Fascism In Rome Open City

For a postwar Italian society, reconciliation with their wartime atrocities required the reconstruction of collective memory. Popular media, such as films and songs, were essential in accomplishing this seemingly gargantuan task. At the heart of Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City, for example, is the active reconstruction of memory. As a work of fiction, Rome Open City honors the resistance against the Nazi occupation of Rome. Yet, as a work which provides insight into the emotional landscape of postwar Italian society, this film underscores a subliminal need to reconcile with life under fascism. In order to forget complicity, it was necessary for Italians to remember a constructed narrative of resistance. While Italian society remembered its resistance narrative, it was not the only European society to embrace this coping mechanism; Eric Hobsbawm observes the …show more content…
Despite mass involvement in creating fascism for “over twenty years,” popular support evaporated for the system as the Allied military forces liberated the Italian Peninsula. Indeed, while the beleaguered populace yearned for change from decades under totalitarian rule as war exhaustion took its toll, the only change that Italians accomplished was in the aftermath of foreign invasion. Perhaps this is entirely a matter of perceived agency. In light of liberation, the effort to reconstruct the collective memory can be interpreted as a reaction to foreign intervention in sovereign affairs. Although the national polity were supportive of this systemic change, they were denied any agency in the process―especially under the imposed condition of unconditional surrender. By recreating the emotional landscape and crafting a shared legacy of resistance against fascists and their collaborators, Italians found a way to reassert themselves into a determined political climate outside of their