The Four Days of Naples (1962) User Reviews

A beautiful work of art, life and humanity

[MITCH! · 9/10 · 9 February 2000]

This film was brought to my attention by a friend who suggested that, since I enjoyed Roberto Rosselini's Open City, I would enjoy this film, which he considered to be even better than Rosselini's. I was impressed, to say the least, and inclined to agree. The story seemed infinitely more real and affecting.

Small stories of individual lives and relationships splintered apart by the actions of Germany in Naples after the Allies have declared victory in Europe in WWII isn't a subject many people will jump at the chance to see, but they should think again. We may never have the experience of being under occupation here in America, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate and feel the bravery of a city that fights back against the tyranny of the weary German army. And if you have an aversion to war films, subtitled ones in particular, don't worry; the performances from the actors involved are strong enough to feed the emotions onto the screen without need of a translator.

This is a gem not many people know about. It's a shame. This is a film that needs a revolution in the minds of cineastes everywhere.

Incredibly realistic

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 29 March 2011]

"The Four Days of Naples" is an interesting film in that although it was made in 1962, it looks like it was made just after the war. That's because many buildings show bomb damage. Could they have sat that way since the war or did they blow up a few buildings to add to the realism? I don't know, but the film sure got the look right.

The film is set in 1943. The Allies have invaded Sicily and are on the move northward. In nearby Naples, word arrives that the Italian army has surrendered--and the residents are thrilled as it looks like the war is over for them. However, the Germans go immediately from allies to enslavers and they begin committing atrocities on the Italians. Soon, the Neopolitans realize that unless they fight back, they will die--thus begins four days of bloody fighting between mostly civilians and the German army throughout the streets of the town.

Because this was a battle to save he city, it's made up of lots and lots of separate vignettes all strung together. Some are very compelling--such as the boys of the reform school leaving to join in the fight--even though many look to be only about 10 or even younger. Others are more bizarre as there are TONS of women running about screaming and getting in the way of the fighting. About the only thing that did not ring true in these stories was when they showed a couple people pulling the pins out of grenades with their teeth---something that only occurs in movies and never in real life (you'd lose your teeth doing this).

This film works very well. Of course, much of this is because it was well-directed, but I also loved the neo-realistic style (though most films in this style were made a decade or more earlier)--with non-actors playing the parts of the citizens. While the film could have been like an American epic (such as "The Longest Day")--star-studded throughout, instead the real folks made it all come alive--like we are really watching the battles unfold. Realism--realistic looking deaths, heroism, occasional cowardice--realism from start to finish.

By the way, although it's a very good film, I would really love to see it re-captioned. That's because like many films captioned many years ago, the people doing this didn't feel a need to caption everything the people said or caption it word for word. I dislike this intensely--as would most film purists. I've seen much worse captioning--but also much, much better.

By the way, you can't blame the film makers, but the tanks used in the film were modern tanks like American-built Walker Bulldogs--not vintage German tanks. There just aren't that many Panzer tanks left and they certainly weren't going to risk the few possibly still available making a film.

Cream of the Crop

[SgtSlaughter · 10/10 · 5 April 2005]

A cast of virtual then-unknowns re-enacts the German takeover of Naples following the Italian Army's surrender to the Allies, and the peasant uprising which ensued. "The Four Days of Naples" was released in 1962 and is shown occasionally on Turner Classic Movies, in Italian with English subtitles.

What's most interesting about this film is that director Loy follows many characters and subplots, and often fails to resolve them because they become lost in the chaos of the house-to-house battle within the city. Frank Wolff ("Desert Assault") is Salvatore, who loves Maria (Lea Massari) even though she has married a rich man. The two wind up fighting along side one another; Gian Maria Volonte is the Captain who helps organize a partisan resistance; Aldo Giuffre (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) is one member of an Italian artillery unit which becomes embroiled in the siege; and Enzo Turco ("Anzio") is a Black-shirt who is taken prisoner despite his Fascist convictions. Every member of the ensemble cast is passionate and utterly convincing. Many were virtually unknown at the time of production, and became big stars in Italy within the next few years.

Director Loy shoots his film with a documentary style. Some shots are well-crafted, though, and give the audience a new perspective on the action. One long pan from a rooftop from which partisans are firing on the Germans shows how the men move from street to street without any cutting at all. The black-and-white cinematography is utterly fantastic. Close-ups of faces deliver all of the drama that dialog simply cannot convey.

