Having grown up amongst many folks of Italian descent, the term paisan, or pal, was quite familiar to me; especially when used by non-Italians to describe Italian friends of theirs. A similar meaning is conveyed with the use of the term as the title of the second film in Robert Rossellini's War Trilogy. Paisan (Paisá), from 1946, is not nearly as well known as Rome Open City, his first trilogy film, but it is a significantly better film, as well as being more truly a Neo-Realist film than its more melodramatic predecessor. Part of the reason is that the 126 minute film is episodic, so that the mawkishness and melodrama, that is inherent in many war stories, never gets to the point of overwhelm. Made and released a year after Rome Open City, Paisan often played on double bills with the earlier film when it was released in America. The film is set during 1943 and 1944, and each of the six episodes follows the Allies' chronological battles northward through Italy. Each episode highlights willful or mistaken miscommunication between the Allies, the Italians, and the Nazis. The film won many awards, in its day, but curiously languished while other Neo-Realist films became exalted as classics. While not, overall, a great film, three of the episodes reach heights that contain great moments, and these are enough to argue the film passes the near-great threshold, meaning reasonable arguments can be made in its favor. Those episodes are the third, the fourth, and the sixth and final one. The others range from bad to solid. All the episodes open with narration by Giulio Panicali.