“Rossellini stands out from the rest of the so-called neorealists for his eye, his intervention as a strong and compassionate witness who knew how to photograph the air around things, and for his disregard of cinema as a spectacle. I took part as a spectator in Paisan and Rome, Open City and I may have learnt my way of approaching cinema from Rossellini, who worked in the most incredible confusion: expiring bills, romantic complications, conflicts, the war. I remember in Naples, during the shooting of Paisan, in the middle of the street, with the allies’ tanks parading behind our backs, and there he was, with his beret and the megaphone: the casualness of a god who’s creating an earthquake only to be able to photograph it. This is the true lesson that neorealism taught me.” — Federico Fellini