The film brings the viewer inside what occupation and resistance do the civilian population of a city. At one point, the Germans drive the citizens out of one quarter so that they can occupy it, forcing people to move in with strangers on the other side of the city. Later, they attempt to conscript Italian men into their labor force, which is what sparks the uprising. The camera follows us into individual homes and family situations, which are ripped apart by the affects of war. He then takes us to massive crowds as they riot in the streets. The scope of battle is excellently captured, as are the cramped alleys and rooms from which the citizens must fight.

There a number of standout vignettes: the Neapolitans throwing furniture from their windows atop the heads of Nazi soldiers in a narrow alleyway; one sequence in which a number of teens escape a reform school to join the fight; a prisoner-negotiation scene in which things go unexpectedly and several Italian civilians are caught in a crossfire; the scene in which the Italian men are taken in trucks to be conscripted, only to have their wives overwhelm the German guards. All of these scenes convey a spirit of freedom, aided by Carlo Rustichelli's rousing score.

"The Four Days of Naples" is a well-crafted drama, intended to be taken seriously, unlike many Italian war films which would follow a few years later. This is an inspiring drama of courage and determination, definitely a must-see for any fan of war films or the Italian cinema.

A wonderful WWII film

[babuon · 10/10 · 2 August 2009]

I saw this film when it first came out and it gripped me completely. I was quite young and not "into" foreign films, but this film caught me up. It showed a resistance that was unique -- not planned, not secret, but almost spontaneous. It mixes the buffoonery of some of the characters, the cowardice of a few and the bravery of the people of Naples. Some moments bring tears, others laughter. How the people come together to fight the Nazis who were still brutally exerting their power even as the allied forces marched north in Italy is a powerful statement of the will of ordinary Italian citizens.

For years I've tried to buy it, Le Quattro Giornate di Napoli, with no success. Then this year,TCM showed a very clean copy of it. But still I can't find a place to buy it. It is so worth having --

If anyone knows where I can buy it, I would be grateful.

Excellent docu-drama on civilians resisting wartime recruitment.

[Jim Bob-3 · 23 January 2001]

This documentary-style drama shows us the determination of a civilian population to end wartime conscription by a former ally. The Nazi army tries by terror to force the Italian people to join them as they struggle on against the advance of the Allied forces in WWII Italy. Citizens decide against fighting the war any longer, and rally themselves to drive out the German soldiers from their city and their lives in only four days.

I watched this film in basic training camp in 1963. I did not know at the time if I was being ordered to Southeast Asia to participate in the war there or not. I had had a vision on the firing range that an active combat role in Viet Nam would be more terrible than I could ultimately live with in later years. Fortunately, I was sent to the staging area on Okinawa, and not to Viet Nam. I saw the film again when I reached Okinawa, and became aware of the war a thousand miles away.

The film crystalized for me that mankind could choose not to fight wars to settle disputes between countries, and that passionate citizens could resist the most disciplined of armies. The Neopolitan people's example to me from twenty years before, as I stood at the brink of the Southeast Asian war, spoke deeply to me of what humanity must strive to achieve through the advancement of its behavior and character.

I long to see the film again, or to read the source book, as world events swirl around us, echoing themes in the Four Days of Naples.

Italian Morale Booster, 2nd half Pretty Good

[verbusen · 6/10 · 4 March 2009]

If you can get through the first half of this or speed it up to that point, you'll see a decent war movie. The whining can grate on you after awhile and that was watching it even in segments! Both sides are pretty pathetic in this one, I would imagine other ethnic races such as the Greeks and Slavs would have little sympathy for a population that picked its sides based on whichever gave it the most comfortable lot in life. Granted, I guess most populations stray that way towards comfort, but the Italians in WW2 seemed to be the masters at it. You wonder what their true motivations are, fighting against tyranny or Allied dollars, I guess both but it sure took them long enough to get to that point! I kind of think they were pretty happy under the Nazi thumb until the Allies were knocking at the doorstep, then they were heroes. Made less than 20 years after WW2, the Italians, a fiercely nationalistic nation (like 96% of the world) needed some flag waving and some story to tell that reflected something good on their side from WW2 and this is an example of that. Similar to "Is Paris Burning" if you want to see more movies in this vein. 6 of 10, a feel good movie for an Italian nation needing a boost in it's national pride. I prefer the 70's movie "Seven Beauties" for another side of the Italian role in the war.

Wonderful! Like no other film I've seen!

[gort-8 · 10/10 · 26 February 2009]

Can you find the main character? I can't.

Like many of you, I love movies. In every film that I've seen; sound and silent, short and feature length, narrative and documentary, a main character emerges. Sometimes, like in Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove, more than one emerges as part of a shifting focus, usually against the backdrop of a grand narrative. I've never seen a film, with the possible exception of very early cinema and raw news footage, where there is not even a pretense at a central character.

