Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 6/3/2014)

Aware he only had $20,000 at his disposal (much of it donated by a politically active old lady), Rossellini originally intended to make a pair of documentaries, about Don Pietro Morosini, who had been murdered by the Gestapo, and the part played by Rome's children in resisting the Germans. He was also keen to pay tribute to Teresa Gullace, who had been slain in front of the barracks on Viale Giulio Cesare while running after the truck carrying her captured fiancé. However, co-scenarists Sergio Amidei and Federico Fellini suggested combining the subjects into a single feature about the Eternal City's response to repression.

They were also eager to reclaim their cinematic heritage and defy Admiral Ellery W. Stone, the head of a commission considering the future of the film industry, who has all-but banned production because `the so-called Italian cinema was invented by the Fascists'. So, with Cinecittà out of action because it was housing some 5000 Italian and foreign refugees and electrical supplies unreliable, Rossellini (who, ironically, had honed his craft within the edifice that film buff Benito Mussolini had constructed) decided to shoot on the streets in natural light on scavenged film stock. He also bolstered his cast with non-professionals, but opted for the insurance policy of having some familiar faces in the principal roles.

The tide of the Second World War may have turned and Rome might have been an open city since 14 August 1943, but the Gestapo still clamps down on partisans opposing the Axis. However, Engineer Marcello Pagliero is not just fighting with the resistance, he is also a Communist and German major Harry Feist is determined to capture him and make an example of him before the populace. However, Pagliero escapes across the rooftops after he is tipped off by the landlady of a rooming house whose tenannts include widow Anna Magnani, who lives with young son Vito Annicchiarico (who is part of a juvenile sabotage gang) and is planning to marry the father of the baby she is expecting, Pagliero's newspaper lithographer pal, Francesco Grandjacquet.

The ceremony will be conducted by parish priest Aldo Fabrizi, who is sympathetic to the underground, even though he disapproves of Pagliero and Grandjacquet's atheism. When Pagliero asks him to deliver some money to his comrades inside some books, Fabrizi agrees and Magnani accompanies him to make his errand seem less suspicious. This heroism earns him the respect of Grandjacquet, who proclaims that he would rather be married by a priest with guts than a spineless Fascist dignitary. But, while he and Magnani look forward to the future, someone from Pagliero's past makes an unexpected return, as old flame Maria Michi seeks him out. She is close to Magnani's sister, Carla Rovera, but is also friendly with Giovanna Galletti, who is in the pay of police commissioner Carlo Sindici and local sergeant Eduardo Passarelli and persuades Michi that she can enjoy the high life in return for a little information.

Struggling to make it in show business and forced periodically to resort to prostitution, Michi succumbs to temptation. As a consequence, soldiers conduct a search of the rooming house and Fabrizi has to pretend to be giving an old man extreme unction in order to hide a rifle and a bomb being hidden on the premises. However, Grandjacket is arrested on the street and, when Magnani evades the clutches of a trooper restraining her, she is gunned down as she runs after the retreating truck taking her lover to prison. Fabrizi runs up to console her and she dies in his arms.

Pagliero remains at large and asks Michi for sanctuary. He has misgivings, however, when she introduces him to Galletti and he condemns Michi for her cowardice and treachery. When Galletti gives Michi a fur coat for her efforts, she breaks down and cries with remorse. Aware his options are becoming increasingly limited, Pagliero goes to see Fabrizi, who gets him false papers and agrees to escort him and Austrian renegade Ákos Tolnay out of the city. But they are caught and taken to Gestapo headquarters, where Tolnay hangs himself in his cell. Pagliero stands firm during his interrogation and Feist and captain Joop van Hulzen taunt Fabrizi when he is summoned to coax him into betraying his brothers in arms. When Fabrizi expresses his admiration for Pagliero's courage as he withstands hideous torture, Feist asks how he can be loyal to someone who despises his faith and vocation. But Fabrizi insists that good exists without belief and proclaims his certainty that Pagliero is close to God, as he dies without saying a word.

