n, Giorgio, flees his home when the Nazi soldiers arrive, Rossellini contrasts the interior and the exterior, the intrusion of the Germans and the escape of Giorgio, in a way that challenges different ideas about openness. Giorgio has been enclosed in his home, though we first see him emerging into the openness of the exterior. He peers down through a crack in the roof to see the Germans as if they were in a small box. In truth, they are standing before his door. The interior of the apartment seems dwarfed by their presence, and they are therefore all the more enclosed by the walls and doorways that seem too small to hold them as they search the apartment. There is irony in that the man hunted, a man clearly not free, is out in the open air, while the hunters, who presumably are free, are enclosed within the confines of his apartment.
Immediately after this sequence, the explanation of the term "open city" is given as the command
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