Lack of good storyline.

Excellent adaptation.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Roberto Rossellini directs fellow neorealist Vittorio De Sica in "General della Rovere".De Sica – we forget how much of a suave, handsome actor the director was - plays Emanuele Bardone, a lowly con man struggling to make ends meet in 1940s, war-torn Genoa. His modus operandi? Promise his fellow Italians that he can find their missing loved ones in exchange for money. He prostitutes World War 2, and profits on the suffering of his countrymen.It's not long, though, before Bardone is reprimanded by the German Army and forced to impersonate a dead partisan general. His mission? Enter a prison and extract information from fellow inmates regarding the identity and location of an Italian Resistance fighter. Bardone does as told – he's a schemer who does whatever it takes to survive – but eventually undergoes a crisis of conscience. He then betrays the Germans and accepts his fate.The majority of Rossellini's more well known films are sentimental, and "General della Rovere", which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is no different. Though he holds his cast at an distance, content to let their actions do the talking, Rossellini's unusually austere aesthetic (classical camera work, gorgeous, inky blacks and whites) is nevertheless perfectly in line with most neorealist works, which, far from being a "gritty" movement, always sanctified the downtrodden and venerated the lowly. "General della Rovere" does the same, exalting Bardone as a fallen angel who eventually finds redemption.Most interesting about the film is the Nazi Colonel who recruits Bardone. He's played with nuance by Hannes Messemer, a real life German Colonel. In contrast, De Sica's character takes on the attributes of your typical movie Nazi; suave, debonair, amoral and coolly calculating.8/10 - "General della Rovere" was a critical and box office success upon release, but it's lesser Rosselini, formulaic and easy. Worth one viewing.

The story of the film concerns "Colonelo" Bertone a self-appointed community intercessor and thief in World War II Italy, passing on bribes from families to the Germans in order to help their sons (or gambling away the bribes and eating their food parcels). It's definitely a film of two halves, the first half of the movie to me feeling decidedly Pasolinian. Bertone, though undoubtedly a scoundrel does his best to keep people happy, is a character that spreads a certain amount of charm in the world. For some people who have never known love or had anyone to look up to, he provides a show, his charisma is like ambrosia. Having been brought up with Protestant vales it has been a revelation to me in life how people value charm as most precious, a Veblen good, more prized when it is most demanding, how a charming person is valued above all others even when they live in a moral vacuum.The second half of the movie is, in structure, a more conventional prison movie where Bertone, working for the Germans in order to save his skin, becomes an impostor pretending to be Generale della Rovere. Whilst pretending to be the general he begins to assume many of the general's characteristics. This part of the film is very patriotic, and contains a beautiful fresco of Italian cities on the prison wall. The ideology of this part of the movie is all about recognising the efforts of the largely Communist, Partito d'Azione and Socialist partisan resistance, bodies who were largely excluded from the post-fascist Italian government, which was dominated by the Christian Democrats, who many felt to have been tainted by association with fascism.Pontecorvo's movie Kapò was released contemporaneously, and features a similarly caricatured version of the Teutonic gaoler and slightly ebullient view of World War II, that would become refined in future decades. That said, Il Generale della Rovere, is undoubtedly a masterpiece.

Unlike some Italian films (such as several by Fellini), this is a very direct and approachable film for the average viewer--no symbolism, odd camera-work or surreal aspects at all. As such, it's a good film as an introduction to international cinema.Vittorio De Sica does a marvelous job playing the role of a rogue who swindles money from desperate relatives seeking information and help about their loved ones held in Nazi jails in occupied Italy. Eventually, it all catches up to him and he is offered a chance to avoid a LONG jail term or even execution--he is to impersonate a general who is leading those Italians seeking to expel the Germans. It seems the Nazis accidentally killed this general when he was trying to escape and they wanted to PRETEND he was still alive in order to smoke out members of the resistance. At first, De Sica agrees but over time he has a hard time remaining so cynical and self-absorbed. His transformation seems believable--from a thief to a patriot and is well worth watching.

I have little to add to what the first two commentators have written.Rossellini has a penchant for melodrama and rhetoric, but, fortunately, he keeps this tendency for the most part in check in this case. This film is dry and sober, and yet touching in the way it describes the transformation of a petty swindler, who manages to survive by cheating those who are unlucky enough to have their loved ones arrested by the Nazis and try everything they can in order to save them from execution or deportation to Germany, into a man who realises that, when faced with the choice between right and wrong, he ultimately has to take sides. And, when the time comes, he will do what his conscience will tell him to do, even though this will mean his own death.Vittorio De Sica is great, as usual, in this dramatic role as well as in his comic ones. Non-Italians may find interesting the fact that Vittorio De Sica was himself an unrepentant gambler in real life as well, to the point that, if I'm not mistaken, his dead left his family saddled with debts. The film also gives a good idea of what life was like for ordinary Italians under the German occupation between 1943 and 1945. Many had to make difficult choices in a confused situation, and they reacted differently. Some took sides and risks, on both sides; others tried to survive. Some came to accept humiliating compromises in order to save their loved ones from death (consider the character of Borghesio, the old, retired lawyer who mortgages his house in order to gather the money that is needed in order to buy the German officer responsible for choosing the prisoners who are bound to be sent to Germany as forced labourers, which often meant death, or of Ms Fassio, the wife who ends up humiliating herself in a desperate and vain attempt to rescue his husband and is torn between her inner contempt for the Nazis and the urge to do everything possible to save his husband). Some others tried to profit from the situation. Some others made different choices in different moments, sometimes cynical parasites, sometimes heroes. However, everyone faced dilemmas, often about their very survival.