PARTISAN REVIEW
has the effect of a "natural" rather than an interpretive variation. The
speed of the action combined with the neutrality of the camera tends
to exclude the possibility of reflection and thus to divorce the events
from all questions of opinion. The political and moral distinctions be–
tween the snipers and their captors do not appear (even the visual
distinction is never very sharp), and the spectator is given no oppor–
tunity to assent to the killing. Thus the scene derives its power precisely
from the fact that it is not cushioned in ideas: events seem to develop
according to their own laws and to take no account of how one might–
or "should"-feel about them.
The final episode, which describes the defeat and capture of a group
of Italian partisans and American OSS men on the Po River, is full of
these strong images: a corpse floats down the river, held up by a life
preserver, with a crude sign-"partigiano"-stuck behind its shoulders;
a baby walks among the unresponding corpses of its family, crying as
if
it will never stop--only the baby and a dog remain alive; a hanged
man sways and turns quietly in the wind, while the other prisoners,
lying on the ground below him, talk in whispers ("What will they do
to us?" "I have wet myself like a baby."), and the legs of a German
guard move back and forth in the foreground ; a row of prisoners
stands at the edge of a boat, and the Germans push them off one by one
to drown (but in this there is perhaps too much contrivance; Rossellini
slows up the tempo a little, and one is allowed to become aware of the
beauty of the shot) .
Again there is no room for ideas. All questions have been decided
long before the episode begins, and to reaffirm the decisions would be
as irrelevant as to reconsider them. All that matters is the events them–
selves in their character as recorded experience: not why these things
happen, but the fact that they happen, and above all the particular
forms of their happening.
I began by suggesting what might have happened to some of Ros–
sellini's material in the hands of an American director. Since the film
is concerned throughout with relations between Italians and Americans,
this contrast is particularly relevant, and I should like now to carry it
further.
A~erican
culture demands victory; every situation must somehow
be made an occasion for constructive activity. The characters and events
in serious American films are given a specifically "universal" or "repre–
sentative" meaning in order to conceal the fact that there are situations
in which victory is not possible. The idea survives- that is a victory;
818
