It’s almost impossible to underestimate the importance of these movies, both for the impact that their startling realism had on the audiences and filmmakers of the time and for the influence they continue to exert on directors.Īndrea Arnold’s current “Fish Tank” is only the latest example of work that continues to draw on Rossellini’s open, observational approach, which mixed location filming with studio sets, professional actors with amateurs asked to play variations on themselves, and screenplays that were not set in stone, Hollywood style, but roughed out in advance and improvised on the spot. IN the immediate aftermath of World War II, Roberto Rossellini made three films that helped to lay the foundations of modern cinema: “Rome Open City” (1945), “Paisan” (1946) and “Germany Year Zero” (1948).