Michi is distraught after witnessing such suffering and is forced to look on, early the following morning, as Fabrizi is sentenced to death and led into the courtyard to face a firing squad. As Michi faints, the heartless Galletti takes back her coat and slinks away, without conscience. But some of Fabrizi's altar boys have heard about his detention and they spot him through the fence. They begin whistling to give him courage and the Italians in the execution party show their own defiance by deliberately missing their target. Disgusted by their timidity, the officer in charge draws his revolver and kills Fabrizi with a single shot.

Always one for a slick quip, Jean-Luc Godard once proclaimed that `all roads lead to Rome, Open City'. In many ways, he has a point, as the influence of the ultimate `rubble film' and Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) has been felt in every subsequent new wave and realist surge around the world. Seven decades on, some have complained that it is starting to look its age, while others recalls that contemporary left-wingers lamented the quasi-religious sentiments of the finale, which seemingly equated defiance and optimism with the Catholic Church and not the Communist Party.

What is not in doubt is the quality of the imagery that Ubaldo Arata achieved using rolls and scraps filched for Rossellini by Rod E. Geiger of the US Signal Corps. Eraldo Da Roma's editing is also precise and reinforces the sense of `being there that Rossellini' captured in compositions that were as ready to encompass landmarks like St Peter's as they were the rundown backstreets or the bewildered face of a child. There's also no escaping the fact, in spite of the committed performances, that pathos seeps through every scene from Magnani's demise onwards and that Renzo Rossellini's swelling score manipulates the audience's response to each new atrocity.

It is also instructive to learn that the picture was less readily accepted in Italy than Paisà (1946)., the second part of Rossellini's war trilogy, which was completed by Germany, Year Zero (1947). Written by six different writers, the episodes in the audaciously elliptical portmanteau followed the Allies from the 1943 Sicilian invasion to the Liberation. The action was pretty much improvised, yet Rossellini consistently linked his characters to their environment and managed to impart an individual imprint on vignettes designed to depict the war as a series of personal tragedies rather than an historico-military event. But the critics were less kind to its follow-up, which was denounced by some as a naive apologia for the nation that had presented Hitler with his unprecedented mandate. Young Edward Moeschke's murder of his ailing father and subsequent suicide undeniably border on melodrama. But the sequence in which the Führer's recorded voice echoes around the bombed-out Berlin ruins has retained its terrifying power perhaps better than Rome, Open City's more obvious heroics and its calculated attempt to unify a liberated, but deeply traumatised and divided people.

Although it was directed by a Canadian, scripted by an Anglo-Jamaican and contained a clutch of Poms in the cast, there is only one place that Wake in Fright (1971) could possibly have come from. Adapted by Evan Jones from a novel by Kenneth Cook, Ted Kotcheff's bristling Outback saga was hailed as a gem by Martin Scorsese after it screened in competition at Cannes. However, it didn't go down as well in Australia, even though it was subsequently claimed as one of the cornerstones of Ozploitation, and the original negative was about to be destroyed when its worth was recognised and it resurfaces here in a spanking new print prior to its release on DVD.

Frustrated at being shunted into the sticks to pay off a bond relating to his further education bills, teacher Gary Bond is looking forward to Christmas back in Sydney with girlfriend Nancy Knudsen. But, in order to catch a flight from the remote Tiboonda township, he has to stop off in the insular mining town of Bundanyabba. Hospitable cop Chips Rafferty convinces him there are worse places to spend a night and, after a beer or six, Bond begins to think he can pay off his debt after he goes on a winning streak playing the penny toss game, two-up, in The Yabba's only bar. However, Bond has one too many brews and, having lost his winnings, winds up accepting the hospitality of Al Thomas, only to raise the ire of Jack Thompson and Peter Whittle when he prefers the company of Thomas's daughter, Sylvia Kay, to the increasingly rowdy ockers.

Having thrown up while canoodling with Kay in the bush, Bond wakes in the rickety shack belonging to downgraded doctor Donald Pleasence, who gives him a pill to cure his hangover and persuades him to join Thompson and Whittle on a kangaroo hunt that drags on into the small hours and culminates in Bond clumsily stabbing a wounded joey to death. Following a brawl with Thompson and Whittle at a drinking shack, the quartet lose control and smash the place up. But, after Pleasence makes awkward advances in the night, Bond decides to say his goodbyes and treks across the desert in the hope of thumbing a lift. Eventually, he finds a trucker who accepts the rifle Bond was given by Thompson and Whittle in return for a ride to the city. But he ends up back in The Yabba and becomes so convinced he is trapped in his sweltering festive nightmare that he tries to shoot himself in the head.

