I decided for this year's DVD Talk Criterion Challenge that I wanted to watch all of one of the celebrity Top 10 lists on their site. After careful consideration, I settled on Martin Scorsese's Top 10. First up: Paisan.

Melodrama works best in certain milieus; silents, animation, and short form. Though this is a feature-length film, because it's comprised of six discontinuous "episodes", the brevity allows for the shorthand of character development and thematic grandeur. Episode III, in Rome, is the most melodramatic, focusing on the ill-fated lovers Fred and Franchesca.

That story is as captivating as it is because of where it takes place within the film. On one level, Paisan is a travelogue. By the time we've followed the Allies to Rome, we're ready for a reprieve from the danger of the front lines and the harshness facing orphans. A romance that doesn't come together as it should feels almost self-indulgent surrounded by the other episodes, but it works because this is the eye of the storm.

More than that, though, as scholar Adriano Aprà points out in his video interview, Paisan is also about the forged-in-fire relationship between Americans and Italians. Each episode brings characters from the two countries closer to one another. Communication improves, but so do personal relationships. By the time the Allied march up The Boot reached Rome - where our protagonists have been for six months - the ice had been thoroughly broken. It's natural that romances and sexual dalliances should bloom under the umbrella of stability.

Of course, what grounds all this melodrama is the stark reality of the setting. Rossellini shot Paisan in the immediate aftermath of World War II, capturing on film the ruins and rubble left by the military campaigns recreated in its narratives. Few of the people we see on screen are actors; the vast majority are the men, women, and children trying to reconstruct their lives, their cities, and their world.

Married to the neo-realism construction is the diversity of the film's protagonists and themes. Each episode presents us with a different cross-section of Italian societies; mistrusting Sicilian civilians, orphans fending for themselves, girls and women compelled into prostitution, and even the least expected: Episode V's Franciscan monks, their initial hospitality toward three American chaplains soured when it is revealed that only one of the trio is Catholic. These juxtapositions between social classes, ages, genders, vocations all imbue the film with a "street level" perspective that feels, by its bittersweet conclusion, to have surveyed the entirety of Italy during the time of the Allies's liberation.

One more element that must be recognized for its impact on the film is the sound. As was standard for Italian productions, everyone looped their dialog (or had it looped by voice stand-ins in some cases) after filming. In a few shots the syncing is obviously off, but for the most part it's surprisingly convincing. And yet, what stands out is how heightened the blend of voices, sound effects, and music complete the audio/visual experience of the film.

In the opening scene, for instance, as we watch a small group of American soldiers approach an abandoned castle that does, in fact, evoke the one in Frankenstein (I had that thought just before the resemblance is remarked upon by one of the characters, and at that moment I knew that Paisan and I were going to be buddies). We hear bombs and artillery fire exchanged somewhere else; footsteps going up and down stone stairs sometimes drowning out those bombardments, reminding us that whatever may be going on elsewhere, our concern is more immediate. There is more danger in that narrow staircase than there is wherever those shells are laying waste to God knows what.

It's a simple thing, really, to make one noise louder than another. And yet, so mindful of the relationships between characters, setting, and also between audience and film, each sound we hear is meticulously placed to call our attention to - or away from - wherever Rossellini wants it to go. Bear in mind, this is a film whose original audio mix was constructed long before Dolby 7.1 channel surround sound systems. This is easily one of the most ear-catching sound mixes I've ever heard from a film, and it disappointed me to find almost no mention of it whatsoever in either the aforementioned video interview with Adriano Aprà, a visual essay called Into the Future about Rossellini's "War Trilogy" by Tag Gallagher, or in Colin MacCabe's penned essay, Paisan: More Real Than Real.

[As I streamed the film from HuluPlus, these were the only supplements from the DVD release made accessible to me. I can therefore not comment on whether the sound mix is discussed elsewhere on the Criterion Collection DVD release.]

All in all, a terrific kickoff to this year's Criterion Challenge!

Paisan entered my Flickchart at #52/1649