VI

		marily executed. As this is going on, she learns from the wounded partisan that the man she is looking for died some time ago.

		As a matter of fact, my summary of this sequence encapsulates more narrative continuity than is present in the text. We know literally nothing about the two main characters except that they think it important to risk their lives to get where they want to go. Other characters appear and disappear, never to be heard of again. A British officer, for instance, shows up for a brief moment. Quirkily, he uses his binoculars to survey the highlights of Florentine architecture rather than pinning down the German positions. Even what happens to the principals is eventually left unsaid. For example, her companion is not seen again after crossing the street. It is not known whether he was able to reach his family after all, whether they were unharmed or not, nor whether he felt any guilt for having caused the partisan's death. As for the "heroine," the film stops, in medias res, when she finds out about her friend's death (the whole effort therefore was for naught). Nor is there a clear resolution to the battle for Florence. Although events (historical as well as fictional) do take place, they are recounted in a manner reminiscent of annals and chronicles. Armies are on the march but on the field of battle the characters' experiences have nothing to do with the liberation of Italy. Their goals are very limited and the extreme volatility of the situation makes it clear that, at any street corner, anything can happen. The allied strategy for the liberation of Italy disappears behind incidental but personally important encounters (the "Saturday" of the annals). Death happens without rhyme or reason: people die because they are hit by gun fire not because it is mandated by the plot. In other words, the camera is far from omniscient. It is as if the writer/director too were discovering the events as they unfolded, in complete ignorance of a final, satisfactory resolution. This segment of Paisa thus demonstrates another kind of film writing, a narrative where "the events truly tell themselves'' at the very moment they are happening, without anyone capable of reframing what is going on within a larger context. At the same time though, the dislocations are also experienced as style, the mark of an exceptional narrator.

		XIII

		In view of all of this, I would like to suggest that the Hollywood paradigm functions in fact as a super genre. It is a genre insofar as anyone easily rec-