War and love. tears and laughter, the worst and the best that can happen to someone - in brief, life, in Rome, ruled by the Nazis, in 1943. The man in question is called Vittorio, Vittorio De Sica. Easy to speak well of him now, but then he was just a 'comedian', an actor without future, protégé of no-one: someone who could count only on himself and his own imagination. And, one day, a German patrol turns up on the movie set where he is working. They are looking for him, find him and take him away, to their commander who wants a word with him. Goebbels in person has written to him, sending him a request which is an order. De Sica is trapped, but...
Acting
Bertorelli's Nazi general: velvet gloves, iron fist, terrifying politeness.
Direction
Bernini squeezes epic dread into 38 minutes of single-location doom.
Writing
The Goebbels letter: a career offer that reads like a death sentence.
Director
Franco Bernini
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This fictionalizes a real 1943 incident where De Sica was approached to direct propaganda—he fled Rome instead.
Marco Paolini, the narrator, is one of Italy's most famous theatrical monologists; his voice here drips with the irony of hindsight.
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