Fellini co-wrote several neorealist masterpieces directed by RobertoRossellini (see also Sunday, January 8). Paisan is a six-episodechronicle of wartime Italy recreating incidents in different locales,from Sicily at the time of the Allied invasion to the marshes of the PoValley in the last months of the war. A triumph of neorealist method,Paisan incorporates fictional anecdotes into semi-documentary scenes ofastonishing verisimilitude. The episodic structure leaves no time forillusions of completeness or drawn-out sentimentality. Rossellini cutsto the essential human qualities of the events he pictures, always withan eye for the extraordinary aspects of "ordinary" individualacts. There is much humor and irony in several vignettes dealing withthe relations (even at the level of language) between the Italiancitizens and the foreign (British and American) soldiery. The lastsequence, however, is stark and moving tragedy depicting a band ofpartisans and O.S.S. men waging a hopeless, lonely battle in thedesolate swamps of the Po Delta.