Rome, Open City

Roberto Rossellini's Open City contains characters so real and emotions so powerful that it is not unusual for audiences to wonder whether the drama being played out on the screen is in truth a bona fide documentation of events surrounding the Italian Resistance during WWII. A study of the production history reveals that the film is closer to a combination of pure documentation (most accounts will go into detail about the location shooting and the presence of real soldiers) and dramatic reconstruction of actual events (like the execution of priest Don Morosini by the Nazis) with some lyrical filmmaking thrown in for good measure (I still get chills down my spine when I hear the children whistling in defiance of their oppressors). Anna Magnani, one of the greatest performers in the history of Italian cinema, is absolutely amazing in this film.