But thinking about it further, the pattern of this story is actually:
in the context of the teacher (the powerful), the father (the weak) is finally killed by the child (the tool).
It is the projection of the Nazis on ordinary individuals, and it can also be regarded as a metaphor of micro-knowledge.
The role of the teacher was not clearly defined at the beginning. It may be a "friend" of a vested interest, or it may be just a ruthless businessman. The disc he sold was Hitler’s speech, and the director did not know if he intended to put the image of the teacher on fascism. What he said to his children in a hurry was also extremely cold, "survival of the fittest," and the weak are destined to be eliminated by the strong, more like an instinctive fascist. The director blurs the definition of the character, but adds the title of "teacher" to him, which is an establishment of authority.
The child obeyed the teacher and killed his father. Some people say that the child "thinks that the father is useless to society". I think it is a kind of conjecture. The child is not very conscious in the process of father killing. He is just a tool of the teacher. Rossellini has already told us this before. The child sells discs for the teacher, and the teacher's care for him is only using his means.
The image of the father is mostly established through dialogue. He believes that people should be used to take responsibility. He is deeply guilty of the burden of being a family. He is also an ordinary person who loves life (he describes food in the hospital, saying that it is like heaven), so that a little bit of enrichment, a flesh and blood image . He has no control over reality. One is sick in bed, and the other is "war has taken away my children, and inflation has taken away my property." He is an image of a weak person who is completely powerless to resist.
In fact, whether it is metaphor or not, the director has already achieved his goal of depicting reality.
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