General Della Rovere: Roberto Rossellini’s superb wartime drama follows an Italian gentleman who is both a swindler and an inveterate gambler; at first, he sells false hope to families of men and women captured by the Nazi forces. Later, arrested, he is forced to pretend to be someone else to uncover information about the partigiani. Vittorio De Sica plays the protagonist, a charming and smooth anti-hero, quick on his feet, but surprisingly not without a moral core. Hannes Messemer plays the SS Colonel who controls him in a performance that projects intelligence without brutality. Cinematographer Carlo Carlini captures the film, which sports competent production design by Piero Zuffi, classically and efficiently. Editor Cesare Cavagna mixes in some documentary footage to anchor the film further in reality, and the pace is quite good. This film is a thematically rich, powerful experience.