Rome, Open City

Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City was shot on the streets of Rome between January and June 1945, with the war in Europe still ongoing, the Allied liberation of Rome had occurred only eight months earlier. Rossellini scrounged unexposed film stock from amateurs and from American GIs; some scenes were shot with the camera hidden because Rome's streets were still patrolled by uncertain authorities. The film won the Grand Prix at the inaugural Cannes Festival in 1946 and is the foundational text of Italian neorealism.

The story interweaves two strands of resistance against the German occupation: the Communist organiser Giorgio Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero) and the Catholic priest Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi, the only major professional in the cast). Anna Magnani plays Pina, fiancée of a print-shop owner involved with the resistance; her death, machine-gunned in the street as she runs after the truck taking her arrested fiancé, is one of the most famous shots in the history of cinema. Rossellini cast non-professionals in most of the supporting roles; the priest's children are real Roman street-kids.

The film established the neorealist programme: location shooting, non-professional cast, contemporary subjects, refusal of conventional narrative comforts. Truffaut, Chris Marker, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Iranian New Wave all traced their lineages partly through this single film. Despite its specific historical anchor, the moral force of Rome, Open City has not weakened.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: The film that founded post-war European cinema, made while the war was still happening. Magnani's death scene alone is part of the language of the medium.