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Paisan

  • Director: Roberto Rossellini
  • Year: 1946
The greatest innovation in cinema around this period is the emergence of mainstream films that are anchored so specifically in contemporary life, that were deliberately not timeless. Rossellini went further than anyone else in this direction - Paisan deliberately interweaves stock war footage with staged settings, real actors with non-professionals, to create something that deliberately skirts the line between fiction and documentary. Paisan is also the first great bilingual film on the list, not only featuring English and Italian but many different dialects, making the film extremely difficult for a native Italian to understand. The performances are often extremely stilted, and there are glaring editing mistakes, but many of the stories are extremely compelling. 

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