National identity and the national History in Cinema...

Rome, Open City (Rossellini Roberto,1945) is a film that interconnects the fates of a number of Romans enduring the last years of the German occupation. At the centre of the film is Don Pietro, a priest who risks his own safety by aiding members of the Resistance against Nazi occupation. The other characters include a communist, Manfredi who is on the run from the secret police and a pregnant young woman Pina. The

narrative is based on the actual events of the real life execution of the resistance priest Don Giuseppe Morosini, in April 1944 and the shooting of a pregnant women by German troops on Rome’s Viale Giulio Cesare. This is a Italian neorealist film which employs hand held camera work, natural lighting all adding to its realist feel. The movie is about Rome and its people, Rome speaks for Italian national identity. Rome Open City develops a more democratic way of telling a story, giving more equal time to a wider array of characters. In comparison The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Fassbinder,1979) was made during the period of the Cold War, the film is clearly a political allegory for the disapproval of the politicians behind the building of the new Germany. We are introduced to a new Germany when the country itself becomes a signifier in its own right from the moment when Hitler’

s portrait comes crashing down at the start. The Marriage of Mario Braun clearly subverts against the notion of the Heimatfilme, the Homeland Film. Both films aim to explore “Historical amnesia” and try to embody national identity and national past of Italy and Germany.

The Marriage Of Maria Braun opens up and ends with a explosion scene. Maria marries Herman during an Allied bombing raid on Berlin in the later stages of World War II. In comparison, the film ends with a house gas explosion in which both Maria and Herman die. Openly love is equated with war. In comparison, the character of Pina in Rome Open City also reflects this notion. Pina

resists the Nazi officers when they seize her yet to be husband Francesco. She runs after him on the open street. To note her resistance is not political but is identified with her natural moral decency, her love for Francesco. These traits establish both Maria and Pina as emblems of Italian and German womanhood and in Rome Open City this is reinforced further by the image of Pina’s dead body on the street where she is. However we could read The Marriage of Maria Braun through a feminist perspective. It could be argued that the character of Maria Braun symbolises the fate of not only German women but women around the world for whom the immediate post war period had brought the kind of autonomy and liberation to. The film alludes to the ‘Trummerfrauen’

the women of the rubble. These women were in the reconstruction period of the late 1940s and 50s and had claimed social benefits. Maria becomes a business women and Pina merely joins the looting of the Bakery. Therefore national identity is closely linked to the struggles of women during the war and post war period.

The Marriage Of Maria Braun employs Brechtian style techniques to highlight how the German families became fragmented and distant following on from the war years. Fassbinder does “not allow his protagonist Maria to embody her part but rather enact her role” (Joyce Rheuban, 1986:253). He distances his audience from the action in the same way he uses the depth of field technique making all his characters in focus in the same shot “visually distancing the characters from one another”(Joyce Rheuban, 1986: 254).This is most evident in the scene in which Maria's husband, thought to be dead, finally arrives home to find Maria with another man.

The film also seems to suggest that post-war German business was one that was built from cold individuals. When Maria goes and visits Herman in prison he senses that she has changed emotional and asks her “ is that how it is between people outside? So cold?”, she responds by saying that, “it’s a hard time now for feelings…”. Fassbinder seems to deny us the opportunity to witness Maria’s feelings. However there are two shots of her running cold water on her wrists , first when she is told that her husband is dead, then later following Oswald’s will. This can be read as symbolic of her tears, her emotion.Therefore the film shows the politics and reconstruction period of the Federal Republic of Germany, showing the decline in human values and showing that they correspond directly to the increase in business success. In comparison the Germans in Rome Open City reflect similar characteristics . In terms of national past, the Germans are represented as people who drink excessively. Importantly one German officer exclaims that, “we can do nothing but kill. We have sown Europe with corpses and hatred blossoms from the graves. Everywhere there’s hatred. We re devoured by hatred, without hope . We shall all perish without hope

”. His attitude on Germany and European history shows that German national past was a dark past.

Rome Open City on the other hand uses the technique of binary oppositions and handheld camera work to highlight Italy’s Fascists opponents. During Nazi raids the camera is situated as a window or on a rooftop as if sneaking in on an illicit peek at what goes on below. This highlights the audiences point of view, we are that of ‘The Resistance’ and the Germans are always clearly ‘the enemy’. As an audience we side with the Italians because the Italians are represented as

good and the Germans as evil. The Italian people are basic people and give comic moments such as when Don Pietro knocks out a sick old man with a pan in order to conceal guns in his bed from the Nazis. The Nazis however are consistently demonised by Rossellini. He uses high angle and long shots to establish the extent of terror the Nazis have against the roman people

. Therefore this film highlight Italy’s national past. The Italians identify with the forces of liberation from fascism in the final days of WW2 and the film even loosely indicates towards a Marxist society in terms of morals not politics.

