YMMV Tropes associated to this film:
- Award Snub: Did receive a number of nominations upon release, and was nominated by the Oscars for Best Foreign Film and Best Original Screenplay, but did not win either.
- Awesome Moments:
- As Germans round up a number of captured men to take away as forced labor for their planned defenses against the Allies entering Italy, a large mob of women - wives and mothers - surround the trucks. Even as the German soldiers raise their rifles to intimidate the growing mob, the women silently push forward. Suddenly, a mother screams out "Give us back our men!" and every woman overwhelm the guards without a shot being fired, pulling their loved ones out of the trucks, and triggering the city's uprising.
- One German patrol getting ambushed in an alleyway, as every window and balcony opens up with Neapolitans tossing every piece of furniture - even literally a kitchen sink - at the soldiers.
- In Real Life, the Neapolitan citizenry who rose up against German Nazis, who historically showed little if any mercy to their occupied territories.
- Funny Moments:
- The ongoing bickering among the Neapolitan people themselves, griping first about the stress of Allied bombing and then the stress of street-fighting against the Germans.
- Even as they're throwing furniture out of their windows to ambush a German patrol, one of the alleyway residents yells at his roommate to NOT throw ''his'' bed off the balcony.
- Heartwarming Moments:
- The women of Naples rising up against the Germans to rescue their husbands and sons.
- A teenager at a school/orphanage leads his fellow students out to fight the Germans. The schoolmaster warns him of the dangers and orders him to stay, but the teen angrily refuses and goes anyway. After a day of fighting, the teen returns with his fellow students to the school, mostly because they have nowhere else to go. The schoolmaster still chides the teen for his actions, but performs his duty to feed the students. While they sit at the same table to eat their meals, the schoolmaster and the student continue to bicker but do so with grudging respect.
- Signature Scene: The citizens ambushing a German patrol in the alleyway.
- Tear Jerker: Every other scene as the uprising commences focuses on a mother or wife coming across a dead man, being asked to identify him, and expressing both hope that it wasn't their husband or son and then sorrow that some other woman would have to cope with that despair.
- The execution of the innocent Italian sailor at the start of the movie, while the witnesses are forced at gunpoint to applaud his death.
- The death of the 12-year-old. His mother is seen at the end trying to help another child reunite with his mother, and the realization her own child is gone leaves her in shock.
