Here they are, today’s additions to the 4xblu online store: Hong Kong Blu-rays of Johnnie To’s “PTU” and “Sparrow,” plus BFI’s limited edition box set of Roberto Rossellini’s “The War Trilogy.”
While it might not have been the first neorealist film, Italian or otherwise (Jean Renoir’s “Toni” and “Ossessione,” Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” are among its predecessors), “Rome, Open City” –the first film in the trilogy — put Italian neorealism on the map, winning a top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946 and even being nominated for an Oscar in 1947. Like many of the Italian neorealist works that would follow, “Rome, Open City” utilized location shooting and non-professional actors to convey the hardships endured by struggling Italians (in this case, depicting life under Nazi occupation). The Italian neorealist films not only provided a training ground for up-and-coming filmmakers like Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, but they also pointed the way for the filmmakers of numerous New Wave movements that flourished around the world in the decades to come.