Uomini contro
Italy / Yugoslavia,
1970, 101 min
Shown in 1981 / 1997
CREDITS
- dir
-
Francesco Rosi
- prod
-
Francesco Rosi, Luciano Perugia
- scr
-
Tonino Guerra, Raffaele la Capria, Francesco Rosi
- cam
-
Pasqualino de Santis
- editor
-
Ruggero Mastroianni
- mus
-
Piero Piccioni
- cast
-
Alain Cuny, Gian Maria Volonté, Mark Frechette, Giampiero Albertini, Pier Paolo Capponi
- source
-
Cinecittà International, Via Tuscolana, 1055, 00173 Rome, Itoly. FAX: 39-6-722-862-33
-
COMMENTS
Shown under the title Uomini Contro in 1981. Francesco Rosi in person as recipient of the Akira Kurosawa Award, 1997.
OTHER
Francesco Rosi’s powerful antiwar film, based on Emilio Lussu’s memoir of World War I, has been compared to Stanley Kubrick’s classic Paths of Glory in showing the false valor and needless carnage of that war and, by extension, all wars. Set in the Carso Mountains in 1916, Just Another War tells of a fanatical general (Alain Cuny) who orders his troops into an obviously futile battle against the Austrians, a socialist officer (Gian Maria Volonté) who gains a following in opposing the general and a young lieutenant (Mark Frechette) who comes to think that some orders should be disobeyed. Like all of Rosi’s films, this is about class conflict. What Rosi called “the clear separation between the men who had decided to initiate the war and those who had been mobilized to fight it” is seen in the Italian soldiers from the south fighting for regions they didn’t even know were part of Italy. “This film says things we will never read in our history books,” said Alberto Moravia. “With honesty and seriousness, Rosi wants his film to contribute to an awareness of our national history.” Rosi would agree: “I have always believed in cinema’s function as a denunciation and testimony of reality, a teller of stories through which children can better know their parents.”
FACTOID #173
Though he starred in an Opening Night film (1967’s How I Won the War), lent his image and songs to 1968’s Festival entry Yellow Submarine and was scheduled to appear at the 1971 Festival with wife Yoko for an evening of their short films, John Lennon never attended the SFIFF.