Instead, the city of Naples itself is the main character. With no disrespect meant to the men and women of Naples who faced the German Army, it's as though the city itself becomes a dog shaking off its deadly fleas.

Mall Megaplexes are jammed with the same few films, with different casts and titles perhaps, but stories told with a very limited scope. I encourage you to sample what great cinema looks like when told from a completely unique viewpoint.

Excellent film well worth seeing

[sissoed · 10/10 · 5 March 2003]

I just saw this 1962 film on Turner Classic Movies and promptly tracked down and ordered a VHS of it. A very realistic film with many characters whose stories start and in most cases are left unresolved in the midst of the fighting. The screenplay was original for the screen, not based on any book, and received a 1963 Oscar nomination in the original screenplay category. There is a 1979 book with the same title, also telling of the uprising, that is NOT the source of this film. According to summaries, the book says that the Naples "street boys" instigated and led the rebellion. Not in this film, however, which focuses on adults and has many wrenching scenes of mothers and children, husbands and wives torn apart. The ensemble cast is passionate and convincing. Unlike the other commenter who said the film is an argument against war, this is really an argument for standing up and fighting against those who would treat you as slaves (which the NAZIs did and which led to the uprising). Great film!

A City's Most Heroic Hour

[Eumenides_0 · 8/10 · 17 November 2010]

The Four Days of Naples were four days of intense fighting between the Neapolitan population and the German occupying forces, four days when Naples became a urban battlefield and men, women and children, scrounging whatever weapons they could, engaged in guerrilla warfare against better trained and equipped German soldiers and forced them out of the city.

Nanni Loy's film, which takes its title after the name of this popular uprising, is a patriotic movie, dedicated to the people of Naples. It's cinema of heroism, of selfless heroes, of good versus evil. This probably didn't sound so ridiculous fifty years ago and we should forgive the movie for not having aged adequately to suit our modern cynicism.

1943. Naples endures daily bombings. The Allied Forces are approaching. As the war reaches its end for Italy, German forces occupy Naples, disarm the population and round them up in security zones. Escape is impossible. Disobedience is punished with death.

The movie begins with celebrating, with a religious procession. Shortly after news announce the end of the war. The initial euphoria of freedom only lasts until the Germans kill an innocent sailor returning from the war as a warning against not collaborating. The Neapolitans endure many humiliations, but the last straw comes when the Germans start conscripting men to send to Germany for forced labour.

The uprising is a spontaneous happening that deflagrates unconnectedly in several parts of the city at the same time. Some men attempt to rescue hostages held captive at a stadium. Somewhere else hidden Italian soldiers organise and unearth guns they hid before the Germans' arrival. In the narrow streets German troops are ambushed by families dropping furniture on them and crashing ruined walls on them. Children from correction houses form their own militias. Soon everyone is involved in the war effort.

The plot digresses from situation to situation, as unpredictable as a butterfly's flight pattern. There are no stars here because the whole population of Naples is the star. That doesn't mean there aren't a few recognisable faces for fans of Italian cinema, but no one takes centre stage. Loy's camera opts instead to give a panoramic view of the city.

The movie was shot mostly in Naples. Almost twenty years after the events depicted in the movie, the city still displayed many derelict buildings and looked like the site of a recent battle. Loy makes a splendid use of this landscape of debris, especially when he films deserted narrow streets and wide piazzas. This stillness before the fighting sometimes is more suffocating than the action. The movie hinges a lot on suspense, we keep waiting for the outbreak and Loy sadistically forces us to wait and wait. When the uprising starts, we're like Naples' population, unable to hold any longer.

The movie is violent, showing not just violence aimed at the body but one that assaults our and the characters' feelings and values. Loy shows intense scenes of fighting, but it's the quiet moments that reveal the brutality of war: when a mother gives her last piece of food to her child; when people search for their loved ones amongst dead bodies; when families are torn apart. The movie works so well because it shows why war is both physically and psychologically repulsive.

We've all seen war movies. But for me the best aren't the ones that have the best sound editing or the most convincing action scenes. That's just technical improvement. I think the best war movies are the ones that, paradoxically, show eternal human values. The best, like Platoon, Merry Christmas, Breaker Morant, or The Four Days of Naples engage us with ideas about human dignity, friendship, freedom, and altruism. For that reason The Four Days of Naples is a timeless masterpiece of cinema.

A masterpiece, lost to the celebrity of Fellini's 8 1/2.