Winding up where it started, in John Meillon's pokey watering hole (and with Bond now aware of the folly of clinging to a superiority complex in Hell), this terrifying dark night of the soul is unflinchingly photographed by Brian West to locate the characters in their spirit-crushing locale. Shot in the New South Wales outpost of Broken Hill and taking its title from the old maxim `may you dream of the devil and wake in fright', it reveals the depths of depravity masked by the most urbane exterior, But, while the film lambastes Aussie attitudes to machismo and the mythical relationship with the landscape, it also offers a sobering perspective on the kind of parochialism that had characterised countless Hollywood Westerns and betrays a grudging respect for the culture of mateship that is so ingrained that the bacchanale stops briefly each night for the lights in the pub to dim so the revellers can pay their respects to the fallen of two world wars.

The performances are exceptional, with Bond and Pleasence making the most curious pair of kindred spirits and their parting is every bit as touching as that of a cowboy hero and the drunken quack after a shootout to clean up the town. Aussie screen stalwart Chips Rafferty (in what would prove to be his last role) also excels, as he shows Bond around his hometown with a phlegmatic pride and an innate trust that is shared by his neighbours, even during the tensest moments of the two-up session when huge sums of money are being bandied around. Indeed, the only person not to accept Bond at face value is the affection-starved Sylvia Kay, whose welcome and attempted seduction are equally sullen and whose disgust that Bond is just like every other bloke is tinged with a sadness that few film-makers following in Kotcheff's wake have bothered to explore.

Musician Nick Cave considers this the finest feature ever made about Australia and its rediscovery is exceedingly fortunate. But one suspects its precise assessment of the national psyche will still seem pretty raw four decades on, as, while it eschews any negativity towards the indigenous population (with an old man on a train being the only Aborgine in the entire picture), its depiction of the average male as a drunken wastrel primarily concerned with the size of the head on his lager is hardly flattering. Indeed, this is as damning an indictment of a country and its mindset as La Règle du Jeu (1939), with the savagery of the kangaroo hunt (whose footage was gleaned from an actual cull) more matching that of the rabbit shoot in Jean Renoir's masterly dissection of a society dancing on the edge of a volcano.

Changing tack dramatically, documentarist Kirby Dick exposes the shocking extent of sexual abuse in the US military in The Invisible War. Stylistically conservative, but unflinchingly provocative and hard-hitting, this deeply disturbing study lost out at last year's Academy Awards to Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man, a profile of musician Sixto Rodriguez that asked far fewer hard questions than the other nominees, Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi's 5 Broken Cameras, Dror Moreh's The Gatekeepers and David France's How to Survive a Plague. Interestingly, the least contentious picture among the 2014 nominees -  Morgan Neville's tribute to America's unsung backing vocalists, 20 Feet From Stardom - triumphed this year over a much weaker field of Jehane Noujaim's The Square, Zachary Heinzerling's Cutie and the Boxer, Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing and Richard Rowley's Dirty Wars.

Like the last mentioned, The Invisible War seeks to alert the American public to the crimes being committed and concealed under its name. Working once more with producer Amy Ziering, Kirby Dick has an enormous amount of testimony at his disposal and it is very much to his credit that he tries to do justice to each of the women courageous enough to come forward and face his camera. However, this has resulted in an inordinate amount of talking-head footage and the film-makers might have been advised to concentrate on four or five cases and let captions and statistics convey the enormity of the problem. Nevertheless, the sensitive editing of Doug Blush and Derek Boonstra ensures that this remains an affectingly human story rather than a dry, but necessary indictment of institutional hypocrisy, indifference and complicity.

