FILM CHRONICLE
PAISAN
The force of
Paisan
is in certain images of danger, suffering,
and death that remain in one's consciousness with the particularity of
real experience. Like the stacked dry corpses of Buchenwald or the
clownish figure of Mussolini hanging by the heels, these images have an
autonomy that makes them stronger and more important than any
ideas one can attach to them.
In the Sicilian episode, a few American soldiers pick their way in
the dark along some vague path beneath a wall, crouching slightly, talk–
ing in whispers; one of them chews
gum
rapidly. Various qualities
belong to the men: they are young; they have a certain motor efficiency
that makes them appear in general well-trained, courageous, and intel–
ligent; they exhibit a solidarity that is practical rather than emotional,
resting on a common-sense acceptance of their situation; they are in
innumerable ways "soldierly," masculine, and American.
In an American film, these men would be "GI's"-the rough and
serviceable vessels of democracy; their personal qualities would
be
ex–
pressed through contrived and carefully differentiated patterns of sym–
bols and ideas (one of the group might be a little comical, and another
"spiritual" or "cultured"; one might be named Rosenbloom, and-at
the very best-one might be a Negro) ; and their presence on the coast
of Sicily would
be
given some specifically "universal" relevance (prob–
ably the episode would begin with shots indicating the scale of the in–
vasion, and then move in to pick up this "representative" group) . But
here the qualities of the men and the nature of their situation are
inseparably contained in the particulars of their physical presence-for
example, the way the large and ungraceful helmets diminish the faces
beneath them, forcing one to see each man as a whole body, with his
"personality" expressed in movement and in the details of his clothing
and equipment; or the astonishingly flat and metallic voice of the leader,
at once childish and self-assured, suggesting a lack of sensitivity · that
may be appropriate to his function; even the chewing gum is for once
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