General Della Rovere (1959)

hyped garbage

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

As great as Open City was, I think I like this one better because of its element of redemption. Also, I must confess I like that Rossellini has largely dispensed with his trademark neo-realism in favor of a more conventional narrative style. Instead of being on location, in the streets, most of his shots here are on sets, once even resorting to rather cheesy process shots. Otherwise, his sets are so well done, that I assumed, for example, that a cavernous prison block was real rather than constructed. Rossellini has thus created a play without being stagy. And the acting! Of course, this is Vittorio De Sica's movie. De Sica was larger than life, and Rossellini worked at governing the bombast. In fact, De Sica's distinguished stature -- silver mane and powerful build -- kept me from getting right into his Bardone character as a weasel. But perhaps it was that stature that allowed Bardone to carry out his scams. And it certainly helped the plausibility of someone like Bardone's becoming someone like Il Generale.Neglected in the reviews is the wonderful performance of Hannes Messemer as Colonel Müller. Another reviewer says that Müller had "fangs". In fact, Rossellini makes an effort to reveal how much Müller loathes the ruthless part of his work, first seeking to prevent reprisals, then, when he is alone, expressing frank distaste after being overruled by German command. Even when he is saddled with the cliché line, "We have ways of making you talk," he is far from a caricature. Then we are brought back to the reality of Müller's SS uniform by his remorseless treatment of Jews.Concerning the controversy... Italy imposed stringent political correctness on discussion of Italy's conduct in World War II. As the excellent documentary in the Criterion Edition points out, Rossellini could not have made Generale della Rovere ten years earlier, when criticism of Italians on the home front was a punishable offense. The story Italians told about themselves depended on which way the wind was blowing. After the war, everybody was an anti-fascist. (Just like the French, as revealed by Marcel Ophül's great documentary The Sorrow and the Pity.) A climactic scene in Generale della Rovere occurs when one who sought during the occupation to go along to get along -- not Bardone, who by now had changed -- was brought to book.An interesting note from the Criterion documentary: This is a true story, based on the real-life Bardone, named Bertone, who impersonated a Generale della Rovere. The story was first told as a novel, by a prison-mate of Bertone's, Indro Montanelli, who escaped. Though there is torture by the Germans in the movie, Montanelli says that the Germans never used torture, only the Italians. To me this was a shocker, making me wonder if, despite the monumental criminality of the Germans in World War II, the stock scenes we grow up with, of the "We have ways of making you talk" variety, are exaggerations and if so, to what degree.Playing the impostor, even in the face of death, is a familiar story. Dickens' Tale of Two Cities comes to mind. Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy is a similar tale. In fact, I see Kurosawa's Kagemusha as a retelling of Generale della Rovere, though Kurosawa strenuously denied it. Perhaps becoming the man you impersonate is simply a universal theme.Anyway, this one's a masterpiece. See it!

An understated masterpiece, this film charts the moral growth in nearly the worst of times of Victorio Grimaldi played by Vittorio De Sica. Other comments set out the main lines of the plot and note the excellence of de Sica as the not-good, but not all-bad, Grimaldi who is just trying to survive, like everyone else. But it evolves in a story of one man trying to live up to the expectations of others, who have had it even harder than he has. Planted in the prison to impersonate the heroic General della Rovere, Grimaldi slowly begins to act like the leader that Rovere was. In one touching scene, while under a terrifying bombardment, he cowers in his cell only to stiffen himself to shout out encouragement to the others, before collapsing in prayer and mortal dread. In this two or three minute episode we learn more about courage than from a score of action movies and thrillers. And of course Grimaldi learns something about himself, too, in a way, and also something about General della Rovere. Toward the end Grimaldi takes on the role of the now dead general so completely that he writes a letter to the general's wife encouraging her to persevere, while he willingly faces execution by the Germans to set an example to other Italians to resist. It is a powerful story of growth, self-realization, and redemption in terrible conditions, though there is also a hint of Italian patriotism, too. The film is hard to get but I managed it a few years ago on VHS, so seekers, persist! It is worth the effort.

Unlike some Italian films (such as several by Fellini), this is a very direct and approachable film for the average viewer--no symbolism, odd camera-work or surreal aspects at all. As such, it's a good film as an introduction to international cinema.Vittorio De Sica does a marvelous job playing the role of a rogue who swindles money from desperate relatives seeking information and help about their loved ones held in Nazi jails in occupied Italy. Eventually, it all catches up to him and he is offered a chance to avoid a LONG jail term or even execution--he is to impersonate a general who is leading those Italians seeking to expel the Germans. It seems the Nazis accidentally killed this general when he was trying to escape and they wanted to PRETEND he was still alive in order to smoke out members of the resistance. At first, De Sica agrees but over time he has a hard time remaining so cynical and self-absorbed. His transformation seems believable--from a thief to a patriot and is well worth watching.

I have little to add to what the first two commentators have written.Rossellini has a penchant for melodrama and rhetoric, but, fortunately, he keeps this tendency for the most part in check in this case. This film is dry and sober, and yet touching in the way it describes the transformation of a petty swindler, who manages to survive by cheating those who are unlucky enough to have their loved ones arrested by the Nazis and try everything they can in order to save them from execution or deportation to Germany, into a man who realises that, when faced with the choice between right and wrong, he ultimately has to take sides. And, when the time comes, he will do what his conscience will tell him to do, even though this will mean his own death.Vittorio De Sica is great, as usual, in this dramatic role as well as in his comic ones. Non-Italians may find interesting the fact that Vittorio De Sica was himself an unrepentant gambler in real life as well, to the point that, if I'm not mistaken, his dead left his family saddled with debts. The film also gives a good idea of what life was like for ordinary Italians under the German occupation between 1943 and 1945. Many had to make difficult choices in a confused situation, and they reacted differently. Some took sides and risks, on both sides; others tried to survive. Some came to accept humiliating compromises in order to save their loved ones from death (consider the character of Borghesio, the old, retired lawyer who mortgages his house in order to gather the money that is needed in order to buy the German officer responsible for choosing the prisoners who are bound to be sent to Germany as forced labourers, which often meant death, or of Ms Fassio, the wife who ends up humiliating herself in a desperate and vain attempt to rescue his husband and is torn between her inner contempt for the Nazis and the urge to do everything possible to save his husband). Some others tried to profit from the situation. Some others made different choices in different moments, sometimes cynical parasites, sometimes heroes. However, everyone faced dilemmas, often about their very survival.