Following a montage of clips taken from recruiting adverts that encourage women to do their bit for their country, Dick introduces viewers to six volunteers who were raped by their brothers in arms. Ariana Klay and Elle Helmer were lieutenants in the Marine Corps at the time of their assaults, while Trina McDonald and Hannah Sewell were in the US Navy, Jessica Hinves was in the US Air Force and Kori Cioca was serving with the Coast Guard. Each woman was keen to succeed in her chosen career and graduated from boot camp with glowing reports. But no one warned them during basic training that they would be considered fair game for any male colleague who decided to impose himself upon her. Moreover, they had no idea that the zero tolerance boast made by the services following some high-profile scandals was entirely empty and that the federal court system would do little to protect them from what it deemed an occupational hazard of being a woman in uniform.

Now living in Ohio with her ex-Coast Guard husband Rob McDonald, Kori Cioca relives how her supervisor started preying upon her soon after she was posted. She holds back the tears as she recalls how he lured her into his quarters to collect a key and broke her jaw with a ferocious swipe to prevent her from resisting his advances. Despite x-ray evidence showing the damage caused to the discs in her face, the Veterans Association has stalled over her claim for compensation and her experience is shared by 20% of all retired female service personnel. Among those interviewed here are Marines Robin Khale and Regina Vasquez, Army regulars Ayana Defour, Christina Jones, Lee Le Teff, Katie Webber, Teah Bedney and Kristen Miller, airmen Robin Lynne Lafayette, Debra Dickerson and Jessica Brakey, sailor Tia Christopher and Valine Demos from the US Army Medical Corps.

Amy Herdy, the author of Betrayal in the Ranks, estimates that some 500,000 women have been raped in recent times, while Anu Bhagwati, the director of the Service Women's Action Network, reveals that 80% of them don't report the incidents for fear of reprisals and being disbelieved  Several years later, Cioca is still on vast quantities of medication for the pain in her jaw that prevents her from joining McDonald and daughter Shea outdoors in the cold, as her face seizes up. The impact upon loved ones is also clear in the case of Sergeant Jerry Sewell, who is still on active duty and yet cannot forgive himself for the fact that his daughter lost her virginity during an assault whose brutality caused her hips to rotate.

Astonishingly, Rear Admiral Anthony Kurta, who is Director of Military Personnel Plans and Policy in the US Navy, avers that all reports are fully investigated by sensitive and well-trained officers. But his smug assurances are contradicted by Greg Rinckley (Army JAG Corps), Stace Nelson (Naval Criminal Investigative Service), Myla Haider (Army Criminal Investigation Division) and Miette Wells (USAF Security Police), who variously state that the majority of cases are dismissed on report and that those that are pursued are invariably handled by men who intimidate and belittle the victims and are often friends with the accused - or are the perpetrators themselves.

Sewell explains how her case was abandoned because the physical and photographic evidence had gone missing. But, when she went to NCIS headquarters in Washington, DC, she found this to be a fabrication, but was unable to have the matter reassessed. Attorney Susan Burke states that the services consider sexual assault an inconvenience and soldiers Theresa Verderber-Phillips, Tandy Fink and Andrea Werner, sailor Allison Gill and Marine Rebecca Catagnus all testify to being blamed for their own attacks and then being victimised for daring to challenge the integrity of a colleague. Jones and Dickerson refer to retaliatory acts, while Cioca shows the camera the crucifix and the bush knife she takes with her everywhere to feel safe. Nothing can drive away the nightmares, however, and she is shown playing with Shea in the darkened garden because she is happier outside at night than during the day.

The healing process has also been tough for Trina McDonald, who had her drinks spiked before she was raped while serving on Adak Island in Alaska. She is now married to Amy Rosaaen-McDonald and lives in Puget Sound, Washington with two of her partner's sons, Tim and Mitch, who fret about her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the fact that she is forever uneasy in the most everyday situations.

Russell Strand, the head of the Family Advocacy Law Enforcement Training Division within the US Army says that rapists are hunters who study their prey and Army psychiatrist Loree Sutton and Helen Benedict, the author of The Lonely Soldier, agree that the forces hone the characteristic that make sex offenders so dangerous. Sutton reveals that 15% of male recruits have attempted or committed before joining up and they are aware that the code of brotherhood will usually mean that their buddies and superiors will protect them if accused. By contrast, 40% of homeless veterans were raped during their stint.

