Outcry (1946) User Reviews

Questa mattina, mi son svegliato...

[GianfrancoSpada · 8/10 · 19 December 2023]

A very well-made WWII film set in Italy, created shortly after the end of the conflict. It stands as a historical document portraying the tumultuous episodes of the shifting alliances within the Italian government, followed by the occupation of the territory and the birth of the Italian partisan resistance.

From a cinematographic standpoint, this movie can be seen as a precursor to neorealism due to its visual narrative and portrayal of characters. It's important to consider that the film was made during a historical period marked by severe scarcity of economic and technical resources, with the tragic wartime events still fresh. It's interesting to note that in the storytelling, the Allied forces are not portrayed at all as liberators of Italy; they are never mentioned, something that in later cinema would be almost impossible to overlook, given the strong post-war American presence in the country.

It's important to remember that during the filming of this movie, Italian politics was undergoing a crucial period. There was a strong Communist Party leading an anti-fascist movement, alongside an emerging Christian Democracy, both vying to fill the void left by fascism. The director, Aldo Vergano, had been a fervent communist and anti-fascist since the 1930s. It's interesting to observe how in the film, he attempts to depict this new Italian society emerging from the ashes of war.

The industrial bourgeoisie is portrayed as trying to relate to the working class, yet fundamentally living a life removed from social drama, despite ultimately facing the consequences themselves.

Narratively, the film presents very good ideas and moments of brilliance. The lead actors are all very believable, although only some truly shine in their roles. It's likely a small gem, entirely forgotten, that is worth rediscovering.

Only Aldo Vergano Film Still Has Strong Impact

[lchadbou-326-26592 · 6/10 · 6 December 2020]

Applauded on its release as a powerful depiction of a local Resistance against Fascism and the Nazis during the end of WWII, and included in a 1993 Tv documentary on neo realism as one of the prime specimens of that great movement, Il Sole Sorge Ancora, the only film directed by maverick Aldo Vergano, still carries a strong impact. The story of a partisan, dodging the terror of the Germans on a country estate where he becomes involved with both a working class seamstress and an enticing aristocratic property owner, has at least two sequences that belong in a compendium of the classics. The first is a strikingly edited firing squad scene in which a priest, chanting the Ora Pro Nobis prayer which is repeated by the watching crowd, and a young worker radical are marched to their deaths.(The priest is played by future director and film scholar Carlo Lizzani and the radical by future director of The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo.) The second is the climax in which peasants and partisans rout the more well equipped Nazis using guerilla tactics as well as farm animals. The film as a whole can serve as an inspiration to those fighting against newer forms of Fascism in more recent times.

Lombardy in the last months of the war.

[ItalianGerry · 16 April 2007]

Often considered one of the great but "secondary" works of the Italian postwar neo-realist period, this film is almost entirely forgotten and unseen today, unlike Rossellini's benchmark "Rome Open City", made a year earlier, and which is widely known everywhere and is a staple of film classes and to which this effort bears superficial similarities.

Created by the Italian (Communist) partisan organization at the end of the war, it was dedicated to "those who fell so that the country might be reborn." It takes as its starting point the events of September 8, 1943 after Marshall Badoglio signed an armistice with the Allies, and the Italian army was pretty much disbanded. What followed was at first a free-for all (one that would be described vividly in Comencini's much later film with Alberto Sordi, "Everybody go Home"/"Tutti a casa.") Uniforms were thrown off; many tried to reach their homes, join partisan bands fighting the Germans, the former ally which was now the enemy. Others, under pain of execution, had to report for service in the new Italian Social Republic army created by the Nazis and hard-core fascists under under a re-installed Mussolini in the North.

The war was far from over, as everyone thought with the fall of Mussolini in the south and Marshall Badoglio's armistice. Instead its worst and cruelest phase had begun, a civil war, and a war against an occupying enemy. One character says, "We thought we were at the end. Instead we are at the beginning again." The events portrayed are between 1943 and 1945 and involve the confusion, mayhem, and struggle in a Lombardian farm village.

Besides the resistors, there is too a collaborationist upper class that has only its own preservation in mind. Hero Cesare is torn between two women, one a freedom fighter (Lea Padovani), the other a collaborationist dame (Elli Parvo). The film displays a kind of "coralità" or group drama.

There is a wild cowboys-and-Indians style sequence in which the German Major Heinrich (Massimo Serato)and his German soldiers go on go on a rampage involving horses, the gunning down of partisans. It might have come from a western movie if there were different uniforms and a few Conestoga wagons. The last scenes with the partisans routing the Germans (cavalry to the rescue) is especially exciting.

There are many heroes and villains in this story. Much it focuses on Cesare (Vittorio Duse) who brings help to the partisans in the hills. A priest, Don Cesare, plays his role in the resistance too, much as Aldo Fabrizi/Don Pietro in "Open City" and pays with his life. He is played by the young Carlo Lizzani, who became an important director himself. Even Gillo Pontecorvo, who has a small role, might have been inspired here when making his "Battle of Algiers" a couple of decades later.

Director Aldo Vergano does brings excitement to the events, but in a way which sometimes detracts from the human drama. "Open City" is a much greater film There is nothing in this movie, despite the inherent force of what we see that moves us in a way that, say, the death of Anna Magnani or Aldo Fabrizi in "Open City" does.

The film played widely in the U.S. in 1949 and 1950 under the title of "Outcry" in some of the same art houses that had shown "Open City" and "Paisan." It garnered some good reviews, was deemed interesting but not as powerful as its predecessors, then disappeared. It really ought to be more widely known today, despite some of its flaws.