Filmed on the streets of Rome in the first weeks of the Allied liberation and employing a number of non-actors in supporting roles, 'Open City' placed itself at the vanguard of the Italian neorealist movement, brilliantly evoking the conflicting feelings of weary despair and steely determination that bound together the embattled partisan resistance in the face of certain death. Yet it was not merely the proximity to the actual events that made Rossellini's film so spellbinding, but the director's sure-handed blend of gentle humor and terrifying violence, a melding of documentary-style camera work with other more boldly melodramatic ingredients to create a cinematic milestone of raw emotional force that stands virtually unchallenged to this day.