PAISAN
advantage of it; there must always be one more push-and it always
destroys his position, for
if
death and suffering are not
in themselves
the greatest of misfortunes, then we are back in the field of politics and
morals, and it is Prince Hal who is right. Thus, in the Sicilian episode,
after the Italian girl is dead, there must be the final scene to show how
cruelly she has been misunderstood. In Naples, it is not enough that the
Negro and the Italian child are both suffering; it must be shown that
even
an American Negro is shamed before Italy's misery. In Rome, it is
not enough that the prostitute and the soldier are both unhappy; the
prostitute must
be
the
very same girl
that he remembers from his first
days in Rome and has looked for in vain; and at the end we must see
him throw away her address with a sneer: "Just the address of a --."
A number of Americans collaborated with Rossellini on this film, and
their influence is apparent-not least in its sentimentality. But the
strength of this American element is a sign not so much of the corrupting
influence of America as of the accomplished corruption of Italy: only
the fact of defeat is Rossellini's own; beyond that, he must nourish him–
self at the table of the victors. And there is a significant difference that
· betrays the nature of this relationship. American sentimentality is rarely
without a note of aggressiveness: I am a small man
aJnd
I shall inherit
the earth (this must be one of the things that impress Europeans as
hypocrisy). But Rossellini transforms this into complete passivity: I am
only
a small man and I have suffered terribly.
From this point of view, the six episodes can be plausibly inter–
preted as representing the fantasies of the eternally defeated as he· tries
anxiously to read his fate in the countenance of a new master. In Sicily,
the Italian
girl
is rejected: the American does not know that she was
.really his friend, and the one who could testify for her is dead. In Naples,
the American finds his heart overflowing with pity: he
understands;
he, too, has suffered. In Rome, the Italian
girl
is rejected again: she is
a whore; she has not waited. But in Florence the American nurse presses
the dying partisan's head to her breast; and in the monastery, the ar–
rogant victor is humbled before the simple goodness and wisdom of
those who have chosen to exempt themselves from history (see Piovene
again) . Finally, on the Po, the American is at last both loved and loving,
directing the Italians in their struggle
a~d
then losing his life in a
protest against their murder.
Robert Warshow
821
