Paisan (1946, It.) (aka Paisà)
In Roberto Rossellini's war-time, neo-realistic, propagandistic
docu-drama about the liberation of Italy in WWII - an anthology divided
into six episodes or vignettes - it was his second post-war follow-up
film to Rome: Open City (1945, It.):
- in the bleak, ragged, rough and minimalist film
- in its sixth and final downbeat episode set in the Po River Delta
of Italy, in December 1944: during guerrilla warfare, a group of
American-Allied OSS agents, two British airmen, and six Italian
partisans had been captured by the Germans behind enemy lines
- from a long distance away, the camera recorded a moving
and horrifying scene - the sacrificial deaths of six Italian POWs
who were bound (hands tied behind their backs), and pushed - one-by-one
- into the water from the side of a boat to drown (they were not
protected under the Geneva Convention treaty); one American officer
and one British officer on the shore objected and ran toward the
boat, and were quickly gunned down by the Germans; the remainder
of the executions were conducted - and the film ended on the watery
waves calming down from the body splashes
- the passionless narrator (Giulio Panicali) spoke (in
voice-over): "This happened in the winter of 1944. At the beginning
of spring, the war was over"
Italian Partisans Captured
Drownings
Waves