Local girl Carmela, who wants to find the whereabouts of her brother and father, agrees to guide the patrol past a German minefield to the seaside.

Francesca, a young prostitute in liberated Rome, takes Fred, a drunken American soldier, to the room where she serves her customers.

He is not interested in her services and tells her of his futile search for a young woman he met and fell in love with shortly after the liberation of the city six months earlier.

After being held up by a gunfight, Massimo proceeds with his search, while Harriet takes care of a wounded partisan, from whom she hears of Lupo's recent death.

Three American military chaplains are welcomed to stay the night at a Roman Catholic monastery in the Apennine Mountains West of Rimini.

Despite the rule that meals have to be taken in silence, Martin holds a speech in which he expresses his appreciation for having found his peace again which he had believed to be lost in the tribulations of war.

[2] Geiger also supplied Rossellini with raw film stock and four American players, Dots Johnson, Gar Moore, Harriet White and Dale Edmonds.

[2] The screenplay was based on scripts and stories by Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hayes, and Vasco Pratolini.

Sazio, a Sicilian girl in the script, spoke with Neapolitan accent and had to be dubbed, as did the friars, whose monastery was located near Salerno in the South but supposed to be set in Northern Italy.

[9] Paisan premiered at the Venice International Film Festival on 18 September 1946 and was released in Italian cinemas on 10 December the same year.

[9] French critic André Bazin chose it as the key film to demonstrate the importance of Italian neorealism, emphasising its grasp of reality through an amalgam of documentary technique and fiction.

[9] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times titled it "a milestone in the expressiveness of the screen" which achieves a "tremendous naturalness" through its actuality photography and casting of unknowns.

[5] Contrary to the prevalent opinion, film theorist Rudolf Arnheim questioned the exaltation of the monks and their intolerance towards the non-Catholic chaplains in the monastery episode,[13] a view which was shared by critics Robert Warshow and, later, Pio Baldelli.