Compassion and the Construction of Women’s Identity in Rome, Open City

Abstract

This chapter investigates Rossellini’s representations of compassion, opening new lines of inquiry in the examination of the film. It also highlights potential connections with the traditional patriarchal ideology, prevailing during Italy’s Fascist period, and deviations from it, which neorealist artists try to eliminate. Rossellini uses compassion as a way to solve struggles and to underscore and approve modern women’s political and social participation. The film also suggests that those qualities are valued only when women also demonstrate the patriarchal values particularly glorified by Fascism, such as commitment to the roles of wife and mother associated with the domestic sphere, thus proposing a less inventive way of problem-solving.