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Auction History Result Lot #: #133 OPEN CITY Italian 1sheet 46 Rossellini  Date Sold 12/16/2003Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price. Appears in Vintage Hollywood Posters 6 CATALOG SOLD OUT The image at right appears in the auction catalog we published as shown above and was sold long ago and we do NOT have it available for purchase. Original Vintage Theatrical Linenbacked Folded Italian Movie Poster (measures 27 1/2" x 39") (Learn More) Roma, Citta Aperta (released in the U.S. in 1946 as "Open City" and as "Rome, Open City"), the classic 1945 Roberto Rossellini Italian World War II (WWII) anti-war political melodrama (written by Federico Fellini; filmed in Rome directly after the end of World War II; about the Italian Resistance fighters who fought the Nazis) starring Anna Magnani, Aldo Fabrizi, Nando Bruno, Harry Feist, and Maria Michi NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography. If you know who did the art (if any), please let us know. Condition: good. The poster is linenbacked; the entire poster has darkened, typical of Italian posters of this time. At some point (almost certainly right when the film came out), someone cut out a roughly oval-shaped portion of the silhouette of the soldier. I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANOTHER IMAGE OF THIS POSTER ANYWHERE, BUT IT SEEMS A VIRTUAL CERTAINTY THAT THE CUT OUT AREA WAS A NAZI SWASTIKA, as the soldier is a Nazi soldier. I can well imagine that people in Italy in 1945 were offended by the image of the swastika, and that the poster could not be publicly displayed in 1945 with it! The area is directly to the right of the gun barrel and it is roughly 4" x 6" at its longest. There were also pinholes around the edges of the poster, creases and small tears along some foldlines, tiny paper loss at the top crossfold, and tears and smudges in the upper part of the man at left's shirt extending into the top of the woman's hair. The person who restored the poster did a pretty good job of replacing the missing oval piece, and it is not immediately obvious that there was replaced paper (it looks like the poster could have had tears in that area). The other defects were moderately well restored. If I owned the poster, I would attempt to locate another image of it (I don't know of any other examples, and if there are any, they probably are in museums!) and then I would make a decision about whether to attempt to restore the censored swastika. Re-restored or not, I think this is a wonderful poster, that is a major part of cinema history! Learn More about condition grades 
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