The soundtrack of both films are important in reflecting national identity and national past. In Rome Open City there is a scene whereby the boys are playing football outside. Sound is important here as we hear a group noise, just like earlier scenes in the Bakery protest where we hear sound off screen. This shows communal joys. The priest Don Pietro is the referee. The blowing of the whistle foreshadows what he did not do towards the end of the film, which was to expose Giorgio’s involvement with the communists. In comparison , The Marriage Of Maria Braun uses the soundtrack to highlight new national beginnings. The film ends with a explosion, we hear a radio presenter excitedly yelling “Germany is master of the world”. Contextually West Germany beat Hungary and won the 1954 World Cup in football. Germany is shown to have regained its standing status in the world by winning the world cup match, showing a fresh new beginning for the country. Therefore both Rome Open City and The Marriage of Maria Braun use the sport of football to convey the message of national unity. For Rome Open City , the priest hands the whistle and the ball to one of the older boys, a symbol that he as the next generation is to take over from him when he departs the football ground : departs his country. In The Marriage of Maria Braun, Maria and Herman depart Germany when they die but they leave Germany in good hands, leaving the country to celebrate its football success but most importantly its National success. Therefore the two films employ soundtrack and images of sport to convey national transition.

Both directors, Fassbinder and

Rossellini, confront the hostility that existed against races, politics and religion. Rome open city shows that Italian national identity was one of a reciprocal relationship between politics and religion. Pina’s character epitomises the resistance of ordinary Italians, a resistance which is linked to her devout Catholic faith through her strong relationship with Don Pietro the priest. She also plans to wed her fiancé Francesco in a church rather than at the local fascist registry office. The joint resistance and heroic death between Manfredi and the Catholic priest Don Pietro show the effective joint venture between communists and Catholics in the actual nationalist resistance. It highlights that the collapse of the fascist state resulted in further divisions within the Italian culture. Further evidence is the proposed marriage of Pina who is a catholic and Francesco who is a communist. In juxtaposition , in The Marriage Of Maria Braun there is a reference to the Nazi prejudice of Jews during the 1940s. When Maria trades a piece of family jewellery for a low cut dress and a bottle of wine, the black market trader wants to sell her the complete collection of Heinrich von Kleist author, she with ease replies with, “Books burn too fast and don’t give enough heat”. Here the book burning refers to Germany’s national past. It clearly refers to the Nazis infamous action against the ‘Un-German Spirit’, against the Jewish and Communist writers in 1933. Therefore Rome Open City explores how the Italian population had rejected Fascisms attempt to forge a national identity: it was fragmented, both religiously and politically. On the other hand The Marriage of Maria Braun reflects how the director

Fassbinder was very concerned about what memories the German people had had about their recent dark national past.The character of Maria can be read as representing Germany’s past. A critic, Jean de baron, suggests that, “the fate of the heroine parallels the fate of Germany, conquered, corrupted and reconstructed. Maria Braun not only symbolises Germany, in Fassbinder’s eyes she is Germany” (Marcia, Landy,2001:190) .The concept of corruption is explored at the end of the film. Maria learns that whilst Herman was in prison he had made a deal with Oswald’s wealth for allowing Oswald to enjoy Maria until his death. Essentially he had agreed to sell Maria to Oswald. This indirectly reflects Germanys national past. Just as Maria’s dream is destroyed , the film implies that the German nation was deceived as well. The West German chancellor, Adenauer, is twice heard on a radio in the background in the film, at first he declares that Germany shall never rearm, then later insists that it is the clear that German must rearm. therefore the German chancellor Adenauer had made a secret deal to rearm Germany. Thus the film addresses the realisation that Germany's post-war prosperity was based on a series of false premises.

However if Maria is seen as representing national womanhood during the post war period then surely the female character can be read as a National emblem, reflecting her country too. The Marriage Of Maria Braun can

be read as an allegory of West Germany. In the film world audiences did not know about how the Germans had felt about defeat and rebuilding. As Douglas Sirk suggests, “ This treatment of a woman who picks herself up from the ashes of a war and national disgrace and becomes an efficient modern business women is a dramatic metaphor for a nation making similar transitions”(Marcia, Landy,2001:210). This is reflected in Maria Braun’s transformations from daughter to wife and from prostitute to business women. She symbolizes the national past of Germany, with the apparent changes from the Weimar Republic, to the

Federal Republic of Germany and from one politician to another : from Hitler to The Adenauer era.

To conclude it is clear that Maria Braun shows how Germany struggled to live in the new Germany. Fassbinder uses a women to comment upon the history of the forties and fifties and especially to critique Germany's ‘Economic Miracle’. Rome Open City endows all those who resist, whether Communist (Francesco, Manfredi ) or Catholic (Don Pietro ). Rossellini is able to encompass the entire nation in his film. As

Geoffrey Nowell Smith helps to put forth, the real heart of the Neorealist movement was that of the ‘resistance film’. Rome Open City is a resistance film against Nazi ideology. The film was shot in

Rome during the Nazi occupation, shot in the still war-torn Roman streets shortly after the Nazi withdrawal, therefore conveying Italy’s present-day more so than its national past. As a result Rome Open city is ‘cinéma vérité’. Accordingly both films represents national identity and past by representing their individual characters to social problematics, through depicting the hopes and struggles of people who were caught up in the material historical world. Equally both films restore some measure of national identity and community.