CORRESPONDENCE
PAISAN
Sirs,
While reading Robert Warshaw's
analysis of
Paisan
(PR July 1948), I
put myself into the position of a reader
of news, and thus was enabled to think
that Rossellini's picture must be an
outstanding cultural event. Where else,
except in a few rare examples over the
past twenty years, can be found "cer–
tain images . .. that remain in one's
consciousness with the particularity of
real experience," where else does a
scene "derive its power precisely from
the fact that it is not cushioned in
ideas," where else are characters "as
real in ten seconds as they could be
made in half an hour"? Even where
the critic attacks the moviemaker, it is
not a thoroughly believable attack–
was not the great Griffith also senti–
mental, also weak in ideas, and, more
often than we like to admit, also lack–
ing in taste?
The critic induced a daydream: I
felt that I would like to see this film,
a good deal of which must be genuine
and powerful. It must be
good,
to be
worth Warshow's carefully considered
writing and the editor's assignment of
six pages to it.
Then the dream faded, and with it
my interest in the "event." I recalled
that I had already seen
Paisan,
and
while seeing it and afterwards, I had
thou~ht
this such a badly made film
that it could be taken seriously only
as an example of the corruption of the
medium; that a critic would have to
have the callous objectivity of anas–
si.atant in a sanitary engineer's labora–
tory to be able to analyze such a can
of garbage, such a dreary collection of
old bacon fat, orange
peels,
margarine
wrappers, chicken bones, vegetable par–
ings, sardine cans, and floor aweepings,
II~
without even the hope of finding a lost
piece of jewelry. Cinematically,
Paisan
is shapeless and dull; the good the
critic finds there is read into it, and
does not proceed from it. Its "force,"
its "moments of tension," the state–
ment that a certain scene's action "is
always one moment ahead of the spec–
tator's understanding" are not signifi–
cant, I submit, simply because these
characteristics can (and ought to
be)
explained on the ordinary level of
workmanship,
whereas your critic ex–
tends his search far beyond this ordi–
nary level to "the fantasies of the
eternally defeated," and into questions
of "the whole meaning of the war."
This is illegitimate until it is solidly
established that Rossellini is a good
enough artist to suggest these far-reach–
ing questions himself, and that he is
aesthetically equipped by the tools of
his trade (his ability as a moviemaker)
to take such a serious and deliberate
course as "the rejection of ideas."
When I saw
Paisan,
it was made
plain to me that the worst faults of
Open City
were magnified, as if the fi–
nancial success of the director's first
film had placed him beyond criticism,
remembering that in Hollywood the
crushing answer to all objection is a
reference to box-office receipts. I found
this "artist" lacking in any primary
understanding of his medium. He is
unable to establish visual continuity.
His camera wanders senselessly from
one vapid viewpoint to another. His
shots either destroy his simple-millded
points by needless complication (if Eis–
enstein used "composition," so also
must this newest "maestro" use it,
whether the scene needs it or not), or
else they present themselves to the
spectator as a tiresome procession of
boring "eye-levels" so mediocre that it
is impossible to say whether they should
have been kept in or thrown away. His
"tempo" is the tempo of a beginner on
the piano whose listener waits in intol–
erable suspense while the difficult chord
