American military personnel interact warily with a variety of Italian locals over a year and a half in the push north during the Italian Campaign of WWII as German forces make their retreat.
Enmeshed with the Italian Campaign during the liberation of Italy from July 1943 to late 1944, six distinct but unconnected episodes unfold in which American military personnel interact with Italian locals–some sympathetic, others hostile–as the Germans are forced to retreat from Sicily to the delta of the Po River. Beginning in Sicily, local girl Carmela guides a band of American soldiers through a minefield with devastating results; then in Naples, Pasquale, an orphaned child of war, steals the boots of an inebriated African-American G.I. and is later followed back to his war-battered town. In liberated Rome, the impoverished young prostitute Francesca waits for the American soldier who fell in love with her six months before; in Florence, during a battle across the Ponte Vecchio, Harriet, a nurse in an American military hospital, risks her life to reunite with her lover. Next, three army chaplains are taken in by a Roman Catholic monastery in the Apennine Mountains, although only one of them is a Catholic. Finally, on the banks of Po River at its delta near Venice, American OSS officers and Italian Partisans fight the Nazis, after saving two downed English pilots.—Nick Riganas Six vignettes follow the Allied invasion from July 1943 to the end of 1944, from Sicily north to Venice. Communication is fragile. A woman leads an Allied patrol through a minefield; she tries to protect a wounded G.I., but the Yanks come to think she killed him. A street urchin steals shoes from an M.P. who tracks him to a shanty town. A G.I. meets a woman the day Rome is liberated; in six months they meet again, but they’ve both been changed deeply during the time apart. An American nurse braves the trip across the Arno into German fire in search of a partisan she loves. Three chaplains, including a Jew, call on a monastery high in the Apennines. Allied soldiers and partisans try to escape capture in the marshes of the Po.—
Don’t miss the chance to experience the gripping stories of American military personnel and Italian locals during WWII in the movie Paisan. Watch it now online for an unforgettable cinematic journey. Get ready to be immersed in the drama, emotion, and historical significance of this remarkable film.