[Irie212 · 10/10 · 29 July 2009]

Masterpieces are rare, but Italy produced two in 1963. 8 1/2 belongs on any serious list of great films. So does Nanni Loy's Four Days of Naples. It is flawless. Both were forwarded for awards; 8 1/2 won most; both deserved every honor for which they were nominated.

Loy's passion is obvious throughout. His is an unsentimental look at one city's famous guerrilla resistance against the Nazis. Although it was filmed on location in Naples (with some footage shot in Salerno) more than 15 years after the war ended, the battle-scars are still evident on this glorious, impoverished city's walls.

The movie builds power in many ways-- every way, really, including using Neapolitans rather than professional actors for many roles-- but most significantly I think in the camera-work and editing, which together create a rhythm alternating between intimacy with individuals, and wider takes on armed confrontations and full battle scenes. One unforgettable scene combines them, when young men carry the bodies of slain fighters through the streets, inciting their fellow citizens to join the epic battle to liberate the city from Nazi occupation.

It is rarely shown; as of this writing it's not on DVD. All I can say is, watch for it.

The people of a city and his fight against the tyranny

[paulo BH · 9/10 · 10 October 1999]

This good film tell a historical fact: the resistance of the people common of Naples against the Nazi, that they occupied the city in 1943, after the fall of Mussolini. Using only light weapons left by the Italian soldiers, they look for hopelessly to maintain the freedom, once the American soldiers are approximating if. For four days, the heroic resistance of popular gets to maintain the military situation in an impasse... Film of beautiful and touching images, as the father taking the dead combatant son in the arms to be veiled home; the people playing domestic objects of the windows on the Germans or the boys of the reformatory, rebelling and fleeing for they unite to the resistance. Unforgettable!!

Thank you Turner Classic Movies

[emuir-1 · 10/10 · 8 March 2003]

I am grateful to Turner Classic Movies for giving me the chance to see this superb film. I can only count the days until they repeat "My Voyage to Italy" by Martin Scorcese. This is the kind of film which puts all those hokey American and British war films to shame, and shows how it should be done.

Touching, historical masterpiece

[DigIt · 29 September 2013]

Every time I watch this movie I'm deeply moved by the many true to life characters you see depicted on the backdrop scenario of the struggle Napoli's citizens suffered to get rid of the Nazis' invasion and occupation.

Many of the characters are not fictitious: the child Gennaro Capuozzo was awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valor.

The cast is exceptional with many great actors and the minor ones act in a perfect way too. Even with the technical limitations of this movie, I find it engrossing and very close to the world famous Italian neorealism masterpieces such as Paisà and Roma Città Aperta.

I highly recommend it.

always remember those who stood up to tyranny

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 30 July 2018]

"Le quattro giornate de Napoli" ("The Four Days of Naples" in English) is about a lesser known event from WWII: the German army's march into Naples and the townspeople's resistance to them. Probably the most effective scene is while the Nazis are marching through an alley, and the Neapolitans start throwing things out of windows in the hope of stopping the goose-steppers. Outgunned though they were, the townspeople had already experienced fascism, and were thus determined not to let their city fall to Nazi Germany. Sure enough, there's a major showdown towards the end.

Nanni Loy's Academy Award-nominated movie creates a real sense of realism. The viewer feels as if s/he is there amongst the Neapolitans, doing everything possible to get rid of the swastika-clad goons. What happens to the boy pretty much sums up what war is all about.

All in all, this is a movie that everyone should see. Excellent.

A powerful movie that convinces you *you are there*

[richard-1787 · 8/10 · 19 January 2023]

This is one very powerful movie, wonderfully filmed. I truly had to remind myself that these were all actors, because it would have been very easy to believe that what I was watching was going on someplace in the world - except that it is in black and white.

My one real problem with this movie, however, is that it went on too long once the Neapolitans started fighting back against the Germans, who occupied the city after the fall of Mussolini in a futile attempt to slow the Allies' march up the Italian peninsula. It becomes basically one street battle after another of Neapolitans with guns against German tanks. While each one is well done, it became too much of the same thing for me.

My other, lesser problems were that:

the depiction of women in this movie is almost uniformly negative. With a few notable exceptions, every time we see a woman or group of women - and that is often - the women are completely overwhelmed by their emotions and getting in the way of the men who are doing the fighting. They never help, but they often hinder. In 1962 that probably didn't bother many viewers, but it does get old today.

In the last third or so of the movie, when we have all the street battles, the caption writer seems to give up on trying to let us know what is being said. There are long stretches with no captions. Since the dialogue is almost all in Neapolitan rather than standard Italian, even some Italians, not to mention non-Italian speakers, are left wondering what all the shouting and wailing is about.

