It was one of the most visceral, gut-wrenching cinematic experiences of my life and I have carried images and sounds from it – the old ladies stalling the Gestapo while the resistance hero escapes across the roofs, the martial music playing as the German regiment marches down a deserted street, the tortured hero slumped in a chair, the priest in his black robes – with me ever since. My introduction to this intense and formative period in Italian history came via the film Rome, Open City, directed by Roberto Rossellini (Isabella’s father), which I first saw when I was an undergraduate studying Italian in the late 1970s. Then began for the people of Rome the nine-month ordeal of occupation: a period of deprivation, hunger and oppression, of hand-to-mouth survival for many, of collaboration for some, of resistance, torture, imprisonment and death for others. On 9 September Badoglio, King Victor Emmanuel, the government and military leaders fled the capital for the south.
