"Man With a Cross" was Roberto Rossellini's final film in what is now known as his "Fascist Trilogy", a trio of films made whilst Italy was under Fascist control. The film is typically brushed off as a propaganda peace – artists were forbidden from straying too far beyond Mussolini's party line – but this isn't quite so.
Unfolding across an apocalyptic landscape (cackling flames, wartorn vistas, tanks cruising the landscape like steel gargoyles), the film watches as a lowly military chaplain navigates the Eastern front. Here he attempts to bring God, and a little compassion, to various characters he stumbles upon. The chaplain character has been read as your archetypal "benign fascist", who "heals" and "sacrifices" and "brings outsiders into the merciful folds of God/fascism" (the film features scenes in which the chaplain races after Russian soldiers and attempts to convert them), but Rossellini seems more interesting in highlighting the commonalities between Fascist and Bolshevik alike. Consider, for example, Rossellini's opening shot, in which Christian doves and idyllic pastures are shattered by the sight of men putting on military uniforms. Another stand-out scene features the chaplain torn between administering death rights to a dying solder and tending to a newborn infant. End result: while the film does function as a traditional propaganda piece (only when on screen text appears, not put there by Rossellini), we actually see Rossellini engaging in subversion throughout, humanising the enemy, chastising both Italy and the divisions foisted by uniforms, and expressing a deep and affecting compassion for all of war's victims. Nevertheless, this is minor Rossellini.
7.9/10 – Worth one viewing. The film is notable for several apocalyptic, surreal combat sequences.
Unfolding across an apocalyptic landscape (cackling flames, wartorn vistas, tanks cruising the landscape like steel gargoyles), the film watches as a lowly military chaplain navigates the Eastern front. Here he attempts to bring God, and a little compassion, to various characters he stumbles upon. The chaplain character has been read as your archetypal "benign fascist", who "heals" and "sacrifices" and "brings outsiders into the merciful folds of God/fascism" (the film features scenes in which the chaplain races after Russian soldiers and attempts to convert them), but Rossellini seems more interesting in highlighting the commonalities between Fascist and Bolshevik alike. Consider, for example, Rossellini's opening shot, in which Christian doves and idyllic pastures are shattered by the sight of men putting on military uniforms. Another stand-out scene features the chaplain torn between administering death rights to a dying solder and tending to a newborn infant. End result: while the film does function as a traditional propaganda piece (only when on screen text appears, not put there by Rossellini), we actually see Rossellini engaging in subversion throughout, humanising the enemy, chastising both Italy and the divisions foisted by uniforms, and expressing a deep and affecting compassion for all of war's victims. Nevertheless, this is minor Rossellini.
7.9/10 – Worth one viewing. The film is notable for several apocalyptic, surreal combat sequences.