Hot damn this was an unconventional war drama that was not only insightful to the inner workings but also a tragic indictment of the political military structure during the time all the while giving you this overlapping religious hierarchy that unfortunately fits lock and goose step with the German regime of the era. You have two great actors here with Richard Burton(Lt. Col. Herbert Kappler) being steely eyed in trying to pensively play out his situation whilst Marcello Mastroianni(Father Pietro…

Marcello Mastroianni and Richard Burton star in this war drama about a real life massacre that occurred in reprisal for the deaths of an SS brigade in Nazi-occupied Rome.

It was very disturbing, especially at the end, and showed the horrors committed by the Germans while occupying Italy. Mastroianni’s character, a priest trying to stop the violence, is based on several people, including Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who was played by Gregory Peck in The Scarlet and the Black (which this…

George P. Cosmatos' film about the events leading up to the Ardeatine massacre in 1944 has been criticised a fair bit over the years for the numerous historical inaccuracies within.

They are criticisms that are justified but in defence of Cosmatos, the artistic liberties he takes with the material, while morally dubious, do make this artistically rather an interesting piece of work. Richard Burton's conflicted Nazi colonel, for instance, is especially well drawn.

While he shows a lot of affinity…

Bitter WWII drama about a partisan attack and the German reprisal. Richard Burton plays Herbert Kappler, head of the Sicherheitspolizei. His days of being a proud Nazi are long gone. He's fed up with the war and everything that comes with it, but Befehl ist Befehl. Kappler becomes in charge of compiling a list of more than 300 more or less random Italians who will be executed. A harrowing task and his ordeal doesn't stop there. It took some time…

Somewhat in the Francesco Rosi manner of newsy reportage whilst squinting at the stylistics of The Conformist. That is, caught between two styles and two positions: moral tract or dramatic reconstruction. The punchy title indicates the direction of travel (the tasteless typography of the poster can be ignored).

To be fair the moral failure of The Vatican on the matter of the 10:1 execution of Italians in reprisal for Nazi soldier deaths is present, as is a degree of turpitude amongst the…

"If they follow the rules of the Hague Convention, they'll say that if the people responsible don't come forward, they'll execute hostages."

Pure acid, Italian polemic cinema whose first act anti-fascist partisan attack planning starts this in the vein of The Battle of Algiers (with whom this shares a cinematographer, and, of course, a composer in Morricone) before becoming a grinding, inexorable, granular condemnation of every complicit society structure and attitude in Nazi-allied Rome that led to the execution of…

Based on screenwriter Robert Katz's own controversial 1967 bestseller, Death in Rome, this 1973 film from journeyman director George Pan Cosmatos tells the true story of the 1944 partisan roadside bombing that killed thirty-three members of the SS Police Regiment Bozen, and the subsequent Nazi reprisal, ordered by Hitler, that saw a staggering 335 Italians executed in what became known as the Ardeatine massacre. Katz's book achieved notoriety because it accused the then incumbent Pope, Pope Pius XII, of kowtowing…

This compelling war drama is based on the controversial book "death in Rome", which suggests that the Pope Pius XII was aware of Hitler's plan to kill 10 Italians every German lost in a partisan attack, and either feigned ignorance could do nothing about it.
Col. Kappler (Richard Burton) is a devoted Nazi who is caught between his duty and his love for Rome when he is ordered to execute 330 Italians in retaliation for the deaths of 33 Germans.…

Rappresaglia
A fictionalised retelling of the Ardeatine massacre which was organised by Herbert Kappler (played by Richard Burton). I hadn't heard of the massacre and found this film very moving, watched on either side of a visit to the cenotaph for Armistice Day, seeing men slaughtered in the course of a war, and as a result of that war, on a day when we formally remember those who have had their lives taken by war.
The way that we saw…

"Hitler l'aveva detto anni fa: nutrite la Chiesa che poi a tenere buono il gregge ci pensano loro".

La ricostruzione dell'eccidio delle fosse Ardeatine svolto con paradigmatica freddezza e sufficiente aderenza storica: Kappler in versione il Principe di Machiavelli (ottimo Richard Burton), Mastroianni pretino dedito ai restauri d'arte ma con spirito rivoluzionario (altro che Francesco), gli altri grigi o inetti, come i generali tedeschi ormai consci della prossima disfatta,o i partigiani, tetragoni e arroccati sulle loro ideologie più o meno…