This film is less narrative than Rome Open City but very similar in content. It is obviously part of the same series. The film is just as realistic in its story, not necessarily in filmmaking style, just as dark and sparse in regards to the lighting and production and just as powerful in terms of the storylines.
There are no happy endings, just like how the priest is killed in Rome Open City, the partisans are drowned at the end of Paisan. The film is a little more on the docu-style side of filmmaking though than Rome Open City as it employs actual “found footage” or footage of the army taking over and moving in.
And the use of a narrator constructing through-lines also helps establish the sense that this movie has documentary aspects to it. It is a brutally real film in its narrative with storylines that don't resolve or have endings that you would expect but not hope for. Again, WW2 marks a departure in terms of content now killing is acceptable on screen whereas before you had to have some redemption for the "good" characters. Now, everyone can be a victim and not a martyr just another dead person, a casualty of war.
One of the storylines that was notable to me in this film was the one of the African American GI befriending an Italian kid in the occupied city. The portrayal of him addressed the issue of integration as there were many African American soldiers in WW2 who went abroad and were treated differently than they were in the states, almost with more autonomy and rights as a person. This glimpse of things to come was quite interesting because you could see how much of a contribution African Americans made to the war effort as white people and thus they would demand greater rights on their return. The relationship between those two characters, both on the fringes of society, an impoverished youth in Italy and an African American soldier rang true to me and was very heartfelt.