McDonald admits to having sold drugs to survive after she returned to civvy street. But Dick is keen to point out that it is not only women who are targeted and Sutton explains that 1% of males in the military (amounting to 20,000) are raped each year. However, as Marines Jeremiah Arbogast and Armando Javier and seaman Brian Lewis reveal, few report their assaults for fear of diminishing the aura of masculinity that is crucial to success in uniform. Ex-soldier Michael Matthews admits that he let his PTSD ruin two marriages before he finally told wife Geri Lynn that he had been held down by two comrades in the canteen and sodomised by a third. Susan Avila-Smith, the founder of VetWOW, states that such assailants are not gay, but they do know how to exploit the rampant homophobia within the forces to ensure that their crimes go undetected.

Retired Brigadier General Wilma L. Vaught is dismayed that lessons do not seem to have been learned from previous scandals, such as the 1991 Tailhook incident, when Paula Coughlin was forced to run the gauntlet through 200 naval colleagues in a narrow corridor at a convention hotel. Despite making the national news and 1500 interviews being conducted, a wall of silence ensured that charges were never pressed. Similarly, 30 women were assaulted at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1996 and soldier Claudia Kennedy recalls that names of the victims were passed between pals so that they knew who would be too scared to resist. Yet, even though a Congressional hearing took the top brass to task in 2003 after 142 reports were filed in a decade at the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, nothing was done to improve the process by which complaints were made and acted upon.

Indeed, as Donna McAleer (the author of Porcelain on Steel) asserts, just yards away from the building in which CIA director Leon Panetta promised to clamp down on offenders, women were being brutalised at the prestigious Marine Barracks that provides troops for White House ceremonials, including the famous Silent Drill parade. Among them were Ariana Klay, who was stationed there after distinguished service in Iraq, Elle Helmer and an anonymous woman who was accused on arrival of sleeping her way to such an important posting. All agree that the atmosphere at the barracks was hostile and not helped by a drinking culture that meant women were forced to go on bar crawls with fellow Marines who almost felt it was their right to violate them. Helmer was raped by her company commander. Yet, the NCIS terminated its inquiry after three days and investigated her for public intoxication and conduct unbecoming. The nameless victim declares that she was charged with adultery after her assault, even though the man who `bagged' her was the one who was married.

Klay was informed that she would be killed and dumped if she reported her rape after a drinking binge in 2010 and her husband, Brian, weeps on camera as he reveals that she has since tried to commit suicide because she was disciplined for wearing shorts and make-up while the culprit got away scot free. Susan Burke says that rapists use the old boy network to cover their backs and most victims are betrayed by the chain of command. Kurta insists that all hearings are fair. But, once again, his claim is undermined by Nelson and Rinckey, who question the legal qualifications of those sitting on boards of inquiry, while retired general Dennis Laich states that commanders often order proceedings halted because they reflect badly on them.

Burke demonstrates how only 175 men were charged in one year, despite 3200 reports being filed. But it is easy to see why so little is done when the work of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office comes under scrutiny, as former director Kaye Whitley seems to no grasp of her brief whatsoever when she comes under the gentlest quizzing on camera. She insists that SAPRO has had great results in getting males aged 18-25 to respect their female colleagues, yet the clips from the training videos that Dick selects seem to put the onus on women going everywhere in pairs rather than persuading the men to behave themselves. One poster even advises them to wait until a woman is sober before asking her for sex. When pressed about the abnormal levels of rapists applying for the services and the numbers of serial rapists in uniform, Whitley shrugs that such information falls outside her area of expertise. But rather than removing her from office, the Department of Defence protected Whitley and, in July 2008, even sent lawyer Martin Dominguez to explain why she had defied a subpoena to appear before a Congressional committee.

