Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy

"Roberto Rossellini was one of the seminal directors of the Italian neo-realist era. A filmmaker rooted in documentary style approach, he applied that to chronicling the change in people and places after the trauma of World War II. This was perhaps never more effective than his defining works Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero. Now Criterion brings together these three connected films with a wealth of extras in this superb package. It’s a fitting release to mark Criterion’s 500th spine number. Roberto Rossellini is one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. And it was with his trilogy of films made during and after World War II — Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero — that he left his first transformative mark on cinema. With their stripped-down aesthetic, largely nonprofessional casts, and unorthodox approaches to storytelling, these intensely emotional works were international sensations and came to define the neorealist movement. Shot in battle-ravaged Italy and Germany, these three films are some of our most lasting, humane documents of devastated postwar Europe, containing universal images of both tragedy and hope. ..."
Criterion Review: ROBERTO ROSSELLINI’S WAR TRILOGY
Criterion: Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy
W - Rome, Open City (1945), W - Paisan (1946), W - Germany, Year Zero (1948)

Germany, Year Zero (1948)
"Unlike the more aesthetically and intellectually conceived French New Wave, Italian neorealism was above all an ethical initiative — a way of saying that people were important, occasioned by a war that made many of them voiceless, faceless, and nameless victims. But this was, of course, a conviction that carried plenty of aesthetic and intellectual, as well as spiritual, consequences, including some that we’re still mulling over today. Deliberately or not, Germany Year Zero concludes Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy by posing a kind of philosophical conundrum, a fact already signaled by its title, which he borrowed, with permission, from a book by French sociologist Edgar Morin. ..."
The Humanity of the Defeated: GERMANY YEAR ZERO
Slant - Blu-ray Review: Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy
senses of cinema - Roberto Rossellini’s Germany, Year Zero: A Child’s Journey through the Crumbling Skeleton of War-torn Germany
amazon: Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy
MUBI: Rome, Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero
vimeo: Children in Roberto Rossellini’s war trilogy

Roberto Rossellini

2016 March: Journey to Italy - Roberto Rossellini (1954), 2016 March: Stromboli - Roberto Rossellini (1950), 2018 August: 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman