With little funding and resources, Rossellini relied on poor film stock and a damaged Cinecittà .
Rome, Open City was written in a week in Fellini's kitchen This is called neorealist cinema, a type of filmmaking in which the people and places purposefully lack the beauty and sheen of the films produced in Hollywood. Both the director, the writers, and most members of the cast had experienced the occupation firsthand, and the director hoped that their shared experience would register on film. Rossellini used many untrained locals to complete the film's cast, asking them to improvise off the script. Written in a week in Fellini's kitchen, surrounded by the fallout of the warfare its creators wanted to share with the world, the plot is urgent as it is passionate. The film is a hodgepodge of action, melodramatic romance, historical documentation and philosophical pondering. The film is a portrait of the Italian Resistance Forces Originally conceived as two documentaries set against the Nazi occupation of Rome, the story, conceived by Sergio Amidei and Alberto Consiglio, and adapted into a screenplay with the help of Federico Fellini, is a portrait of the Italian Resistance Forces' efforts to reclaim their country. The project would become one of the best and most important films about World War 2.
In August 1944, two months after the Allied powers pushed the Nazis out of Rome, filmmaker Roberto Rossellini began work on Rome, Open City.