Back in Ohio, Cioca and McDonald admit to having intimacy issues and she cries at the end of an argument because she fears he will abandon her. Herdy claims that the trauma suffered from military rape is often much worse than in civilian cases, as the victims had looked upon the perpetrators as brothers and Sutton concurs that it often feels like incest. Cioca goes for a walk in the snow and reads the suicide letter she had prepared for her mother and explains that she only desisted when she realised she was pregnant. Trina McDonald reveals she swallowed a bottle of pills, while Sewell contemplated hanging herself from a flagpole and Matthews was only saved from asphyxiating himself in his garage by the family dog.

The growing incidence of unpunished assaults eventually prompted Burke to explore ways of challenging the Feres Doctrine, which states that no one can sue for any misfortune that befalls them while serving in the military. Seventeen men and women come forward to support her cause and they bring a suit against Republican defence secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates for depriving rape victims of due process and their rights under the First Amendment. Vasquez, Haider and Cioca are joined in the campaign by ex-Marine Sarah Albertson, who was forced to go on a hike with her attacker shortly after the ordeal. Bhagwati is enlisted to be their spokesperson and Haider (who was raped by a senior CID agent) comes to the fore when a small group meets the press and politicians from across the aisle, including Chellie Pingree, Louise Slaughter, Mike Turner, Loretta Sanchez, Jackie Speier, Ted Poe and Niki Tsongas and Susan Davis, who step up to the plate to help publicise the initiative.

Miette Wells concedes that the majority of men in the forces are honourable. But Klay admits that she could no longer recommend the military as a career for a young woman and Cioca even tries to dissuade a waitress from joining up. Shortly afterwards, she learns that the VA has rejected her claim for compensation because she quit the Coast Guard two months inside the entitlement period. When Dick and Ziering approach Whitley again, she seems no better informed about SAPRO's performance and it is disheartening to hear her successor, Major General Mary Kay Hertog, lauding her in August 2011 for doing such a fine job and promising to uphold her high standards.

Kurta also maintains the pretence that all is well, even though the Department of Defence Inspector General has not investigated a single rape case because it purportedly has better things to do. He insists that commanders are dedicated to helping the women in their units and would never stoop to letting their relationship with an accused man sway their judgement. But 33% of victims decide against reporting an assault because their superior is friendly with the rapist. Hertog reaffirms that there can never be a conflict of interests, even though 25% of women keep silent because the person to whom they are supposed to report is actually the perpetrator. She protests that anyone who feels slighted can always take it up with their congressional representative, but Burke dismisses such a suggestion as ludicrous and Laich notes that the majority of America's NATO allies have stopped allowing commanders to determine the prosecution of sexual assault cases.

Hivnes laments that the crime that ruined her life will have had no effect on her abuser, while Cioca hopes that her rapist dies horribly. Trina McDonald is more rational and hopes that the men who attacked her see this film and have to confront their guilt. But Benedict states that rape is often more about power and violence than lust and such obsessive tendencies mean that culprits invariably re-offend. Haider agrees in revealing that less than 5% are successfully prosecuted and placed on the sex offenders register, while Nelson explains that the majority of cases are bargained down from a felony and that it is up to the courts to take a stand. But, in December 2011, the judiciary rejects the Feres suit and includes in its findings the staggering statement that women in the military will simply have to get used to the fact that some of them will be raped.

As some of the interviewees are shown visiting a military museum, Laich avers that this disgraceful state of affairs prevents the US military from being great, while Sutton insists it is the nation's duty to pass reforms. But, even though an appeal has been lodged, the revelation that 26,000 men and women in uniform were raped in 2012 (an increase of 35% on the previous year) seems to suggest it is unlikely that anything will change anytime soon.

After such a barrage, it should come as no surprise to learn that a woman in the US forces is less likely to be killed in action than sexually assaulted by a man she knows. But, while the facts assembled here can only fuel outrage, their presentation is not always particularly viewer-friendly. Names and titles flash up on the screen at a bewildering rate and it isn't always clear what qualifies a speaker to make their assertion. Some of the first-hand testimony might also have been accompanied by illustrative imagery rather than blandly lit close-ups. But content always matters more than style in advocacy actualities and Dick and Ziering are not only to be applauded for the wealth of information they have amassed, but also for the ease with which they lured senior officials into making themselves look arrogant, ignorant and detestably complacent.