Video Reviews and News : ****Excellent***Good**Ordinary*Poor : **** General Della Rovere. Connoisseur. $59.95.1959.

Three great exemplars of Italian neo-realism--Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and writer Sergio Amidei--collaborated on this wartime study of a small-time Genoa chiseler who, after being arrested and imprisoned by the Germans, is forced to impersonate a heroic Resistance general. De Sica was the star, rather than director, and it was the finest performance of his career. Playing this dapper con man, he uses his aging matinee-idol looks, his impeccable delivery, his humane vulnerability, even his own real-life flaw (compulsive gambling) to create an unforgettable portrait of unlikely nobility. The film is a brilliantly ironic study of role-playing in crisis: The Nazi Colonel (Hannes Messemer) who recruits Bardone is inwardly liberal-minded, even compassionate--but his role makes him a monster. Bardone is a silky, shifty worm--but his assumed persona of the heroic general consumes and transforms him; he reaches at the end for the greatness and courage he’s only shamming. A quietly moving and, at the end, devastating film.