All three films in this set -- Rome Open City, Paisan and Germany Year Zero -- look spectacular and prove the very existence...