I watched this on Netflix also and although I like De Sica much better (for some reason his melodrama seems less melodramatic!) there were a few points in other reviews with which I wanted to take issue. First, the title means (I think, given my pidgin Italian) "It was night in Rome". "Escape by Night" is indeed a weird choice for an English title, but one can't really fault the movie for that. Also, as for the American acting like an Italian, even Americans can occasionally act according to the adage "When in Rome..." so I don't buy that as an indictment of the historical sense of the film.
The point that is made above about stereotypes is a good one. I would expect Rossellini to accept this criticism -- it is almost as if, fifteen years later, he is setting out to tell his story of the way Italian society adapted to the end of the occupation. The black market, the Church, the aristocracy, the professional class -- they all are caricatured, almost as if he was doing a sociological study of the time. I thought that film succeeded at that level, although of course there is really little character development if all of them are a "type."
One other distinctive feature I wanted to point out is the role of the Communists in the film - - Rossellini paints the Communists as the major anti-fascists and as having sacrificed quite a bit. This wholeheartedly positive portrayal is unfamiliar for me, as someone who grew up in the Cold War era, but according to my limited understanding, historically accurate. Since the film was made in 1960, at the end of the decade of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, though, I wonder if this portrayal was not somewhat pointed?
