MovieChat Forums > Roma città aperta (1945) Discussion > Question about the ending (spoilers)

Question about the ending (spoilers)

posted 14 years ago by tmaj48
5 replies | jump to latest

Don Pietro's execution is to be by firing squad in an open field, which
seems like a strategic mistake on the part of the Germans. Why would they
do such a thing out in the open, where it can (and is) witnessed by a group
of children, guaranteeing that the priest's death will be seen as a martyrdom
and confirming the Germans' villainy?

And how did the boys get there in the first place? I'm assuming that the
two men summoned them there, since the second priest exchanges glances with them
before the kids begin whistling. Why would these men setting up the area for
the execution, and not the soldiers?

I'm not crying, you fool, I'm laughing!

[–] preppy-3 13 years ago

I think they did it as a warning. Basically they were saying to the kids if you fight us THIS is what happens to you!

[–] tmaj48 11 years ago

My mother just recently told me a story which I guess answers my original post. When she was a kid in Warsaw during WWII, she and her classmates were
taken on a school field trip to an area of town by a contingent of German
soldiers. The soldiers had them look at a project they had just completed--
it seems a local boys' orphanage/school had committed some infraction (something
concerning studying from books the Nazis disapproved of). The soldiers were
ordered to punish the priest who ran the school by hanging him and about a dozen
or so of the students (they were about 12-14 years old) in a row outside the
school. My mother and the rest of the class (they were about 11-12 years old at the time) were led past all the hanging corpses to see for themselves how low the scummy Germans would sink, and as a
warning not to defy them.

I'm not crying, you fool, I'm laughing!

Hewwo.

[–] prplayer 8 years ago

you're right, it doesn't make any sense

i guess they did it for dramatic effect

so many movies, so little time

[–] stevekaczynski 8 years ago

Sometimes they carried out public executions, but more often they took people to remote areas to kill them. The Nazis and Italian Fascists were in a tug of war with the Allies for the loyalty of Catholics (there are some traces of this in the film - Bergmann finds out his soldiers searched the sacristy and says that this was "tactless", and in real life Nazi propaganda aimed at Italians made much of the atheism of the USSR, and the British and American bombing of the Monte Cassino monastery). Executing a priest might have been something they did not want to publicise. Perhaps the boys had a tip-off about the execution site.

"Chicken soup - with a *beep* straw."

[–] stevekaczynski 8 years ago

It also looks like they took him to the outskirts of Rome to shoot him. Executing a priest was controversial - the Nazis were not entirely insensitive to Catholic opinion. At times they were more careful to court it than the Allies were.

"Chicken soup - with a *beep* straw."