A wartime bread-riot at a Roman bakery: Pina (AnnaMagnani) stoops to pick up a loaf. "You?" a man asks."Should I starve?" she asks. Then she gives him the bread; heshouldn't starve either. The raw courage, and raw terror, of individualscaught up in the implicit violence of everyday life under fascism ismade explicit in Open City. Magnani's portrait of a human being-proud,plebeian, sardonic--struck a chord around the world, as if a human beinghad never been captured on film before. Pina is the pregnant lover of aresistance worker, Francesco; the priest who is to marry Pina andFrancesco "tomorrow," Don Pietro, runs errands for theunderground. In the film that put neorealism on the map, Rosselliniseems to have removed the "screen." Our heroes don't even getclose-ups for their death scenes. But in Aldo Fabrizi's Don Pietro, andthe little boys who whistle a resistance song to comfort him as heawaits a firing squad, this film has a redemptive power that isoverwhelming.