The film also would have done much more had it focused on a battle of wits between these two men. Alack, it did not. It became a political screed; one ironically presented as flushing out the truth about the war, even as it whitewashed the Fascist role in Italy’s downfall, blaming it almost exclusively on the occupying Nazis. While one can forgive numerous implausibilities (imagine an American equivalent- wartime prisoners who find out Generals Eisenhower or MacArthur are imprisoned, and not being able to detect a two bit fraud), melodramatic twists, and plot holes, if other parts of the film pick up the slack, didacticism is almost impossible to overcome.
The DVD package from The Criterion Collection, to be released March 31, 2009, is a good one, but not a great one. On the plus side is a 15 minute long visual essay on the political implications of the film. Done by Tag Gallagher, a Rossellini biographer, it sets up the background tale of Della Rovere superbly, even if it does not deal with the technical or artistic merits of the film. Also well done are three interviews with Rossellini’s children, Isabella (13 minutes long), Renzo (9 minutes long), and Ingrid (5 minutes long), as well as Italian film scholar Adriano Apra (7 minutes long). All give insight into the film and Rossellini, and each segment’s flaw is that they are too short. There is also a theatrical trailer, as well as a booklet with a solid essay by film critic James Monaco and a bit of a 2000 interview with the novelist Indro Montanelli. Monaco, however, misuses the term symbology for symbolism on page 5. I do not believe this a typo, so one can only wonder how a critic could not get the difference in the two words, much like people often misuse loath and loathe.
On the negative side is the glaring absence of an audio film commentary. Surely it costs not that much to get someone to do one? Given that it’s often free advertising for the film historian or critic, this is simply inexcusable, and should not cost much, if anything. Almost as annoying are the standard white subtitles that Criterion unfortunately uses. Lacking an English dub would not be so bad if the subtitles were readable. White subtitles on a black and white film (and one with far more white than black) are difficult to read, especially in a dialogue-intensive film like this. Rossellini is not Antonioni in that regard. Even worse is that about 10-15% of the dialogue goes untranslated, so nuance is lost.
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