>If they think everything is fucked and hopeless, and there's not
>much of an alternative on offer, why should they risk anything for
>no imaginable payoff? Who's going to go first? Just do your best to
>get by. It's a system that encourages cynical resignation. I feel it
>myself about 40 times a day.
Last night I watched Rosselini's Rome Open City. Great movie, especially if you watch some of the extra stuff that comes with the Criterion edition. There you get interesting background like Rosselini (and Fellini) one day working with Mussolini's son on "Fascist Triology" propaganda films and the next working on Rome Open City even before the city was liberated.
It occurred to me watching it that maybe one reason some on the left in the U.S. are always quick to find fascism lurking 'round corners is that in a resistance situation like that portrayed in Rosselini's film things (what is to be done) look so clear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iePrL22RVFQ
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/italians/resources/Amiciprize/1996/fascist http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/italians/resources/Amiciprize/1996/fascistfilms.html