The third panel of Rossellini’s war triptych (following Rome, Open City and Paisan) was, according to the director, "an attempt to discover the real reasons which had driven the Germans to act as they had done." The film is cast in the likeness of its young central character, Edmund, and the devastated city in which he lives. Rossellini conceived the film around the final scenes of Edmund wandering in the ruins. This long final sequence marks the end of a narrative trajectory that begins in the mode of documentary reportage but becomes ever more hallucinatory, charting a journey through a strange, devastated landscape.