The first American picture dealing with an “occupied” country is set in Italy. Apart from evident anti-Italian racism, there are many surprising things about that very early period of “freedom”: the American Army’s collaboration with mafia, the indulgence towards Fascists, the dramatic return of the Italian POW. In fact, the film did not satisfy the Office of War Information, as the text of the OWI’s review shows: It is doubtful overseas entertainment fare at this time. European audiences might see in the picture an over-simplification of the problems involved in the occupation and rehabilitation of a town in a belligerant country by Allied Military Government personnel. The script has side-stepped any conflict of pro and anti-Fascists. It establishes the former Mayor, patently a Fascist, as being subject to ridicule, such a solution might indicate to overseas audiences a weakness and lack of understanding on the part of Americans today. […] Certainly there’s little in the picture, aside from Joppolo’s sympathetic attitude, to present the American way of life in a constructive way to people of Europe”. (OWI document dated June 15, 1945)