I would certainly recommend this movie to anyone interested in World War II Italian history. I don't know, honestly, if it would hold other viewers for its full two hours.

Raw documentary realism. Fantastic cinema.

[weirdquark · 9/10 · 17 November 2022]

Neapolitans fight back against the Germans in this fantastic cinema verite film about the civilian uprising in Naples. The raw, unpolished (by Hollywood standards) cinematography lends it a documentary realism. The long-take, wide-angle shots of real locations in Naples, and scenes employing complex staging involving dozens or hundreds of people are awesome to watch. They give a real sense of the geography and rhythm of urban battle, a rock solid sense of time and place, like the action is happening for real and that you're actually there. Which is so different from the modern trend of hyperkinetic shakycam closeups that convey "chaotic busy-ness" while providing absolutely no sense of time, place, relative geography, or physical context.

Viewing recommendation: This film makes a great double feature with Everybody Go Home! (1960) aka Tutti a Casa, made two years earlier. The plot of that film takes you from the September 8, 1943 Armistice right up to the Naples uprising at the end of September.

WWII realism

[SnoopyStyle · 8/10 · 20 January 2023]

This is a historical true event. It's 1943. With the Allies approaching, the population of Naples celebrates their anticipated liberation. There is nevertheless a contingent of Nazi German soldiers occupying the city. They start conscripting the male population and holding them hostage at the football stadium. They shoot civilians as the partisans fight back. For four days, Italians from various walks-of-life rise up to fight their oppressors using a variety of methods.

This award winning film recreates the celebrated WWII events. It has two Oscar nominations. It has the feel of reality. It doesn't follow any one character, but a variety of people. It reminds me a lot of The Battle of Algiers (1966). The action is a little broader with some broad humor. The big battle is impressive with a couple of tanks. It is a great realized war movie.

four days of naples

[mossgrymk · 8/10 · 9 February 2023]

Good docu-drama (which gets less docu as the film progresses) about a city at war. I'd place it below "Battle Of Algiers" and quite a ways above "Is Paris Burning?", two films on the same general topic made at roughly the same time. I especially admired the way director Nanni Loy is able to weave individual stories within the overall tapestry of Naples fighting the German foe so that we get a feeling of intimacy and immediacy that only focusing on specific persons can achieve while not losing sight of the larger picture of tyranny being defied. And, of course, as other IMDB reviewers have noted, the battle scenes are realistic in the extreme. One not only feels fully invested in the action but, at least in my case, plucked from my Los Angeles couch and plunked down in war torn Napolii.

Is it too captious of me to say that I would have liked a fuller, more nuanced examination of why many of the Neapolitan rebels took up arms against the Nazis less than a fortnight after they were fighting alongside them? Was it hatred of Nazi-ism? Hatred of German occupation? Or, since the American army was about to enter the city, could it have been a desire to be on the winning side? Certainly you get no satisfactory answer from this very propagandistic film. And it is not as if this flag waving can be excused as a patriotic product of immediate postwar Italy since the movie was made nearly twenty years after the events depicted. Give it a B.

PS...Ironic to be watching this Italian anti fascist film while the country is currently being ruled by a fascistic prime minister.

Feels Like a Documentary

[evanston_dad · 8/10 · 27 July 2023]

A fictionalized rendering of a Neopolitan uprising against the Nazis when a garrison of Germans refuse to concede the end of WWII.

I have no idea how accurate this movie is, but it certainly looks accurate. Director Nanni Loy films in grainy black and white, giving the film the look of newsreel footage from the 1940s. The whole movie feels more like a documentary filmed by a guerilla journalist than a fictional film.

There aren't really characters to follow as much as there are faces that become familiar over the course of the film. But despite the lack of a conventional narrative, the movie pulses with humanity.

Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1962 Academy Awards, and then nominated for Best Original Story and Screenplay the year after.

Grade: A.

Depicting an important time in Italian history

[jordondave-28085 · 9/10 · 2 June 2023]

(1962) Four Days Of Naples/ Le quattro giornate di Napoli (In Italian with English subtitles) WAR/ NEO- REALIST

Co-written and directed by Nanni Loy, chronicling in different locales all over Naples about how the Italians rallied together against the Nazis out of one of Italy's most hardest hit cities during WWII. Says it was inspired by actual events which in my opinion didn't need explaining since it was one of many cities Nazi Germany invaded attempt to take over, and I as an audience want to witness how the rallying came about. Also impressive is the handling of the cast of thousands since it didn't solely center on a single person using the same pre-bombed locales classifying it as a "Neo-Realist" film in the same category as "The Bicycle Thief" and "The Third Man". Nominated for two Oscars.