Did you know that there’s a movie that dramatizes the making of ‘Rome Open City’? It was made in 1996 in Italy and appears to be incredibly difficult to find a viewing copy of. I did manage to find the trailer though and have posted it above. The film was a lifelong ‘love project’ for the director/writer Carlo Lizzani who finally got it made when he was in his early seventies. Lizzani began his career as a co-writer of Rossellini’s 1948 film ‘Germany Year Zero’.

It looks tantalizing. As you’ll see, the film clearly features intercutting of the new dramatized footage of the film being shot with clips from the original film interspersed. The story of the making of the film is covered in great and entertaining detail in Tag Gallagher’s superb biography ‘The Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini’–the money was always running out, Rossellini and his producer/writing partners feuded constantly, Anna Magnani and Rossellini began their tumultuous relationship during the shoot and a man named Rod Geiger, a mysterious American fresh out of the service, stumbled into the whole mess and wound up helping them complete the film by, among other things, turning up a black marketeer who supplied film stock (which was then very scarce). Geiger is portrayed in the film by Christopher Walken. Who else?