The Genius of Pasquale
Paisan is Roberto Rossellini’s follow up to his critically acclaimed 1945 masterpiece, Rome, Open City. Those are big shoes to fill, and many do not think that the film stacks up anywhere close to Rome, Open City, but I highly disagree. I think this film was a masterpiece in its own right and deserves more recognition for being a great Italian film of the 1940’s. This is not to say it does not get recognition however, but in my experience there have been mixed reviews compared to Rome, Open City.
Paisan is separated into 6 stories. Each of them touching on the times of the war in Italy, and how it affected both the common folk of the country and outsiders. My favorite moment of these stories is in episode 2. The episode features a young orphaned street hustler, Pasquale, who is wise beyond his years, and his strange relationship with Joe, a drunken US solider. In the beginning of the film, Pasquale takes a passed-out Joe’s boots. Joe figures this out and catches him stealing more, and demands to see Pasquale’s parents. When they arrive to Pasquale’s “home”, he finds that Pasquale has been orphaned due to his parents being victims of war time bombings. Saddened, Joe lets Pasquale keep his boots.
I wanna get away from the bigger story here, and focus on a much smaller piece of the puzzle to episode 2. And that is the character of Pasquale. As I mentioned, he is a young hustler who has way too much knowledge for someone his own age. But I think this character is a clear attempt at screaming to the audience, “YOU ARE A PRODUCT OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT!”. In war time Italy, there was hardship and poverty all over. As a Kidd, this makes life rough, and even rougher when your parents die and leave you behind with nobody to care for you. Pasquale had no choice but to grow up way too early, and learn the tricks of the streets. This draws parallels even to modern day America, as it is all too common to see kids in poor urban communities to hustling, turn to drug dealing, turn to robbery, turn to whatever they need to do to make their ends meet. In Pasquale’s instance in particular, they did a great job of making his character seem relatable, and someone that you could feel for. It would have been easy to make him just seem like a scum bag who takes advantage of people in any way he can to make a buck, which sure, he was to an extent, but we also got to see his emotions. Emotions are effective in telling us as viewers that, “ok, this kid is human”. When we have that understanding of someone being human, you can ask yourself what you would do if you were Pasquale, and I think most would be lying if they did not say they would be doing the same hustles. We are all products of our environment, and Pasquale was handed a really bad one, and made the most with the cards he was dealt.