Plot: Enmeshed with the Italian Campaign during the liberation of Italy between 1943-1944, six distinct but unconnected episodes unfold. Starting off from Sicily, a local girl, Carmela, guides a band of American soldiers through a minefield with devastating results, while in Naples, Pasquale, the orphaned child of war, after stealing the boots of an inebriated African-American G.I., is followed back to his war-battered town. Then, in liberated Rome, the impoverished young prostitute, Francesca, waits for the American soldier who fell in love with six months before, and in Florence, during a battle across Ponte Vecchio, Harriet, a US wartime nurse, risks her life to reunite with her lover. Next, three army chaplains spend the night at a Roman Catholic monastery, however, only one of them is a Catholic. Finally, on the banks of Po River, American OSS officers and Italian Partisans fight the Nazis, after saving two downed English pilots.
Alternative Plot: Roberto Rossellini's film, made in the aftermath of WWII, consists of six distinct chapters, showing various relationships between the American occupiers and the newly liberated Italians. Two of the outstanding episodes see black military policeman Dotts Johnson robbed of his shoes by a cheeky street urchin while the film ends with a reminder that the war was still not won, as German troops prefer to fight a battle to the death.
Rate this movie!